As part of my never ending renovation project this year, I got myself Invisalign. This is a tooth straightening product that, instead of wire braces on your teeth, consists of a series of plastic trays that fix to your teeth and exert gentle pressure. Each week you change for a new set of trays, and after a year your teeth are better aligned. Or so the theory goes.
In practice, this meant I spent two hours in a chair at my dentist today, while they glued plastic to my teeth for the alignment trays to attach to, and then taught me how to insert and remove the trays. This is important because you don’t want to have food trapped between the plastic and your teeth – that would be a surefire route to dental decay. So instead, every time you eat or drink, you prise the trays off your teeth, then brush and floss before you remount them.
This involved a lot of drool from me as I pulled them off and put them back on. I assume it will also result in a loss of weight, because the hassle of cleaning your teeth every time you have a snack is just going to be too much. Oh, and if you have animals you need to be especially wary, as the plastic the trays are made of is (apparently) a very attractive chew toy. Hooray for complimentary tray holders …
You have to wear them for 22-23 hours every day. They’re oddly uncomfortable at the moment – the best way I can describe it is feeling like I have something stuck between my teeth – but I’m fairly confident that feeling will normalise quickly. Or I’m having a tough 2022.
Not much else to say at this point. I suppose I should have taken before and after photos really …