Maintaining proper dental care can lead to a less stressful and more fulfilling life. Unfortunately, not everybody gets the proper dental care as a child. Others may just have more dental issues come up as an adult. This leads to about 25% of the people that wear braves in America being adults.
If you are not set on wearing braces to get straight teeth, you may consider using Invisalign instead. What do you need to know about Invisalign as an adult?
This guide compares both options.
What Is Invisalign?
Invisalign is an alternative that some patients prefer to use to braces. This gives you a practically invisible aligner to wear for both your top teeth and your bottom teeth. The goal of this is to try to straighten your teeth and fix any other issues that come along with that.
Like anything else, there are pros and cons to this choice.
Appearance
One of the biggest benefits of choosing Invisalign over getting braces is that this has less of an effect on your appearance. When you wear braces, these braces tend to get in the way of your ideal smile.
Because Invisalign is practically invisible, you can still see a person’s teeth very well when they smile. Because of this, people may not want to wear braces because they may feel like this impacts their appearance. This can especially be the case for people who rely on their appearance for their career or for those who are known for having a good smile.
Flexibility
Another big benefit that you get with Invisalign compared to braces is the flexibility that you get with this option. The flexibility is that you have the option to take this off and put it back in whenever you please.
With braces, you are stuck with them on your teeth until a dentist performs a procedure to take the braces off of your teeth.
There are a few times when you are encouraged to take Invisalign guards out of your mouth. The main time this occurs is when you want to eat or drink. Except for drinking water, you are supposed to take these out whenever you want to eat or drink something.
If you fail to take it out while you are eating, you may not be able to chew the food properly and small pieces of that food may get stuck in the guard. Also, you could potentially cause damage to the guards if you eat or drink the wrong thing with that.
Another time you might want to take these out is when you have to brush your teeth. This can make it easier for you to keep your teeth clean and you can get more food that is stuck in your mouth out of there.
Even in proper conditions, about 33% of people brush their teeth incorrectly. This is bound to increase when you add braces as an obstacle.
With braces, you are stuck working around them when you are trying to do these tasks. Most of the time, it is nearly impossible to do as good of a job with these tasks compared to when braces are not there.
Discipline
Something that you have to keep in mind is that if you choose to go with this more flexible option, you have to have the proper discipline to keep up with this. This means taking this off every time you are supposed to and putting this back on at the appropriate time.
Examples of times you should put them back on are right before you go to bed and when you are about to leave the house for the day. These can both be times when you have them off because you want to brush your teeth before doing the main activity.
Unfortunately, you could fall asleep before you remember to put these back on. Or, you could be in a rush to get to work and forget to put them back on before you leave the house for the day.
Not having the appropriate discipline for this could delay your treatment. As a result, you could end up wearing these a lot longer than you would braces.
Management
Finally, a big advantage that Invisalign could give you is that you do not have to go to a dentist’s office nearly as often for this. With braces, you have to make several appointments just to keep up with managing them. You will have to go in for the initial procedure, check-ups on your progress with your teeth and to make sure your braces are ok, plus going back when it is time to remove the braces.
Using Invisalign keeps you out of a dental office for these follow-up appointments. Instead, you can just return for your routine dental appointment and you can insert these guards yourself.
Use Invisalign as an Adult
If you are considering using Invisalign as an adult, these are the pros and cons that come along with it. The biggest pros are that it has minimal interference for your appearance, it is easier to manage than braces, and it offers you a lot more flexibility when it comes to usage.
However, the main con with this option is that it takes more discipline on your behalf to use it correctly. You are responsible for taking these guards in and out of your mouth at the appropriate times.
Do you need advice on what you should do? Schedule a consultation with us today.