Eating food can harm, degrade, or discolor your teeth aligners, as well as encourage bacteria to develop quickly on them. You’re strongly advised to resist ingesting anything other than water while using your teeth aligners. However, even when you take out your teeth aligners to eat, what you chew on may affect your teeth alignment progress.
If you’re planning on correcting your dentition via invisible teeth aligners, it’s essential you read through our checklist to ensure you understand what you’re signing up for. However, If you’re currently on an alignment treatment, there are certain foods that you have to avoid. Read on to discover what these foods are.
Foods to Avoid When Wearing Invisible Teeth Aligners
Considering that aligners carry out micro shifts to put your teeth back into position, there are some foods that you have to stay away from to prevent ruining the effects of your alignment treatment. Here are a few of them;
Candies and Hard Foods
Jawbreakers, crusty bread, seeds, and nuts are among foods that can cause cracks or chips in teeth. Furthermore, by forcing your teeth out of alignment, these meals can obstruct your alignment correction. Safer alternatives, such as potato chips and pretzels with a rapid and pleasant crunch, are unlikely to affect your teeth aligners.
Fruits and veggies are a better choice, but they must be sliced into bite-size pieces. Overall, stick to softer fruits such as bananas, grapes, and strawberries.
Foods That Are Sticky and Chewy
If you plan to utilize invisible teeth aligners, you should know that chewing gum is prohibited throughout treatment. Sticky foods, such as gum, can stick to the teeth surfaces following consumption. This food debris can lead to plaque, tartar, as well as bacteria buildup on the teeth and aligner trays, leading to tooth decay.
Staining Liquids and Beverages
Coffee, tea, and wine can stain the aligners, making them more visible to the naked eye. The shape of invisible aligner trays can also be distorted and damaged by hot coffee, tea, and other hot fluids.
Citrus juice, for example, can dissolve tooth enamel and cause infection. In this light, when using teeth aligners, it's critical to keep the trays clean and practice good oral hygiene.
Raw Ice
Chewing ice, when wearing invisible teeth aligners or not, is terrible for your teeth. Namely, they’re known to damage the teeth and hamper your therapy progress.
How to Care for Your Teeth Aligners
The teeth alignment procedure takes an average of 6–12 months, but they have to be changed every two weeks. However, poor maintenance can cause you to remove them sooner, negatively affecting the procedure. That said, here’s how you can adequately care for your teeth aligners for best results.
Maintain a Good Oral Routine
Foul breath is very common among users of invisible teeth aligners. However, you can avoid this by taking dental cleanliness more seriously.
Before placing their teeth aligners back on, patients are advised to brush and floss after every meal. This helps prevent bacteria from growing on the teeth and aligners' surfaces. When dental hygiene is lacking, the intimate contact area between the teeth aligners and the teeth can become a breeding ground for harmful germs.
Clean Teeth Aligners With a Soft Brush
You can clean your transparent teeth aligners using a gentle brush and cleaner. You can also do this with a toothbrush.
However, ensure that you brush your transparent teeth aligners carefully with a brush with soft bristles when you wake up. Moreover, before placing the teeth aligners back in your mouth, you should give them a thorough rinse.
Brush and cleanse your teeth aligners gently once more before sleep to eliminate any bits of food or dental plaque that may have accumulated over the day. Rinsing thoroughly ensures that any dirt or bacteria left over from your last meal are removed.
Use Mouthwash as Alternative to Brushing
Rinse your mouth with a non-alcoholic mouthwash before replacing your invisible teeth aligners if you don’t have time to clean your teeth. This is important because debris from the previous meal may remain in your teeth and eventually become part of the aligner if they’re not removed.
Keep Your Teeth Aligners in a Safe Location
One of the significant concerns regarding teeth aligners is that they’re readily misplaced or lost due to their detachable nature. After cleaning your aligners, store them in their case to keep them healthy and protected from damage. Also, keep them away from pets and avoid putting them inside your pocket, handbag, or napkins.
Wrap Up
The use of teeth aligners has increased in popularity because of their effectiveness in correcting crooked or misaligned teeth. However, patients still have a role to play in ensuring the effectiveness of this procedure by taking adequate care of their aligners. By playing their part, they can be sure to get perfectly aligned teeth in six to twelve months.
If you have a problem with your alignment and want to correct it, the top-notch dentists at Straight Teeth Invisible have provided you with a solution with their transparent teeth aligners. This dental device allows you to have proper alignment of your teeth without compromising your smile — as is the case with traditional braces.
FAQ
Can I eat with my teeth aligners on?
You might not feel like taking your teeth aligners off while eating, especially when in public. However, this teeth correction procedure was developed for convenience and cannot withstand chewing. As such, always take out your aligners when you eat.
How long should I wear invisible teeth aligners in a day?
Patients are expected to have them on for 20–22 hours a day. Taking them out is only acceptable if it’s for only 2–4 hours; any longer than this might affect treatment.
To reduce the discomfort that patients go through while ensuring effectiveness, the shifts are spread out through 6–12 months. Overall, it’s a very convenient and effective way of correcting various teeth alignment problems.
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