Author: Aura Dental
Invisalign in St John’s Wood: you’re in charge
When people get to be adults, they like to take charge of most aspects of their lives, especially now in the 21st century. And that extends to dental treatments too. People want convenience and freedom and to be able to take responsibility for their treatments. At Aura Dental, we love how using Invisalign in St John’s Wood allows our patients to maintain freedom around food and autonomy with their dental treatments.
Invisalign allows self-responsibility because it is removable as well as pretty much unnoticeable once it is in place over the teeth. Here’s how it works:
The consultation
Invisalign in St John’s Wood always start with a thorough consultation. We need to be sure that Invisalign, which is great for mild to moderate treatments, is the right device for your straightening issues. If it is, we scan your teeth with a hand-held scanner that goes into your mouth and takes hundreds of pictures of your teeth that we then translate into a 3D image on the nearby screen. We use a simulation to show how your teeth need to move and what they will look like once they are aligned.
3D printing
A series of aligner trays are 3D-printed at the Invisalign plant in the US. Each one has precision-placed pressure points inside it. These press gently on your teeth to nudge them into alignment. You start with tray number one and wear it for 7-10 days. When the pressure wears off, your teeth have shifted slightly and it’s time to put in tray number two. You work your way through the entire series of trays and by the end your teeth are aligned. This takes, on average, a year.
You decide
You take your aligners out to eat and drink, and for cleaning. You dictate what you eat and when, and when you move onto the next aligner in the series. Because the trays do the work, you don’t need to keep coming back to us at short intervals. This saves time and money on appointments with us, but means you have to be responsible and make sure that you stay on track with your treatment by wearing your aligners for at least 20 hours a day.
Walk out with teeth already in place
One of the hassles of having dental implants in St John’s Wood is that you have to allow a good stretch of time while the implants integrate with your bone tissue. That may be fine and dandy if you have just one or two missing teeth and don’t mind living with a gap while the implant and bone below the gum line fuse with each other. But if you have a whole or arch of teeth that are failing, or maybe even both arches, you are not going to going around toothless for a few months, are you?
Well, the good news is that with Teeth in a Day dental implants in St John’s Wood, you don’t have to. How’s how this treatment works:
Stage one: the implant surgery
You come into us at Aura Dental and we start by removing any teeth you have left in the arch that are failing. Once we have cleaned out your teeth, we are ready to insert between four and six dental implants on each arch. We usually put four dental implants in the lower arch, and six in the upper arch. Once that is done, we then attach some pre-made bridges, which our lab technician will have adapted to fit your arches. These are temporary teeth. You go home with your new teeth in a day.
Stage two: the healing stage
This is a vital part of getting dental implants in St John’s Wood, so you must not be all gung-ho with your new implants. For the first 24 hours, you will need bed rest, and then for the next week or so, you will have to restrict yourself to a liquid diet of soups and smoothies. You will be able to numb any pain with over-the-counter medications. It’s best then to remain on a soft food diet for the next few months so that you do not put strain on your implants while they are becoming one with your jawbone.
Stage three: you get your perfect teeth
You come back and we fit you with metal-reinforced bridges with crowns that are indistinguishable from natural teeth.
And that’s it. Job done.
Easy alignment
Life has already got so much hassle in it that if there is a way to take some of it go away, we all like to grab it. Inventors are always hard at it making processes go more smoothly, and nowhere more so than in the world of braces in St John’s Wood.
At Aura Dental, we have a selection of braces that each, in its own way, has been designed to make the teeth straightening process easier for you.
Braces used to be so much hassle that only those with pretty complex or severe alignment issues went to the trouble to sort them out, or their parents made them do it. The truth is though that even mildly misaligned teeth don’t work as well or last as long as teeth that line up and work properly as a team, evenly distributing the forces created by biting and chewing across the whole arch.
So, if you are an adult who is thinking about getting braces in St John’s Wood, it’s worth coming in for a consultation and finding out just how easy it is get your teeth straightened these days.
Invisalign
This is one of our most popular treatments because instead of brackets and wires, this brand uses a series of 3D-printed ultra-thin plastic aligners that look like mouth guards. Once in place, they are very hard to spot, which means you can go through your day without worrying about people staring at you or asking personal questions. Also, Invisalign aligners are removed for eating and cleaning, which means you retain your freedom around food for the duration of your treatment, and cleaning your teeth is as easy as ever. Invisalign works well on mild to moderate misalignments and takes, on average, a year to complete.
Six Month Smiles
Small clear ceramic brackets strung with tooth-coloured wires work on the front six teeth only and use gentle forces that take 4-9 months to do their work.
We also use the Inman Aligner and Quick Straight Teeth braces in St John’s Wood. No matter which braces you use, you will have to wear a retainer afterwards to keep your teeth in place.
How effective is Invisalign in St John’s Wood?
Invisalign is an example of how teeth straightening techniques have come a long way in the last twenty years or so. This treatment has acquired cult status over the years since it allows patients to straighten their teeth without wearing metal brackets and wires.
But is Invisalign really effective? At Aura Dental, we use Invisalign to treat a wide number of dental problems and we are constantly pushing the boundaries of clinical possibility. Invisalign in St John’s Wood can help you smile with confidence again.
How is Invisalign different from conventional braces?
Invisalign uses a different mechanism to conventional braces for moving teeth. Rather than pulling the teeth into position, it uses pressure points inside the aligners to nudge teeth into position. And whereas braces require brackets and wires, Invisalign is made of a system of plastic, transparent removable aligners. These aligners are made with the help of 3D technology for the best fit possible. Patients should change them every 7-10 days to see their teeth gradually move into their correct position.
Invisalign in St John’s Wood is more convenient than regular braces, because the aligners can be removed any time for eating and brushing your teeth. Moreover, the aligners are easy to use and do not require constant adjustments just like metal braces. Last but not least, Invisalign aligners require shorter treatment in most cases compared to conventional braces and this is an added bonus for professional adults.
Practical and effective
Many people fail to understand that Invisalign is not a substitute for metal braces. As a matter of fact, Invisalign is a powerful and effective treatment in its own right. Invisalign in St John’s Wood can be customised to treat a number of dental conditions including crowded and gapped teeth. The system works well for most teeth straightening issues. However, if your teeth are severely misaligned, you may need to start with traditional braces before moving to Invisalign.
Commitment is key
As with most treatments, the most important aspect of Invisalign in St John’s Wood is a commitment to your therapy. You need to wear your aligners for at least 20-22 hours every day for them to be effective.
Dental implants in St John’s Wood – things to know before your operation
We are all careful to keep our teeth healthy and intact, but sometimes accidents happen. Whether the result of trauma, old age or oral disease, missing teeth can cause many problems and should be replaced as soon as possible. Modern dentistry has developed considerably over the years and dental implants have proven to be effective and long-lasting.
At Aura Dental, we are here to make you feel as comfortable as possible with your implant surgery. If you decide to have dental implants in St John’s Wood, our experienced dentists will explain every step of the procedure and make sure they answer all your question and queries. All implant treatments are customised to fit our patients’ requirements and dental needs.
Understanding how dental implants work
Prior to your surgery, you need to familiarise yourself with dental implants and how they work to restore your missing teeth. While there are quite a few different types of dental implants available, they all work the same way. Dental implants are small titanium posts, which are surgically inserted into the jawbone, ideally after the extraction of a badly-decayed or dysfunctional tooth. Having your implants fitted just after your tooth extraction will minimise the waiting time between the healing period and the fitting of the replacement teeth.
Once the dental implants are attached to the jawbone, they will gradually begin to form a bond with the bone tissue through a process known as osseointegration. This procedure is possible because implants are made of titanium, a metal that is compatible with the human body. This healing period has different durations for different patients, but once it is completed, you can have your replacement teeth fitted. In some cases, replacement teeth can be attached to your dental implants directly after the surgery.
Is treatment with dental implants painful?
Dental implants in St John’s Wood are not a painful treatment. Patients with increased sensitivity or dental phobia can choose from a wide range of sedation options for extra comfort.
Contact us
If you would like to learn more about dental implant surgery, now it is the time to give us a call.
Go for straight teeth
If you could choose, which would you prefer? To have beautifully straight teeth, or stick with your wonky ones? If you answer to the latter, why is that? Is it because you don’t want to have to go through months and months of having brackets and wires on your teeth, making it hard to eat, hard to speak and next to impossible to look like a grown-up? You are not alone. And, you are not obliged to have metal braces now that Invisalign in St John’s Wood is here.
At Aura Dental, we offer Invisalign in St John’s Wood because we know how many of our patients long for straight teeth but don’t want to suffer through the indignities and hassles that can come with bracket and wire braces.
Invisalign is different. Based on the removable retainer, these clear aligners look more like mouth guards than traditional braces. When you choose this method of straightening, you don’t get just one appliance that is fixed onto your teeth and progressively tightened to pull your teeth into position.
No brackets and wires
Instead you get a series of incrementally different 0.3mm thick clear plastic aligners that snap on over your teeth and are held in place by metal clips on your back teeth. Each aligner has carefully placed pressure points. You put on one and it feels a bit tight against one or two teeth. Over the course of the next 7-10 days, those tight bits push your teeth a tiny bit of the way towards alignment. When the pressure wears off, you change to the next Invisalign aligner in the series. How many you have depends upon the complexity of your case, but the average treatment time is a year.
This means fewer visits to us for tightening.
No messy food issues
You take the aligners out every time you need to eat or drink anything other than plain water, and then you brush your teeth. This keeps the aligners transparent and pretty much invisible when you are wearing them.
Book yourself for a consultation and we can tell you if Invisalign in St John’s Wood will work for you.
Only you need to know they’re not real
People really rather dread other people finding out that their teeth are not real. There is quite a stigma attached to having false teeth that look like false teeth. Maybe it’s because false teeth on dentures have in the past been liable to behave badly and embarrass their owners, and the crowns didn’t look very real either.
Both pitfalls can be avoided, provided the crowns are made by a good dental technician, like those here at Aura Dental, skilled in crafting lifelike teeth for each person, and the foundation for the crowns will remain stable.
This second requirement is what sets dental implants in St John’s Wood apart from other tooth restoration methods.
Strong and stable
It’s the way that dental implants in St John’s Wood are embedded in the jaw that makes them much more stable and strong than either dentures or fixed bridges.
Dentures only offer about a quarter of the chewing power of natural teeth because they rely on suction to the gum for stability. Bridges rely on neighbouring healthy teeth which are fitted with crowns that act as buttresses to the bridge. Trouble is, the teeth have to be ground down to take the buttress crowns and can never be whole natural teeth in their own right again.
Dental implants in St John’s Wood are tiny titanium posts or screws that replace the root of the teeth and then have porcelain crowns fitted on top, once the implants have integrated over several weeks into the jawbone.
Once integrated, dental implants provide as much chewing power as natural teeth, and can be very long-lasting, even for decades. As long as you look after them well, and avoid gum disease, there is no reason why they should start to wobble around and give the game away. Plus, they will prevent you getting a pointy chin and collapsed face, which come with jawbone loss.
The implants help preserve the jawbone, which starts to dissolve once it’s missing tooth roots. The jawbone needs the tremors of tooth roots to renew itself and without them it actively starts to melt away, losing as much as 25% of its size and density in the first year alone after tooth loss.
Give your teeth a longer life
You probably know all about how important it is to brush your teeth at least twice a day for two minutes. That’s how long dental research says it takes to remove the film of sticky, bacterial plaque that builds up during the day. But, if you have got wonky teeth, all that brushing may not be reaching the plaque. And if you can’t get at it, it will build up, harden into tartar and give off acids that cause decay and gum disease.
What this means is that in the long run, wonky teeth, with all those nooks and crannies for plaque to proliferate in, tend not to last as long as straight teeth. So, if you want to hang onto your teeth for as long as you can, you need to get them straightened with braces in St John’s Wood.
At Aura Dental, we can help you find the right braces in St John’s Wood to suit your lifestyle, your budget and your realignment needs.
If you are an adult, you will probably want braces that detract as little as possible from your looks. You might be happy with discreet braces in St John’s Wood, such as those from Six Month Smiles, clear aligners, or invisible lingual braces.
Six Month Smiles
These are bracket and wire braces, but the brackets are smaller and made of clear ceramic and the wires are finer and tooth-coloured. You can see these braces, but they blend in with the teeth rather than dominating them. These braces are designed to work on the front six teeth only and the average treatment time for realignment is six months.
Invisalign
These are clear aligners that snap on over the teeth like mouth guards. They are very thin and transparent and when they are in place, they are very hard to spot. The average treatment time is a year and they work best on mild to moderate misalignments.
Lingual braces
These are bracket and wire braces that are fixed to the inside (tongue-side) of the teeth, where they can’t be seen at all. Each bracket is made to exactly fit each tooth and so these braces can be used to correct even very complex alignment issues.
The age of great teeth
If you look back over time, you will find that people have always done their best to look after their teeth. There are human remains going back 9,000 years or more that have evidence of having had dental work done to them. And, certainly the ancient Egyptians were keen to experiment with ways to straighten teeth.
Now, we have reached a time when braces work really well on all sorts of alignment problems and there are fewer and fewer excuses for wonky teeth. In fact, you rarely see them on millennials.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that more people are having straighter teeth come through naturally; there are as many wonky teeth as ever. The difference is that devices for straightening teeth are more discreet and more of them are designed to work on mild misalignments. Mildly wonky teeth take less time to straighten and can be fixed with devices that can barely be seen, such as Invisalign. In St John’s Wood, at Aura Dental, we are accredited to use Invisalign on our patients, and, they love this tooth straightening by stealth.
Invisalign in St John’s Wood: the lowdown
If you have never heard of Invisalign, then prepare to be a bit surprised. This device is nothing like traditional bracket and wire braces. There are no wires, and only two metal clips on your back teeth. The rest of the device is a very thin plastic tray that snaps on over your teeth rather like a mouth guard.
Instead of having just one device that stays glued to your teeth for months on end, Invisalign is a series of clear aligner trays. You wear each one for 7-10 days before moving on to the next. The straightening comes from precision-placed pressure points within each aligner that gently nudge your teeth one tiny step towards alignment. Once the pressure of each aligner wears off, it’s time to move onto the next one.
At 0.3mm thick, it’s almost impossible to see the aligners once they are in place. Plus, they are removable for eating, drinking anything other than plain water and for cleaning.
To find out more about Invisalign in St John’s Wood, why not come in for a consultation?
Long-lasting replacement teeth
If you suffer from missing teeth in St John’s Wood, dental implants will provide natural-looking replacements. At Aura Dental, we have a lot of experience in giving patients these high-quality substitute teeth in a wide range of tooth loss situations. Whether you’ve had a single front tooth knocked out while playing sports, or several teeth have failed over many years, dental implants are a fully-functioning solution.
The stages of dental implants in St John’s Wood
The process begins with an in-depth consultation at our relaxing dental practice. The team will talk to you about your dental history and assess your oral health. It’s important to have healthy teeth and gums and sufficient jawbone density before treatment can begin. Some preliminary work might be needed to prepare you to receive the implants. The team will take precise measurements of your teeth and mouth and create a meticulous treatment plan.
Then comes the minor surgical procedure, during which the dentist will place small titanium posts into your jawbone. After a short period of rest, you’ll return to the practice to have the new teeth affixed to the implanted posts. These teeth are customised to look natural and perform effectively. From start to finish, the treatment can take several months.
Healthy future
Having dental implants in St John’s Wood brings numerous oral health benefits:
- The jawbone meshes with the screw-like titanium posts, securely anchoring the new teeth in the mouth so you can use them just like natural ones. You’ll have no more worries about biting into and chewing your favourite foods;
- Unlike with removable dentures, there’s no need to use dental adhesives;
- The new teeth are easy to clean – brush and floss as normal;
- Your smile will have much more aesthetic appeal;
- You may find the stability of the new teeth makes certain words and phrases easier to pronounce;
- Your facial bone structure will retain its robustness. You won’t develop the sunken look associated with tooth loss.
Long-lasting benefits
If you look after them properly in St John’s Wood, dental implants will last for decades. It’s a procedure that can significantly enhance your quality of life.