How long does it take for teeth to settle after braces?

doriansmith

I finished Invisalign braces 9 months ago & was given a bonded retainer behind my bottom 6 teeth along with a plastic night time retainer, plus a plastic one for my top teeth to be worn full time for 6 months & gradually reduced to nighttime wear thereafter.

Nine months on and my top teeth don't feel settled at all - if I have the retainer out for a couple of hours in a row it's tight going back on & it doesn't seem to be getting better at all. I know that teeth never fully settle into one place & will always move eventually without a retainer but I'm sick of the annoyance of dealing with it 24/7. I would love to be only wearing the plastic retainer at night like on my bottom teeth.

Is it normal for teeth to still feel loose/unsettled 9 months after treatment?
I can't ask my ortho about this as I've moved to the other side of the world since finishing treatment!

fifofum

How long was the Invisalign treatment?
Were you treated by a general dentist or by a specialist orthodontist?

vishal

a hawley retainer might help. it will allow your teeth to settle but will retain alignment, you might even see some spaces appear as the teeth find a place they are happy to be. a small amount of bonding may be required.
alternatively, as long as your bite allows you can bond your upper teeth with a fixed retainer on the top also

kkth0360

The long term stability of the results of your treatment will depend on lots of different factors, an important one being the positions of your teeth before treatment and the types of movement carried out. In general, teeth should be relatively stable by 6-12 months post-treatment. However, if certain types of movement were carried out, or some teeth were moved into inherently unstable positions (sometimes necessary for reasons of aesthetics or compromise) then they may always be very prone to movement. In these cases a fixed retainer may well be the safer option. As the orthodontist who carried out your treatment is familiar with your pre-treatment tooth positions and the types of movement that occurred it would definitely be worth contacting him for advice (by email?).

Incidentally, by "relatively stable" above, I mean stable enough to allow a removable retainer to be worn at night only, without the teeth moving noticably during the day. For the vast majority of people (90%+) the positions of their teeth will never be stable enough for them to completely discard their retainers, although most will eventually be able to wear removable retainers for 2 or 3 nights a week without any problems.

doriansmith

fifofum wrote: »

How long was the Invisalign treatment?
Were you treated by a general dentist or by a specialist orthodontist?

My treatment was about 16 months and I was treated by a specialist orthodontist

Vishal, I would love a bonded retainer but my ortho decided not to do one as he said my bottom teeth would hit off it. Is there any way around this? Like could I get one anyway & hope for the best or could it actually do some damage?

kkth0360, my front teeth did have quite a bit of movement, my left lateral incisor was the reason I got braces as it was pretty badly out of line. My ortho did warn me when I finished that that tooth is always going to want to move back to where it was. I know I'll be in retainers nightly forever & I'm fine with that, just not if I'm going to have to keep wearing it during the day long term too. I'm also worried about the damage I could be doing by my teeth constantly moving back & forth when the retainer's in/out like this

vishal

your ortho would know best, maybe a little bit of grinding off the top of lower teeth would make enough room?

otherwise retreatment with fixed braces to reduce your deep bite.

doriansmith

I had to google deep bite there! I'm pretty sure I don't have a deep bite as my lower teeth don't hit my top gum unless I have the definition wrong?

I do have an overbite & it was a lot worse before treatment but obviously it's not 100% better now either or I wouldn't have this problem. Bit annoying cos my ortho actually pushed me to get Invisalign & promised me the results would be identical to traditional braces. Then again my sister had traditional braces & they couldn't fix her overbite either, I think sometimes surgery is the only way & there's no way I'm resorting to something that drastic.

I will look into having my lower teeth filed a bit, will give my ortho an email

btkm8unsl0w5r4

A deep bite is nearly impossible to correct with invasalign unless you want to procline everything. That the thing, it sorts out the look of the front teeth without addressing to causes of the mispositioning of the teeth in the first place. Skeletal factors and bite factors unless corrected or permentely retained are prone to relapse. I for one dont feel its any good except for very minor cases....orthodontists whats your views ????

You are not the first person on the forum complaining about relapse or poor results with these limited objective orthodontics..........nor the last I wager

doriansmith

It's not true that it can only sort out the front teeth. All of my teeth were moved in an attempt to fix my bite. It's not 100% perfect now but it's a massive improvement on how my back teeth were. My ortho also incorporated elastics at one point in treatment to help with bite correction. It wasn't a quick fix of only the front teeth

btkm8unsl0w5r4

Elastics connected to what...... the tooth on one end and the invalalign aligner on the other ?????.did you have brackets placed on the teeth, Invasalign alone cannot do much except tip teeth, if you had other treatment also then thats a different story.

Sounds like the ortho realised that more movement was needed than the invasalign could provide to stablise the bite, I am guessing you didnt have extractions either......

doriansmith

He cut a couple of pieces off the aligners & attached hooks to my teeth for the elastics. I didn't have any brackets placed, just the elastic/hooks.

I had both upper wisdom teeth extracted to make room for the other teeth to move back. The wisdom teeth were giving me a lot of hassle anyway so I probably would have gotten them removed regardless as they were causing me problems with cleaning due to the angle they came in. Why did you guess I didn't have extractions out of interest?

Cathyht

Hi, I think also the age you get the teeth moved has a lot to do with it. As the teeth slide into place, the groove from their path of movement needs to cement over, similar to a bone healing. Also if you are working with the growing jawbone in a younger child to adult, I think the teeth can stabilize better than if you are older having your teeth moved.

I had one of the worst things, a crossbite, very narrow bite, overcrowding, and a few different braces, but I waited until I was 18 to start, which was really a bit late. I felt that pressure you are talking about putting in the retainer back in, even after 9 months without braces. I dreaded wearing the retainer forever. Then I was working in France during my final year in college and lost my retainer, so I expected the worst, for my teeth to move right back some top premolars were slightly lose and trying to push back inside the lower ones.

In panic I went to a French dentist for some temporary help just to last till I came back home. He bonded the back of my 4 bottom and top incisors, he slightly filed down some premolars on one side, so they sort of stabilised the back teeth from going back into the cross bite.

I never did have another retainer made and my teeth have not moved noticeably in over a decade since that dentist, no crossbite.