Invisalign

Everyone knows what traditional braces are, the glued on metal bands, brackets, and wires. Invisalign is a removable, clear, for all intents and purposes, plastic tray. And when I say plastic, it's a very specialized type of material. I tell patients our goal is to have you wear them 22 hours a day, but you can take them out to eat, you can take them out if you have to give a speech. If you're a high school cheerleader and you got to go to a football game, you take them. But you try to wear them as long as you can every day. And it's a series of trays that are microscopically different, and through the succession of changing those trays out on a weekly basis, we slowly move teeth. Each tray will move the teeth up to one-quarter of a millimeter, tray by tray moving the teeth into the position and the function that we want. Who is a good candidate for Invisalign treatment? Basically, anyone. We can even do Invisalign on kids that haven't lost all of their baby teeth yet. Generally, someone with their permanent dentition in my office, all of their permanent teeth. I've done Invisalign on 14-year-old kids. I've done Invisalign on 20 and 30-year-olds. I've done it on an 84-year-old gal. So anybody, young to old. I will generally send patients home with four, five, six trays. So you're not coming into the office on a weekly basis. You come in every four, five, six weeks so that I can make sure that you're progressing the way I want you to. But short of that, the trays come in and out, you can eat, you can drink, you can brush your teeth, kind of be in control.