The short answer is:
NIGHT TIME FOR LIFE TIME
There is no safe time to stop wearing your retainer. When you do, your teeth will move and we get to start treatment over again. No one wants to start treatment over again! The only way to protect the investment of time, effort, money, discomfort that you put into getting your beautiful smile is by wearing your retainers every night!
Teeth continue to move for the rest of your life – regardless if you had braces or Invisalign or nothing, if you had wisdom teeth or not, if you had extractions or not. Having a good fitting set of retainers is the ONLY way to prevent that shifting. You may have a friend or sister or cousin who never wears their retainers and they’re teeth are “perfectly fine, nothing changes.” And some people’s teeth are more stable than others. And other people forget their retainer for only a night or two and can already see some changes in straightness or spacing. Don’t test it!
(An aside: it has been proven that wisdom teeth do not cause crowding of the front teeth. That is a myth that many people believe but science has disproven. Teeth move because they move! There are good reasons to have wisdom teeth removed, but prevention of crowding in the front of your mouth is not one of them.)
With good care, retainers should last a long time – but that time varies from person to person. If you clench or grind your teeth, if you consistently clean them and use your case for protection, if you take them out carefully rather than yanking on one side – all these things can affect their life span. Just like glasses & watches, eventually they will need to be replaced. When retainers are lost or broken, please let us know ASAP so that we can get a new set remade. Usually we can reprint the previous set from your final treatment scan, but if your teeth have moved, we may have to discuss other options – including full retreatment.
Many people ask me about permanent retainers, or the “little bar behind your teeth.” We do them sometimes, but they’re not my favorite choice in most case. The wire glued behind your lower front teeth is like having braces glued to the back of your teeth for the rest of your life. It’s a lot of work! You have to use a special flossing tool (and this is an area that collects a lot of calculus), you have to be careful with what you bite into, and eventually it will break and need to be repaired/replaced. Additionally, in most people, we can’t do an upper wire retainer because of how your teeth fit together, so the upper option is only a removable one. For most patients, if you’re remembering to put in the upper, it’s not a big challenge to also use a lower removable. And then during the day you can eat and clean without any restrictions. Finally, there is nothing better (in most cases) about the glued in wire compared to people who are diligent in wearing a removable retainer at night time.
If you’re having any issues with the fit of your retainers or teeth/bite, please give the Laurent Orthodontic team a call as soon as possible so we can talk with you about the options. It’s always easier to fix small problems than big ones! You can reach us at (707) 938 – 5255 or www.sonomaortho.com