3 Advantages of Choosing Clear Aligners Over Traditional Braces

Everyone wants a bright smile with uniform, even teeth. If your teeth aren’t straight or you have another issue like a gap between your teeth, you’re likely looking at ways to make your smile more attractive.

You may be wondering if you can wear clear aligners rather than metal braces. If you have crooked, crowded, or rotated teeth, or teeth with other moderate but not severe issues, then clear aligners may be the answer for your orthodontic needs.

At Chester Family Dentistry, we offer clear aligners to our patients living in or around Trumbull County. Here are three big advantages of clear aligners over traditional braces.

1. They’re invisible

The most obvious advantage of clear aligners is that they’re invisible. You’re not wearing a mouthful of clunky metal wires and brackets.

For most teenagers, a majority of their lives is spent trying to fit in with their peers. About 9 in 10 teens say that having metal braces would prevent them from fitting in. A teen who doesn’t fit in with peers may develop psychological issues such as anxiety and depression.

Facial appearance and clothing are daily preoccupations for teen girls and many boys. Having to wear metal braces for more than a year is likely to impede self-confidence at a vulnerable time of life. Research indicates that teens with clear aligners are twice as likely to have a boost in self-esteem than teens with metal braces.

For adults, facial appearance can be just as important as for teens. If you’re in a highly visible occupation, such as sales or marketing, you want to make a favorable impression on each new contact, and your appearance is a big part of that. Whether it’s fair or not, people judge you by how you look.

A big smile indicates to others that you seem trustworthy, friendly, and approachable -- all critical factors in the business world. No matter where you work, a professional appearance with a friendly smile goes a long way toward forming important work relationships and actually can make you appear more competent. If you’re wearing metal braces, you may not feel like smiling as much. Metal braces simply get in your way in positioning yourself professionally at work. Clear aligners enable you to retain that great smile while having orthodontic work done.

2. They’re removable

You can simply pop your aligners out and put them in a small carrying case when you’re ready to eat. Aligners enable you to continue to eat all of your favorite foods. As a teen or adult, having to forego what everyone else is eating at a cookout or party is difficult.

On the other hand, the list of foods you have to avoid with metal braces gets lengthy:

• Chewy, rubbery foods, like licorice or gumdrops

• Foods that stick to your teeth, such as gum, taffy, or caramels
• Brittle foods, including nuts, popcorn, or hard pretzels
• Harder vegetables and fruit, including whole apples, carrots, and corn on the cob

Metal braces can deter intimacy as well. Teens have been known to get their braces interlocked! Clear aligners make adult intimacy more pleasant, too, because your partner isn’t hitting hard metal when kissing you.

3. They make cleaning your teeth easy

Because you can remove your clear aligners, you can care for your teeth much more thoroughly than if you’re wearing metal braces. Simply continue your regular brushing and flossing routine.

On the other hand, it’s easy to see how the metal wires and brackets can trap food between your teeth. People who wear traditional braces need to take extra care with both diet and teeth cleaning. You can damage the protective enamel on your teeth by insufficient oral care while you’re wearing braces.

Chester Family Dentistry uses both MTM® Clear Aligners and ClearCorrect aligners to correct crooked, crowded, rotated, misaligned teeth, teeth with gaps between them, and other mild-to-moderate orthodontic issues. One of our providers works with you to determine what type of aligners are going to work best to give you a new smile with uniform, even teeth.

Call our office in Warren, Ohio, or book an appointment online today to see if clear aligners are the best choice for you.