Author: Aura Dental

Secret smiles

The trouble with getting your teeth fixed has always been that there’s no hiding that you are having treatment. That’s not so bad at school, where every third kid is wandering around with entire railway systems on their teeth, but in the work place it looks a bit odd. So odd, that colleagues or customers may find it hard not to stare, and the nosier ones will just have to ask all sorts of personal questions, distracting you from doing your job.

Braces in St John’s WoodIf that’s the kind of scenario that puts you off getting braces in St John’s Wood, then you need to come and see us at Aura Dental to find out about some modern systems that can straighten your teeth with so much discretion that people may never even know you are having treatment.

Take Invisalign for example. This system is specifically designed to be almost impossible to spot, once it is in place on your teeth.

Invisible Invisalign

Invisalign braces in St John’s Wood are not really even braces, in that there are no brackets and wires fixed onto the fronts of your teeth. Instead, you receive a series of very thin clear plastic mouth guard-like aligners. These snap on over your teeth, and are held in place by discreet brackets on your back teeth. Each aligner has carefully positioned pressure points that, over the series, nudge your teeth into position. You wear each aligner for a week to 10 days and when the pressure has worn off, it’s time to move on to the next one.

Removable Invisalign

As well as being almost invisible, Invisalign braces in St John’s Wood are removable. You take them out every time you want to eat something, or drink anything other than plain water. If you don’t, whatever you consume will discolour the plastic. All you have to do is brush your teeth well, after you’ve eaten and then put the aligner back in. You’ll find yourself cutting out mindless snacking and endless cups of coffee and you may even retrain your eating habits over the year, on average, that it takes to complete treatment with Invisalign.

Straightening your teeth with Invisalign in St John’s Wood

Teeth straightening has been evolving due to the surge in demand for adult treatments in recent years. Innovations stemming from technological advances and new, modern materials being readily available have made straightening your teeth quicker, easier and simpler than ever.

One that stands out from the rest here at Aura Dental is Invisalign. In St John’s Wood Invisalign can straighten your teeth without anyone even noticing you’re having treatment. It is considered cosmetic due to its limited adjustment capacity but can still have transformative effects.

Invisalign in St John’s WoodWhat is Invisalign?

Invisalign is teeth straightening treatment that uses a series of clear aligners that look like transparent mouth guards. These braces fit snugly over your teeth. You wear each aligner for one to two weeks, until your teeth have shifted in position, then you move onto the next one. This process is repeated until your teeth reach the desired end point.

Invisalign is much easier to live with than traditional forms of teeth straightening. The aligners are removable, making meal times no hassle at all. It’s even easy to clean your teeth. You simply stick to your usual dental hygiene routine, as prescribed by your dentist. And if you really want to make sure no one can see you are having treatment, you can even take them out for an hour or two, for a special occasion.

Invisalign vs. traditional braces

Invisalign has many advantages over traditional braces. Many adults are put off seeking teeth straightening treatments due to their unsightly appearance.

In recent years ‘train track’ braces have been made less conspicuous with clear and tooth-coloured materials, but they still can’t be called invisible -Invisalign is. Most people won’t notice you’re having treatment, unless you tell them.

Invisalign aligners are custom-made from a smooth plastic that fits around your teeth much more comfortably than traditional braces. Many people with traditional braces complain of discomfort, sometimes to the point of having to be prescribed painkillers. This doesn’t happen with Invisalign aligners.

Find out more

If you’re looking for a modern alternative to traditional braces, Invisalign in St John’s Wood could be the treatment for you. Call into our surgery today and chat to our dedicated clinical staff about the treatment options.

A long-lasting solution with dental implants in St John’s Wood

Since the first implants were placed by dentists in the 1980s, they have been serving happy patients worldwide, and improving their quality of life.

At Aura Dental in St John’s Wood, dental implants are fitted to replace any number of missing teeth. Implants can support multiple forms of tooth replacement. With proper care, these restorations can last a lifetime.

Dental Implants in St John’s WoodDental implants for overall dental health

One of the many beauties of dental implants is that they work to improve your oral health as a whole, benefitting the remaining natural teeth.

Our jawbones need stimulation to remain dense and in good shape. When a tooth is lost, the stimulation that’s naturally provided by the root stops and the jawbone and gums begin to recede and change shape. Surrounding teeth can become loose in their sockets, or fall into the gap left by the lost tooth.

Implants provide the same stimulation to the jawbone that a natural toot root does, helping to maintain the shape and density of a healthy jawbone.

Dental implant procedure at Aura Dental

At our practice in St John’s Wood, dental implants are fitted during a minor surgical procedure. A small hole is created in your jawbone to allow the implant to be fixed firmly in place.

The implant is made from titanium, which is a miraculous metal. The body registers it as natural tissue and grows bone and blood vessels around it. This process is known as osseointegration and can take from a few weeks to up to six months to complete. This integration creates a stable and durable implant, that can support a range of different tooth replacement options.

What tooth replacement options are available with dental implants?

Dental implants can replace one, multiple, a whole arch or a full set of teeth. A single implant can support up to three replacement teeth on a bridge, for example. The number of teeth that can be replaced with a single implant depends on the density of the jawbone at the point of insertion. Dentures can also be adapted to fix onto dental implants. Call into our surgery today to find out if dental implants could help you to a happier and healthier smile.

Grown up braces for grown up people

As dentists, we hope that braces won’t forever be associated with those awkward adolescent years and cumbersome metal appliances, but at the moment they still are. In fact, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can still get your teeth straightened. It’s just that you can only get your jaw realigned up to about the age of 18 when the bone sets hard. That’s why we tend to see many more young teenagers than adults wearing braces. But also because despite adult braces having been around for a while, adults don’t want to look like teenagers, especially if they are in positions of responsibility and work with the public. But, if you come to us at Aura Dental, you will find there’s much more to braces in St John’s Wood than metal and micky-taking.

Braces in St John’s WoodBraces in St John’s Wood for adults tend to be much smaller and more discreet than kids’ braces. We have a range of such braces to choose from, and some are even so discreet that they are as good as invisible.

Invisalign

These are braces, but not in the traditional sense of brackets and wires cemented onto the teeth that pull teeth into alignment. Instead, these aligners resemblance bite guards. The transparent plastic tooth trays at only 0.3 millimetres thick hug the teeth so closely that once they are in place, they are very hard to spot.

You receive a series of these, and wear each one in turn. Each aligner is slightly different in shape than the previous one, with carefully positioned pressure spots to nudge your teeth along the path to alignment. You wear one for a week to 10 days before swapping it for the next in the series.

As well as being pretty much undetectable, these braces in St John’s Wood are also removable. You must wear them for 20–22 hours a day, but you take them out for eating, drinking anything but plain water and cleaning. This gives you a lot more freedom food-wise and makes tooth brushing far less of a hassle.

To find out more about braces in St John’s Wood, book a consultation.

Sneaky teeth straightening

If you are thinking about getting your teeth straightened, you are probably also thinking about all the time you’re going to have to spend picking food out of your braces and fending off intrusive questions. Well, worry no more! Teeth straightening can be an entirely private affair with standard cleaning routines when you choose Invisalign in St John’s Wood.

Sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. At Aura Dental, we offer Invisalign in St John’s Wood because it takes much of the hassle out of wearing braces as well as the embarrassment.

Invisalign in St John’s WoodClear aligners

Unlike traditional bracket and wire braces, which are bonded to the fronts of the teeth, Invisalign in St John’s Wood uses clear plastic aligners, which look like mouth guards. They have specific pressure spots that press the teeth into movement.

The process

When you choose Invisalign, we start with a consultation, during which our accredited dentist makes pinpoint accurate measurements of your mouth and teeth using a hand-held scanner. This translates into a picture of your teeth on the screen, and a computer programme will show you how your teeth can be moved into alignment. So, you get to see how your teeth will look before you even begin treatment. It’s a great inspirational tool!

Your aligners

Your aligners are manufactured in the USA using 3D printing. You will get a series of aligners; how many generally depends on the extent of your problems. You start with the first aligner and work your way through the series, wearing each one until the pressure wears off, in about one to two weeks. The aligners are only 0.3 millimetres thick and when they are in place, they cannot be seen by the casual observer.

Eating and cleaning

The great thing about Invisalign is that you can take them out for eating and drinking anything other than plain water. In fact, you must, so that they don’t discolour. You can eat whatever you like, but you must brush your teeth before putting the aligner back in. You must wear your aligners for 20–22 hours a day if you are to stay on schedule with your treatment.

The modern way to get new teeth

If you are starting to lose your teeth then you need to know what options are available for replacing them. Times have moved on and now you can get dental implants in St John’s Wood, as well as the more traditional replacement teeth options such as bridges and dentures.

You may never have heard of dental implants in St John’s Wood before, but they have in fact been around for over 30 years now. They have moved from an exciting, experimental treatment to a tried and trusted one that offers effective, long-lasting and versatile ways to replace lost teeth.

Dental Implants in St John’s WoodDon’t delay

Having dental implants in St John’s Wood relies on having a good jawbone. This is because your implants will be inserted into your jawbone, where the titanium implant needs to integrate with the bone tissue. New tissue grows all over the implant, over a period of about two months, holding it in place as securely as a natural tooth.

However, as soon as you lose a tooth, the area of bone around where the root used to be is no longer stimulated by vibrations coming down through the tooth root. The bone cells think they are no longer needed and the bone starts to resorb pretty quickly. You can lose as much as 25% of your bone tissue there within the first year of tooth loss. Dentists do have ways to restore the bone, with bone grafting, but treatment is much simpler if you come along soon after losing a tooth.

This loss of bone tissue is also why dentures, however well they fit at the start, tend to end up sliding around in your mouth. The bone and gum they grip onto recede.

Clever ways with dental implants in St John’s Wood

Dental implants can be used to replace one, a few or all of your teeth. One implant will hold up to three crowns, and there are techniques using longer implants, inserted at angles at the back of the jawbone, that allow dentists to install an entire arch of crowns on only four to six implants.

The best way to find out if dental implants are right for you is to book a consultation.

Time for that lovely smile

How long does it take to get that lovely straight-toothed smile you’ve always hankered after? Probably not as long as you believe. The beliefs about braces in St John’s Wood are usually based on stories of wearing braces back in the 1980s, when treatments were cumbersome to wear and took forever to complete. They were almost always stories about kids who had had to get their jaws realigned so their teeth would bite together correctly. This takes a lot longer than just getting a few wonky teeth realigned.

Realigning wonky teeth still takes time, teeth can only move so fast, but mild misalignments take only a few weeks to months to correct rather than two or three years.

Braces in St John’s WoodAlong with shorter treatment times, braces in the 21st century have evolved to be much more discreet than their forebears. They don’t need to be as heavy duty-looking when they are making more moderate adjustments using gentler forces. So, fixed braces have smaller brackets and thinner wires. Some are also clear or tooth-coloured and look almost more like jewellery for the teeth than straightening devices.

But, there is one more straightening device that doesn’t even look like braces in St John’s Wood. It’s called Invisalign.

Invisalign

Invisalign looks more like a mouth-guard than braces. It is a very thin, 0.3 millimetre, transparent plastic tooth tray that snaps on over the teeth and is secured to the back ones with discreet metal clips. Once it is in place, Invisalign is so thin that it disappears and all but the keenest observer will fail to spot it. It’s also so thin that it won’t interfere with your speech, and the smooth plastic won’t rub inside your mouth.

Unlike braces, which are tightened to produce tooth movement, Invisalign aligners have carefully placed pressure points that nudge the teeth gently into alignment. You wear a series of aligners to produce movement, each one taking one to two weeks to do its work. You can also remove them for eating and cleaning.

To find more about braces in St John’s Wood, why not come in for a consultation?

The secret way to straighten your teeth

When you decide to take the plunge and get your teeth straightened as an adult, you probably aren’t going to want to include endless conversations with strangers about your braces as part of your treatment. Neither are you likely to want to spend ages picking bits of food out of your braces in your lunch hour. Just the opposite, in fact. If that sounds like you, then you are going to love the idea of Invisalign. In St John’s Wood, this revolutionary way of straightening teeth is available from your trusty dental team here at Aura Dental.

Invisalign in St John’s WoodWe just love this way of straightening mild to moderately misaligned teeth, and we think you will too. When you have teeth straightening with Invisalign in St John’s Wood, you will be able to get straighter teeth without anyone realising what you are up to. This can be a real bonus if you have a public-facing job, or one that requires you to act with authority.

The innovation behind Invisalign

Invisalign is different from the usual bracket and wire braces that we mostly associate with teeth straightening. Instead of having the device cemented to your teeth, you will be given a series of rigid, transparent plastic mouth guard-like aligners. These are carefully manufactured to specifications taken from digital scans of your teeth.

The pinpoint accurate scans are fed through a computer programme that charts the path that each of your wonky teeth needs to move along, and, if you have more than a few, in what order they need to move, in order to become aligned. Then, a series of aligners are 3D printed to fit your teeth, but with pressure points carefully factored in. You wear each one for up to two weeks and then move onto the next.

The aligners are so thin that, when they are snapped on over the teeth, they become almost invisible. That’s one plus. The other is that they are removable for eating, drinking and cleaning.

Come and find out how Invisalign in St John’s Wood can help you and take the first step towards a more confident smile.

Eating: it’s a team effort

The trouble with the older ways of replacing teeth is that they are based on the premise that all we need for eating is the crowns of our teeth. However, there is so much more involved in getting our food into our mouths and transforming it into a swallowable paste. The crowns are the biters and grinders in this process and they need the roots to hold them steady while they do their work and the jaws to create the grinding and biting actions. That’s why, when people need replacement teeth in St John’s Wood, dental implants are the best solution.

At Aura Dental, we have seen so many people’s lives transformed by having dental implants in St John’s Wood that this method of tooth replacement is what we would like everyone to have.

Dental Implants in St John’s WoodThe advantages of dental implants

Dental implants don’t just replace the teeth, they also preserve the jaw and therefore the face. This jaw aspect of tooth replacement was not so well understood several decades ago, when it wasn’t unheard of for young people to have all their teeth removed and replaced with dentures. People used to get that as wedding presents, or 21st birthday presents. It was thought of as a great way to save on dental expenses. But now, however, we shudder in horror at the thought of it. At Aura Dental, our goal is teeth for life, and, if one, some or all of them turn out not to be for life, then finding the best way to replace them is our next goal.

When dental implants are inserted, they can become teeth for life. Like our natural teeth, they become meshed with the bone tissue of the jawbone and are held securely anchored by the bone cells and blood vessels that grow all over their surface.

Providing they are well cared for, which is easy to do, your St John’s Wood dental implants can remain in place for the rest of your life. All you have to do is make sure you avoid gum disease, with careful twice-daily brushing, daily flossing, maybe some interdental brushes and some mouthwash. Couple this with a bi-annual scale and polish with the hygienist and you’re set to enjoy your new teeth for years to come.

Eat what you like and still get straight teeth

Braces can be such a faff. There they are, stuck on the fronts of your teeth for months on end, collecting your breakfast, lunch and dinner between the brackets and wires and rubbing on the inside of your cheeks. Of course, it’s all worth it for the lovely straight smile you get at the end of treatment, but what if you didn’t have to go through all that fiddling about with floss and brushes, or give up eating some of your favourite foods while you were having treatment with braces in St John’s Wood?

Well, now you can. Here at Aura Dental, we offer all the usual bracket and wire braces, even some that can barely be seen once they are on the teeth, but we also offer a system that has been revolutionising treatment with braces in St John’s Wood. It’s called Invisalign.

Braces in St John’s WoodWhat is Invisalign all about?

You may well have heard of Invisalign. After all, it’s been on the market since just before 2000 and over 4 million people have now received Invisalign treatment. But you may not have seen it on anyone. That’s good. That’s how it’s meant to be. When people are wearing these very thin plastic mouth guard-style aligners, they are almost impossible to spot. They are moulded to the teeth using pinpoint accurate measurements from the Itero digital scanner. These measures are fed into a computer and used to plan treatment with a series of aligners that are manufactured using 3D printing.

Invisalign aligners have carefully placed pressure points inside them that nudge the teeth along to correct alignment. The average treatment time is a year. Another big plus with this system is that the aligners are removable for eating, drinking and tooth brushing, which means that you don’t have to change your diet while you go through treatment. You can even leave them out for special occasions of a few hours.

If Invisalign is not for you, at Aura Dental we have plenty of other braces in St John’s Wood, such as Six Month Smiles and Quick Straight Teeth. Why not come in for a consultation and find out how we can help you get the smile you’ve always wanted.