If you are thinking about getting your teeth straightened, it’s not a matter to take lightly. You only get one set of teeth after you lose your baby teeth, and they have got to last you for decades. Teeth can suffer damage from all sorts of causes, and one root cause is when they are not properly aligned. It would be such a waste to invest in teeth straightening, only for it not to work properly and for you to lose teeth early when they could have lasted so much longer. That’s why we recommend always seeing an orthodontist in Hampshire before you go ahead with straightening.
An orthodontist is a highly qualified dentist who has successfully completed two or three years of postgraduate training in this particular area of dentistry. They also keep up to date with new innovations in techniques, devices and understanding, to be able to offer you quality advice and treatment for teeth straightening.
When you come to see us at Winchester Orthdontics, our Hampshire orthodontist Dr Suzette Mulder will be able to offer advice tailored to your specific issues and requirements. If you or your child has complex needs, she will be able to tailor a programme of straightening just for you.
Suzette appreciates that having braces is not done for the immediate beauty effect, and so, where possible, she will always recommend the least intrusive device. One that many people have used is called Invisalign, often misspelt as Invisaline.
This treatment does not even look like traditional bracket and wire braces. Instead, it uses transparent, acrylic aligners (hence the name Invisalign) that snap on over your teeth like a mouth guard worn for sports to protect from grinding at night.
Instead of having your invisible braces tightened when the pressures wears off to progress the straightening, you are given a series of aligners to wear. Bumps carefully positioned on the tooth side of each aligner gently nudge your teeth into position. When the pressure wears off one aligner, which usually takes 7-10 days, it’s time to put the next one in. The average treatment time is a year.