HOW MANY HOURS A DAY DO I HAVE TO WEAR THE ALIGNERS?
HOW MANY HOURS A DAY DO I HAVE TO WEAR THE ALIGNERS?
TIME From DIGITAL ORTHODONTICS - Solo Edition by Dr. Bak Nguyen
Between 20 to 22 hours a day will be the right answer. 22 hours a day is the optimum recommended official guideline generally accepted in the profession. That said, I have tried it on myself, I can tell you that lesser than 20 hours a day, it won't work.
The use of aligners, just like braces, is the stimulus to apply pressure and tension at specific points in your mouth, thus pushing your body to remold the bone sockets of your jaws. Doing so, we are changing the axis of emergence of the teeth, allowing the teeth to align within the initial bone.
The bone remodeling process happens in 2 phases. As you are feeling pressure on your teeth, your body responds to it with a hormonal reaction, destroying enough bone within the bone socket of that tooth to release the pressure felt.
That usually will last 2-3 days. Then, on the opposite side of the tooth, your body will start a second hormonal process for bone formation. In other words, your bone is remolding in 2 separated phases, first with destruction in response to pressure and then, with bone formation in response to tension, that process will take 3-5 days to happen.
As the socket of the tooth is now remolded, we can move on with the next aligner, pushing the tooth a step further. It is important to know that this is a hormonal process. Hormonal processes are all-or-nothing reactions and can only occur one at a time. In other words, if you do not complete the first process, the second process will never start.
In simple words, that means that if you do not wear your aligners for long enough, you might complete the bone destruction phase but will not have enough time for the bone formation phase to complete itself before applying more pressure, kick-starting again the destruction phase.
I use the words destruction and formation because that is really what it is. The danger here is to only react to what you feel. You feel the pressure and will be aware of the first phase of bone remolding, the destruction phase. For the second phase, you do not feel the tension, so you will have the tendency to think that nothing happens. You cannot be more mistaken!
This is the reason why it is important for you to keep wearing your aligners 20-22 hours a day to complete the remolding process. Within a week or so, you might have achieved the process. Your attending will confirm that with a picture of your aligners sitting on your teeth. Sometimes, it might take more time, it all depends on the results of your teeth matching the aligners.
Please keep in mind that your doctor cannot guess how long you have worn your aligners. He or she can only tell if your teeth have completed the destruction phase, moving into place. You will have to be honest with your attending.
Eventually, your attending will see the lack of bone formation due to the underwearness of the aligners, but that will be months down the line and will take several months to address. You do not want to go down that road. Establish a trust relationship with your doctor and be honest.
So, in short, you must wear your aligners all the time except to eat, to drink everything but water, and to clean your aligners. All things considered, you will have between 2 to 4 hours a day to eat. Enjoy!