WHAT IF I GIVE UP AND NEVER FINISH THE TREATMENT?
WHAT IF I GIVE UP AND NEVER FINISH THE TREATMENT?
TROUBLE SHOOTING From DIGITAL ORTHODONTICS - Solo Edition by Dr. Bak Nguyen
That will be problematic. If you stop treatment midway through, unless you keep wearing the same aligners day and night for the rest of your life, your teeth will not stay where they are.
Even so, your aligners will not last more than a few months. You were in transition, your teeth were not yet in a stable position. Chances are that your teeth will relapse pretty close to where there started.
The reason is simple, the aligners are guides to remold your bones, the bone sockets in which your teeth are. By remolding these sockets, we are changing the axis of emergence of the teeth, thus aligning them. Until the process is completed and stabilized, all the forces present in your mouth are working against us, wanting to keep the teeth where they were.
Once stabilized, the bones, which is the hardest component of the system will keep your teeth in a new balance, one more pleasing to the eye. Even at this stage, if you do not wear your retention nightly, it is a matter of months before your teeth start to shift.
Now, if you've never reached that point of new balance, that you never gave your body the chance to recuperate (for the periodontal ligament to regain its original size), your teeth are mobile and subject to the natural forces in your mouth which will push your teeth back to where they were prior to treatment.
Now you understand the underlying physic, biology, and logic. The choice is still yours.