Hello my fellow Invisaligner!!! As a Dental Hygienist I have babysat A LOT of sets of braces over the years, but Invisalign and aligners have their own unique set of rules to follow so I thought they deserved their own blog post.

Invisalign aligners are clear removable appliances which help to correct and realign your teeth to help give you that natural, confident smile that you’ve always wanted - that’s why I got them anyway. Every set of aligners are individual to each patient, along with your treatment time and whether you will need additional attachments fixed to your teeth etc. My original treatment plan was for 9 aligners, along with some teeth attachments and elastics to be worn for 10 weeks, but this has been impacted a bit by the Covid-19 situation and will probably take a bit longer now, ah well, I’m not too worried, I would rather be safe at home and wear my aligners for a few more weeks. You can find out how I’m getting on with my Invisalign in my Invisalign Diary post here.

One of the massive positives of Invisalign is that you can remove the aligners to clean your teeth, so you can pretty much stick to your original oral hygiene which hopefully should look a bit like this:

Using something like an interdental brush/floss/ water flosser in between your teeth at least once a day but you’ll probably want to do this a bit more if you’re wearing Invisalign. You can find out a bit more about cleaning in between your teeth here.
Cleaning your tongue with something like a tongue scraper once daily.
Using an electric toothbrush like the Oral B Genius 9000 * or the Ultra Soft Curaprox 5460 * manual toothbrush, twice a day for 2 minutes - ideally timed using a timer, angling 45 degrees towards the gum line.
With a toothpaste that works best for you, you can see some of my favourite toothpastes here.

After you brush your teeth you should also clean your aligner under COLD running water with a soft toothbrush again like the Curaprox 5460 * manual toothbrush. If you have attachments on your teeth you might want to clean around these with a CS 1006 Single Brush *, you can read a bit more about using these here.

You should be completing this routine AT LEAST twice a day, once before you go to bed at night, and at one other time throughout the day. Having said that, you’ll probably want to clean your teeth after you eat too, so it would be good to carry a toothbrush, toothpaste and some for of interdental brush - something like the CPS 457 Pocket Set * from Curaprox is perfect for this - if you’re not going to be eating at home. If you don’t have your SOS dental kit with you, you can use some alcohol free fluoride mouthwash, or even some water from the tap to rinse your mouth out after eating before you put your aligner back in.

About once a week, or as much as you feel you need to, you might want to give your aligner a bit of an extra clean, especially if you have to wear each of your aligners for more than a week, or you’re ending up wearing your final aligner for more than usual due to social distancing and restrictions on non emergency dental treatments. You can do this by using the Invisalign cleaning crystals that come with your aligners, or, if you’ve ran out of these and can’t get more, something like Retainer Brite or even Steradent will work well. I’ve made a ‘how to’ video of this which I’ll attach to this blog, in the video I’ve used the Invisalign Cleaning Crystals so make sure you follow the manufacturers guidelines with whatever you are using and always make sure that any time you are using water near your aligners that it is COLD as we don’t want to alter the shape of your aligner and effect your progress and treatment plan.

Remember you should be wearing you aligners for as close to 22 hours a day as possible, if you’re not wearing your aligners for as long as this daily you teeth won’t move as they should which could lead to poor tracking of your teeth in your aligner and could mean that you need to move back an aligner or add more time to your treatment plan which is not ideal. If you think this is happening you should contact the Dentist that is doing your treatment. Just as a side note you should also be contacting your Dentist if any of the attachments that have been added to your teeth have come off.

You aligner ideally should only be removed when eating, drinking anything that isn’t still water, and cleaning your teeth. Personally I would also avoiding eating a lot of foods that can cause staining as this may transfer to your aligner or cause your teeth to become stained. You can read a bit more about teeth staining here. Also you should avoid smoking & vaping while wearing your aligners.

Hopefully you’ve found this helpful! I absolutely love my aligners and the progress my teeth are making is amazing, my only regret is not doing it sooner! You can find out more about Invisalign treatments with my Dentist Dr Murray Smith or at Moira Cosmetic Dental. Thankyou so much for reading :) any questions please let me know.

*gifted products