Speaking, eating, and smiling are all basic things we need to do, but the relationship between your upper and lower sets of teeth can make that challenging if they don’t line up correctly.
How these two sets of teeth come together in your mouth is known as your bite, and if one or both sets have issues with gapped, crooked, or otherwise misaligned teeth (called malocclusions), it can affect the basic ways you use them.
Braces are the standard way to manage these issues, and clear aligners like Invisalign® are among the most popular choices due to their discreet approach to helping straighten teeth without being noticeable.
Dr. Adam Nusblatt and our medical staff at Nusblatt Dental offer Invisalign to residents of the East Village, Manhattan, New York, seeking to straighten their teeth discreetly. If you’ve never used this dental tool to help misaligned teeth, let’s explore some basic information about how this process works and what happens during and after treatment.
Traditional metal brackets-and-wire braces have been around for a long time. Despite the various changes in their application over the years, the principle remained the same: attaching a device to teeth to slowly force them into alignment over time and work to keep them straight for as long as possible.
Invisalign, though, employs transparent aligner trays made from a thermoplastic called SmarTrack® that performs the same task as metal braces but with multiple adjusting trays that move teeth into place in a shorter time.
Using Invisalign helps you manage issues with mild-to-moderate bite issues, including crooked teeth, overcrowding, gapped teeth, overbite, underbite, open bite, and crossbite.
To initiate the process, we first need to obtain a comprehensive image of your teeth in their current state, either through a mold or by using 3D technology to map the upper and lower jaws. Once we have this information, we create an image of what the teeth will look like in the finished product and map out the aligner trays that need to be molded to achieve it.
Then, the clear trays start coming in. After ensuring they fit correctly, we allow them to do their work of slowly straightening teeth.
As this progresses, you’ll switch out trays on a weekly or biweekly basis as needed, and we’ll check on your teeth every month or six weeks before providing you with the next set of trays. Overall, you can expect to be doing this between 9-18 months before your teeth finally move into their proper positions, helping them look, feel, and work better.
After going through all the trays and getting your teeth just how you want them to look, the Invisalign process is finished, but the work isn’t done. To maintain the look we’ve worked to achieve, you’ll need to wear retainers molded after the last set of aligner trays every day afterward for as long as you want to preserve the results.
We generally recommend wearing them full-time for the first three months after the Invisalign treatment is complete, then nightly from that point forward.
Invisalign offers an elegant and subtle solution for managing misaligned teeth, but maintaining the results is a long-term task, so be prepared. To find out what Invisalign can do for you, make an appointment with Dr. Nusblatt and the Nusblatt Dental team today.
