Chewies and Invisalign; a guide from Aura Dental

When it comes to wearing aligners, you want to be prepared for as many eventualities as possible.

While uncommon, during the first few times you put your aligners onto your teeth, you may find that you have difficulty fitting them correctly. They may not slot onto one part of your teeth or, you may have issues with aligning them over the correct teeth.

Fiddling around with them excessively can cause damage so, this is where chewies come in!

At Aura Dental, our team has helped many patients use Invisalign St John’s Wood and can attest to the many benefits that these invisible aligners have to offer. After all, we have used this aligner in our clinic for over 10 years!

However, we do acknowledge that they can be tricky to adjust to and, rather than have frustrated patients give up on the treatment due to problems with slotting the aligners into place, we are in favour of anything that can help make the process easier.

So, what are chewies and how do they help with using Invisalign St John’s Wood?

What do aligner chewies do?

To understand what chewies do, we will first break down how aligners work.

With Invisalign St John’s Wood, the aligners are custom-fitted to your teeth and, throughout your treatment, you may need to wear up to 14 different aligners in succession.

But, as they are not fixed, for them to work and apply the right level of pressure to the correct teeth, they have to be set in place properly.

Chewies help with the placement of aligners; simply put the aligners and chewies in your mouth, bite down on it for a few minutes and voila! Your aligner will be in place! As chewies are made from soft plastic, you can chew on them for as long as required but, if you frequently find that your aligners don’t fit, then you may need to see our team.

Do they accelerate the treatment?

You may have read that using chewies reduces the treatment time. This is partially correct.

As we mentioned earlier, having your aligner fit correctly is crucial to realigning your teeth and, as chewies help with positioning, they are useful for keeping the treatment running on schedule or, in some cases, accelerating it. But, to be clear, we don’t have enough data on the use of chewies to state whether they do or don’t speed up the treatment time of invisible aligners.

Are there side effects?

As you may know, wearing an invisible aligner does not come without its share of soreness; because they apply pressure to your teeth when you change between them, there is likely to be some discomfort.

And, when you use chewies, this can be exacerbated; the repetitive biting motions required to use these tools can cause jaw soreness and muscle pain.

Can’t I just chew something else?

You can, but it is advisable to use something designed for use with aligners, such as Munchies or Movemints. Do not be tempted to chew on items such as pencils or pens, as these are often too hard and can cause damage to the aligners.