Be Prepared for the Daily Routine of Wearing Invisalign
If you want straighter teeth – and who doesn’t? – then you basically have two options. You could get traditional braces and have a mess of metal and wires glued to your teeth and poking and prodding at your gums and cheeks 24/7. But as much fun as that sounds like (read: absolutely zero fun whatsoever and actually pretty miserable in reality), you’re probably going to want to go with your other option and get Invisalign.
Why? Well, because in any debate that pits pieces of metal scraping the insides of your mouth for literally the entire day for years against pieces of plastic resting on your teeth for most of the day and (probably) for fewer years, it’s pretty clear what comes out on top.
But getting Invisalign is still making a commitment, and you always want to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into before you commit to something. So, here’s what you can expect your Invisalign routine to be like on the daily.
Eating and Drinking
If you’re thirsty – and we’re going to go ahead and go out on a limb here and assume you do get thirsty periodically throughout every day – you can quench you’re fine to drink water with your trays in. But you shouldn’t ever drink colored liquids, especially dark ones, with your trays still in your mouth. They’ll stain your aligners/trays pretty quickly, and having invisible braces that are covered in stains kind of defeats the purpose of the braces being invisible, so it’s probably best to avoid this if you’re hoping to keep a nice white smile while you have Invisalign.
The good news is that drinking water is one of the healthiest choices you can make for your oral and overall health. But if you can’t completely cut yourself off from other beverages – and most people can’t, so you’re hardly alone here – then at least make sure you take your aligners out before drinking. Just be sure to put them back in immediately after taking a sip.
You should also avoid overly sugary drinks whenever possible, even if they’re clear/light in color and even if you take out your trays before drinking. The sugars can build up between your teeth and cling to your aligners when you put them back in, again causing them to become stained.
As for food, you should never eat while wearing your Invisalign trays, so you’re going to want to just stop eating entirely. No, obviously that’s a bad joke. Instead, just take your trays out before taking a bite. Again, just put them right back in after you finish eating!
Keeping Your Aligners In
It’s recommended that you keep your trays in your mouth for 22 hours a day every day. That’s not a small amount of hours. We know. But hey, if you had traditional braces you’d have no choice but to keep them in there 24/7 because of that whole glued to your teeth thing. So, while 22 hours is a lot, it’s an improvement over your alternative.
This means you’ll have to be disciplined with watching the clock and only taking them out exactly when it’s time to eat or drink and putting them back in as soon as you can afterward. It’s less about the number of times you take them out throughout any given day and more about how long you leave them out for when you take them out. When you take them out, try to get them back in quickly.
Cleaning Habits
It’s best if you can brush (and floss) your teeth every time after you eat or drink (not including water) before putting them back in, so try to carry a travel toothbrush and toothpaste with you to prepare for that.
As for cleaning the aligners themselves, brushing them just like you would your teeth is a good option. But you may also want to soak them in denture cleaners to clean off stains while you have them out to eat, drink and brush. Again, they’ll be in your mouth most of the day, but Invisalign wearers tend to let their trays soak in denture cleaners while they’re eating breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Talking with Invisalign
When you first put your retainers in, you may develop a very subtle lisp. We’re not talking the Sid the Sloth from Ice Age here, so don’t get too worried about it. But it is possible that you’ll have a little bit of trouble speaking without a lisp when you first put the trays in. Most people don’t develop any sort of lisp at all, though, and even those who do tend to adjust to the aligners pretty quickly and learn to speak with them in without a lisp.
