What To Expect During Your Orthodontic Treatment?

Hi, I’m Dr Mike Anderson, The principal orthodontist here at Allstar Orthodontics in Fortitude Valley and Albany Creek in Brisbane.

Our new patient, Noah from New Farm, just started his orthodontics treatment with us a couple of days ago. During our initial consultation, he asked me, “Hey Mike, what can I expect during the course of my treatment?”

This is something many people who are considering orthodontics treatment think about. So, I decided to make this video just in case you are also think about this.

Orthodontic treatment will vary for different people and different problems. Sometimes it may only take a few months and other times it can take considerably longer. So it depends on the complexity of your case. But your orthodontist will be able to provide you with this information.

As for your diet, there are some foods you need to be careful with when you have braces. You’ve got to be particularly careful when you’re eating hard or sticky food, because the braces are only held on with a temporary glue.

With clear aligners, you can eat most hard foods. You don’t necessarily need to be so careful, but with both braces and clear aligners, you must avoid acidic drinks, like soft drinks, because they can damage the teeth, not to mention it’s better for your health as well.

In terms of pain and discomfort, for the first few days, or even the first week of having orthodontic treatment, you can expect to feel some discomfort. If you’re feeling quite a bit of discomfort, you can take some pain medication if you need it, but you should find after the first week that things start to settle down.

Keep in mind that when you’re feeling the pressure on your teeth, this is a sign that your teeth are starting to move and you’re starting to get some straightening. Often our patients find this sensation of pressure a motivation to keep going.

In terms of hygiene, if you are already brushing your teeth twice a day, you don’t need to brush any more often than that. Brush after breakfast and then again after dinner, that’s all you need to do when you’ve got braces or clear aligners. There is no benefit in brushing more often than that.

As for periodic practice visits, because we’ll be using dental monitoring to monitor your progress, you’ll only need to come to the practice when we absolutely need you to. So this is going to help provide convenience for you. We will let you know when you need to come into the practice and when we need to adjust your braces or clear aligners, all through the dental monitoring app.

Now, I actually had one patient asked me before if she could still play musical instruments even with braces or aligners.

You can continue to play any musical instrument when you’ve got braces or clear aligners, and the same goes for playing any sports. You can still continue to play sports. Obviously with contact sports, you need to wear a mouth guard, whether you’ve got braces or clear aligners, which we can custom make for you.

In terms of speech, sometimes your speech might sound a little bit different when you first start your orthodontic treatment, but this is something that will quickly return to normal within a few days when the mouth has adapted to your orthodontic appliance.

As you can see, during the course of the treatment, there’s a little bit of adjustment, but it’s not a massive inconvenience. You can just get on with life and have a straight beautiful smile at the end of your treatment.

So I hope you’ve found this short video useful, and have given you more clarity on what to expect during an orthodontic treatment. If you or your child are looking for an orthodontist to help you realign your teeth and give you that beautiful smile, we would love to look after you.

Simply call us on 07 3666 0096 or send us a DM on Instagram and Facebook. And we’ll be in touch to help you organise an orthodontic consultation. See you in the next video.