5 Tips to Make It Through Your First Week of Invisalign Treatment

Every time you look in the mirror, your eyes are drawn to your crooked teeth. They make properly cleaning your teeth difficult and smiling confidently downright impossible. Luckily, you have a consultation scheduled for Invisalign in Richardson. Invisalign involves using clear, discreet aligner trays to straighten your pearly whites. Read on to learn five tips to surviving your first week of treatment.

1. Protect Your Tongue and Gums

The edges of your aligners might irritate the soft tissues in your mouth. This is especially common at the beginning of your Invisalign journey, but don’t worry. Your mouth eventually toughens up. To speed up this process, you can use dental wax to cover up rough spots. Use clean fingers to roll a small pinch of wax into a shape, then apply it to the areas of your trays that are bothering you.

Another solution might be rinsing with peroxide-based mouthwash. It’s specially designed to provide relief for teeth and gum sores during orthodontic treatment. Buy a bottle for your medicine cabinet before you begin Invisalign treatment.

2. Treat Your Discomfort

Invisalign works by exerting pressure on your teeth to shift them into a straighter position. That force can cause some discomfort, especially when you’re wearing a brand-new set of aligners. This is why your dentist recommends doing chewing exercises whenever your re-insert your aligners. Not only can it help your treatment stay on track, it can help with pain relief as well.

3. Keep Track of How Often You Wear Your Aligners

For treatment to be truly effective and timely, you’ll have to wear your aligners for a minimum of 22 hours a day. There are plenty of mobile apps out there, such as TrayMinder, that can help you track your progress. TrayMinder will let you know how long you’ve worn your aligners and when to switch to a new set of trays.

4. Remove Your Aligners in a Safe and Sanitary Way

If you’re going to take your aligners out with your hands, make sure to wash them beforehand. However, your trays are going to get tighter the farther along in your treatment you are, so you’ll have to continuously find new angles for removing them. It might help to use a tool created for this purpose, like OrthoKey, which has a special hook designed to comfortably take out your aligners and save you from nail gashes.

5. Keep Your Aligners Clean and Clear

Ideally, every Invisalign patient would avoid eating or drinking while wearing their trays. But some people are going to “cheat.” That’s just a fact of life. Admittedly, finishing off a glass of white wine or morning coffee with your aligners in isn’t the end of the world as long as you don’t indulge in that habit every day. If you’re going to cheat, do so near the end of your aligner cycle so that if your trays get stained, there will be less time until you’re going to switch them anyway.

About the Author

Dr. Jan Ortiz is a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico School of Dental Medicine. He received his specialty training in Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics combined with a Doctorate in Sciences in dentistry from Boston University’s Goldman School of Dental Medicine. He is currently Board-eligible from the American Board of Orthodontists. To get started on your Invisalign treatment, click here to visit Dr. Ortiz’s website.