Can My Teeth Shift After My Invisalign® Treatment?

There are several reasons your teeth may be misaligned or maloccluded, including impacted teeth, early childhood thumbsucking, prolonged bottle feeding, tumors in the jaw and mouth, and improperly fitted dental appliances. Several braces can help with straightening teeth, but clear aligners like Invisalign® are among the most popular choices, as they do the job without making you feel self-conscious using traditional metal braces.

This treatment can take just over a year to complete, and once done, you see a difference in your teeth. But how permanent are the effects? Can the teeth shift again after using Invisalign, and if so, how do you maintain the look you’ve worked so hard for? Let’s find out by looking at the Invisalign process and how to keep your teeth straight once it’s complete.

If you live in the Brea or Banning, California, area and need braces or other dental devices to help your teeth, Dr. Ayed Hawatmeh and his medical staff at Bravo Dental Group can help find the correct treatment for you.

How Invisalign works

Braces slowly force teeth into proper alignment, and with clear aligners, they do it with a series of fabricated trays placed on teeth throughout treatment until the teeth get straightened. The process starts by examining your teeth, followed by 3D scans to map your current dental alignment and plan where your teeth should end up when it’s finished.  

From there, we make the clear aligners, and you wear them for most of the day (up to 22 hours) for 3-18 months, depending on your specific needs. You can remove these aligners for cleaning, brushing, and flossing teeth. You switch out the trays every two or three weeks as your bite progresses to its overall goal, exerting force in the areas needed to be in its proper place.

Keeping teeth aligned after treatment

After the Invisalign process, you keep your teeth straight using retainers, essentially your last set of aligners at the end of treatment. Your teeth can shift over time if you stop wearing the retainers (full-time for the first three months, then nightly after that), but as long as you keep using them, you will be fine. 

If you stop wearing them for a while and start wearing them again, you may experience pain and discomfort putting them back on, as the fit may change depending on how long you stopped using them.

Teeth can shift after Invisalign treatment if you stop using your retainers as instructed. Keep following the regime, and your teeth will look great. For Invisalign, retainers, or other dental needs, make an appointment with Dr. Hawatmeh and Bravo Dental Group today.