There was a time in the past that if you didn’t get your teeth straightened as a child or certainly no later than your teens, you were often forced to resign yourself to living with crooked teeth for the rest of your adult life.
Thankfully, those days are gone.
While traditional braces are still very much available and often used for orthodontic correction, there are now clear aligners that are barely noticeable while you’re wearing them. One of the most popular brands of clear aligners is Invisalign®.
Using Invisalign® aligners to create a straighter, more beautiful smile, takes a bit of determination and some commitment on your part. One of the first challenges you’ll face is simply adjusting to your new normal during the first week of wearing Invisalign® clear aligners.
The First Week with Invisalign® Aligners
The biggest thing to help you get through the first week is just knowing what to expect. If you know what could happen and have an idea of how you may feel, it often helps you with adjusting to the feeling of the aligners in your mouth.
Here are a few tips to help you successfully navigate through those first few unfamiliar days.
How to Deal with Discomfort from Invisalign® Clear Aligners
Clear aligners work by slowly moving the teeth into a different, more ideal position in your mouth. During the first few days of wearing clear aligners, it is not unusual to have some discomfort.
How much discomfort you experience depends, to a large degree, on your level of pain tolerance, but chewing and biting exercises can help reduce the discomfort and offer some relief. Your orthodontist will have excellent suggestions for the proper exercises and when to do them for the greatest effectiveness.
Your aligners may even come equipped with foam chewies designed specifically to exercise your mouth to help ease some of that initial discomfort. They help massage your gums, which stimulates increased blood flow to the area. The nutrient-rich blood also helps to relieve discomfort naturally.
Your Tongue Will Benefit from Protection
The edges of the plastic can take some getting used to and may cause irritation until your tongue toughens up a bit. It’s fairly common to experience a few sores on your tongue during the first week or so of having your Invisalign® clear aligners in your mouth, and again each time you replace the trays for a new cycle.
Using dental wax to cover the edges of the aligners will help accelerate the toughening process and may offer some protection against sores developing on your tongue.
There are over-the-counter medications, like Colgate Peroxyl, that you may want to have on hand to help heal any minor irritations you may encounter. It also aids in providing oral pain relief.
Keep Your Invisalign® Aligners Clean and Sanitary
One of the benefits of clear aligners over traditional braces is the flexibility of wearing them, as they can be removed as needed. You’ll likely be removing your aligners fairly frequently, so you want to be sure you do it safely and keep the process as sanitary as possible.
There are accessories available to help you in those efforts. Using storage cases to hold your aligners when you’re not wearing them keeps them from becoming dirty. Storing them in the case also helps to prevent losing or breaking them.
From time to time, you’ll want to clean your clear aligner trays. Your orthodontist can advise you on the preferred method to use to make sure your aligners stay clean and fresh.
If you have other questions about Invisalign® clear aligners or wonder if they might be right for you, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re happy to schedule a consultation so you can learn more about how Invisalign® clear aligners can transform your smile, even when you’re well into adulthood!
