When you have your teeth shifted by a dentist, they’ll apply either braces to your teeth or craft aligners. These two devices will shift your teeth in the perfect position, giving you a dazzling smile or correcting any issues. Retainers come after the braces or aligners and prevent your teeth from shifting. You’ll need to wear them the rest of your life while you sleep, but can retainers fix minor shifting?
Retainers can fix minor shifting, but it’s very important to determine what “minor shifting” is and how retainers work when “fixing” it. Your teeth will always want to shift back to their natural positions after they have been corrected professionally. This habit is called elastic memory, and all teeth have it. Wearing a retainer every night prevents your teeth from making the trip back to their natural position. The more you wear your retainer, the better.
Things happen, though. People lose retainers, they crack, or the dog chews them up. If you go as little as a few days, your teeth can begin to shift back to their natural positions. If you go longer, you might see big shifts, and gaps might start to visually appear. If you find your retainer after a few days and put it on, it may be tight. This means that your teeth have begun to microshift. These are the smallest of movements, but they are a sign that they are trying to move. Your retainers can fix the minor shifting, but only slightly. If it’s been months since you last wore your retainer, your teeth will have shifted too far for your retainer to fix.
Never wear your retainer if it hurts, even if it is able to fit on your teeth. If you wear your retainer after weeks of not wearing it and it hurts, take it off immediately and schedule an appointment with your dentist. This means your teeth have shifted too far to be corrected by a retainer. If you continue to wear your retainer while it hurts, this could damage your root nerves and cause massive issues, not to mention a huge bill to repair your teeth.
Replace your lost, cracked, gross, and damaged dental retainers with a new one from SportingSmiles. Prevent your teeth from shifting using the most durable clear retainers available. Take your own impression at home and save hundreds over going to the dentist. Impression kit included.
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Where your retainer can help is microshifting. These shifts in your teeth are not yet visible, and if it’s been a few days or a week, your retainer should fit snuggly on your teeth still without issue. Your retainer can prevent your teeth from shifting further and slightly shift them back into the perfect position. This is extremely minor, though; it won’t fix any major shifting, and sometimes it won’t fix any minor shifting.
When your teeth are starting to shift back, and you can’t correct it with your retainer, you’ll need to go to the dentist for a plan. They’ll likely craft aligners to fix the small shifting and then give you another retainer to wear. It can be a disappointing solution after all the money and time you spent getting your smile perfect the first time.
This is an unfortunate occurrence, and one that happens quite often with the nature of retainers being lost or cracking over time. There is one easy way to prevent any panic or need to revisit the dentist. Keep a backup set of retainers on hand! SportingSmiles has been crafting retainers since 2009 as America’s number one retainer provider. Over one million people have chosen to keep their smiles protected with SportingSmiles.
With SportingSmiles, you can receive replacement retainers or keep a backup set of retainers on hand in case of emergencies. This is all done from the comfort of your home and without the huge expense of the dentist. When you order retainers, you will either be sent the patented impression kit, where you will take impressions of your teeth and ship them back, use physical molds of your teeth that you can get from the dentist, or use digital STL Files that you can also receive from the dentist. These are simple and easy ways and much more affordable.
The retainers that SportingSmiles crafts are the exact ones your dentist would make with the same premium material. Receiving them is so much easier and more affordable, though. The best way to prevent teeth shifting is to keep a replacement set of retainers on hand when the unexpected happens. Keep your smile perfect with retainers from SportingSmiles!
