Top 10 Tips about your Invisalign aligners
- The best way to clean your aligners is by brushing and rinsing them in cold water, you can also use the Retainer brite cleaning tablets. It’s important that you brush your teeth after each meal before re-inserting your aligners to maintain good oral hygiene.
- You should wear your aligners all the time during treatment, except when eating, drinking, playing sports, brushing or flossing teeth. Recommended wear is 22 hours a day.
- The vast majority of patients report no effect on speech. However, as with traditional orthodontic appliances, there is an initial adjustment period associated with having something new in the mouth.
- The orthodontist will instruct you when to change your aligners, it is usually weekly, every 10 days or every 2 weeks depending on your treatment plan.
- Some patients need to wear elastics while wearing aligners, if we need to do this for your plan, we’ll show you how and where to connect them to your aligners.
- Please keep all of your old aligners never throw them out in case you have to step back in treatment or you lose a set of aligners.
- Carry your case with you at all times, you will need to remove your aligners to eat/drink and if you place them in a tissue you may accidentally throw them into the bin, or they could get squashed or damaged.
- When putting aligners in your mouth, always press them into place never bite them as your bite muscles are too strong and could damage them.
- Aligner chewies are a spongy tool to improve the fit of your aligner. By biting down on the chewie each time, you place the aligner in your mouth you reduce any gaps between the aligners and your teeth, which helps the aligners work more effectively. Only use the chewies after you have pressed the aligners into place with your fingers. Start at one side of the mouth and bite on the chewie, then move it to the other side, one tooth at a time. Then repeat in the other direction and keep doing this for a couple of minutes when you put in your aligners. If you can do it at other times of the day that’s even better.
- If you go to a refinement stage of your treatment you may have to wear your last aligner as a retainer at night time only until you receive your new aligners.