Now that you have that perfect straight teeth after Invisalign treatment, how do you keep your teeth as straight as it is?
The answer is simple: you have to wear retainers. After Invisalign treatment, you may be asked to wear retainers day and night or just at nighttime. This is based on several factors including the severity of your initial problem, age, and whether your dentist is using the retainers to finalize a few tooth positions.
After 1 year of continuous wearing of retainer, it is still recommended to wear your retainers 3-5 times a week for long term.
Numerous patients are stunned by these recommendations. We are not trying to “torment” patients for the rest of their life, however we do need patients to understand that without consistent wearing of retainers, there is a solid probability that the beautiful, straight teeth that they now possess may not last.
What is the reason for this?
Your teeth are housed in your jawbones. When you undergo an orthodontic treatment, you have a power framework on the teeth that pushes the teeth into a new position. In order for the tooth to move into a new position, it needs to have bone on one side to vanish or soften (we call this resorption). So if a tooth were moving from the front of your mouth towards the back, the bone on the back of the tooth would disappear (resorb).
Once the tooth is in the new position, new bone is deposited around the tooth to help it stabilize in its new position. This process of depositing new bone can take 9 to 12 months.
During this time, you are wearing your retainers, which are helping to stabilize the new positions of all the teeth while the new bone is being deposited. Hence this is the reason why you have to wear your retainers daily for 1 year.
You may still be wondering why you need to continue to wear retainers after 1 year. There is more to the story and more tooth biology, so hang in there as we explain it further.
Following 1 year of ceaseless retainer wear, we regularly prescribe that you to keep on wearing your retainers around 3-5 times each week for long term. The reason we prescribe this cycle of wear is because of the moderate moving of the teeth forward and inward as we age.
This development happens graduallyand in general takes decades to occur. Be that as it may, it can be averted through continued and steady wear of retainers.
