With today’s DIY generation who builds night stands out of pallets or dog houses under the staircase, it’s no wonder DIY braces have taken off. You should be warned though, DIY braces are not ideal. Although DIY braces and home straightening kits are out there with the promise they will give you professional results for a fraction of the price, they are quite dangerous. In some cases, severe damage can occur to your teeth. Find out why Dr. Gohard advises her patients in Florham Park to visit her for their orthodontic treatments. A Healthy Smile Dentistry is a proud provider of Invisalign clear aligners serving patients in the Florham Park area.
What Are DIY Braces?
- Some of the different materials patients have made braces from include:
- Orthodontic Wax
- Rubber Bands
- Hair Elastics
- Jewelry-Making Bracelet Beads
- Paper Clips
- Dental Floss
- 3D Printed Aligners
None of these materials are sterile or made of medical-grade quality. These can lead to tooth loss and painful tooth infections. Unfortunately, there are plenty of vloggers on the internet who have gained popularly for introducing these ideas into the minds of teenagers. In some cases, some people with 3D printers have started making their own clear aligners like the Invisalign aligners. Achieving a straight smile is desirable for many patients and for those who are choosing one of these DIY methods, they aren’t considering the potential consequences that may occur now or later. Although braces sound like a large amount of money to invest in, they are cheaper than the costs of the procedures it will take to repair your teeth following one of these DIY braces methods.
Cons of DIY Braces
Your Teeth Can Move Back
With DIY braces, there is no guarantee that your teeth will even move. In addition, there is no guarantee that your teeth will move the way you want them to or that they will stay in their new position. If you do successfully manage to move your teeth with a DIY method, don’t expect your tooth to stay there. With professional orthodontics, your teeth are supposed to move slowly into their new position over a period of time. This allows your jaw to get used to their new position and ensure long-term results.
With fast and sudden movements, your teeth will move back and return to its original position since it wasn’t moved in the correct way. In addition, once you stop using your DIY braces, your teeth will move back because you aren’t using anything to keep them in position. With professional braces in Florham Park, Dr. Gohard gives patients a retainer to wear at night to keep their newly straightened smile intact.
You Can Lose Your Teeth
One of the top reasons you shouldn’t even consider DIY braces is because you could potentially lose your teeth. If that doesn’t scare you away, we don’t know what will. When you use tight rubber bands or a different material to give yourself a quick fix smile, this can harm your dental health. These rubber bands can destroy your teeth from your roots. The rubber bands can cut off the blood flow from your teeth. Your teeth need this circulation to be healthy. The DIY braces run the potential of cutting off this supply and destroying your teeth and roots. Without the blood circulation and destroyed roots, your dentist will need to pull your teeth. What sounds better? Paying for professional braces from your dentist or having a tooth extracted and paying for an implant?
DIY Braces Can Cause Gum Infections
DIY braces are a non-sterile way to straighten your teeth and with that comes serious consequences like gum infections. Because the braces are done using non-sterile supplies, these non-sterile items can cut into your gums and damage the tissue. Open sores form and they are unable to heal because of continuous wear of the DIY braces. Although gum infections don’t sound serious, you should know that they are. Gum infections can spread through your blood and facial tissue. This can result in life-threatening infections or severe bone loss. Some DIYers have even lost rubber bands up in their gums and required their dentist to surgically remove them. These gum infections caused by DIY braces can cause serious gum infections. Don’t take this risk, it’s not worth it.
DIY Braces Can Affect the Way You Speak
Unless you designed your own full-mouth DIY braces treatment, you’re most likely just shifting a small portion of teeth. Unfortunately, that’s not how tooth movement works. When you move one tooth, the other teeth in your mouth will shift to fill in any gaps. This unforeseen tooth movement can then cause you to speak differently. This is because your upper and lower teeth may no longer fit together, as well as your jaw. This can affect the way you chew and the way you speak. You might develop a speech impediment, a lisp or even an apraxia of speech. Unless you want to go to speech therapy, steer clear of DIY braces.
DIY Braces May Give You Emotional Trauma
Due to the unforeseen results of your DIY braces, the DIY braces can lead to emotional trauma. This trauma can stem from the damage made to your smile. As a result, you may experience symptoms like confusion, mood swings, lack of interested in loved activities, avoiding activities, intrusive thoughts, body aches, fear, insomnia and even depression. DIY braces are not worth harming both your physical and your mental health.
DIY Braces Can Cost You More Money
The top reason people even begin to consider DIY braces methods is to save money. Little do they know, DIY braces can end up costing you more. You may have spent only $2 on some rubber bands, but you might spend $3000 replacing your tooth you had to have pulled as a result of your DIY braces.
When you damage your teeth with DIY braces, this may require Dr. Gohard to extract your tooth or even teeth at our Florham Park dentist office. An extraction will be your first expense. Following the extraction(s), you will then need to find a way to replace your missing teeth. This can include dental implants, dental bridges or even partial or full dentures. Each of these treatments can become quite costly, actually costing more than a professional orthodontic treatment.
In case you don’t need to have any teeth pulled but the damage you did to your teeth is able to be fixed with surgery or another dental procedure, this is just as costly as having your tooth extracted and replaced. For example, that gum or tooth infection that is serious is going to cost you surgery and perhaps even a dental crown to protect your tooth. Save yourself the pain and money and skip out on DIY braces.
You Can Make Your Bite or Teeth Worse
One aspect that many people don’t consider with DIY braces is that they will actually make their teeth appear worse. When you are aimlessly tying rubber bands around your teeth with no idea of what’s actually going on in your mouth, you can actually move your teeth in the wrong direction or mess up your bite. This is because you don’t know where your teeth should go and how you can get them there. Messing up your bite will require you to receive a professional orthodontic treatment to fix, and let us tell you, it’s not a painless process.
You Might Not Notice the Damage
One huge con of DIY braces is not knowing what’s going on inside your teeth during your self-treatment. During professional orthodontic treatments, your dentist can arrange for an x-ray at any given time to inspect your teeth. With DIY braces, you might not notice any physical damage happening on the outside, but once you take a visit to the dentist, your x-rays might show something different like structural damage to your teeth or even problems with your jaw structure.
Reasons People Consider DIY Braces
You Don’t Have the Right Resources
The top reason that people consider DIY braces in the first place is that they don’t have the resources to know better. For example, they don’t have enough money or access to the right resources or tools to have the job done. Even if you’re a quick learner with success in many other DIY projects, this isn’t the same thing as building something you found on Pinterest. This is your health. You wouldn’t give yourself plastic surgery right? This is the same. Your health is not worth damaging with DIY braces.
You Don’t Have the Money for Professional Braces
What led most people to even consider professional braces in the first place is the fact that they don’t believe they have the money to pay for professional braces. Either their parents won’t pay for the treatment or they don’t want to pay for it themselves. What most patients don’t know, however, is that braces are considered a preventive dentistry treatment and most insurance companies cover a decent portion of the treatment. In addition to insurance, at A Healthy Smile Dentistry, we offer different payment plan options so patients don’t need to pay for their entire treatment up front. Before you write off professional braces because they’re too expensive, schedule a consultation with Dr. Gohard for Invisalign treatment at our Florham Park office to find out how much braces will cost you and what your different payment options are.
You Think You Can Do it Yourself
Another reason so many people are trying to give their self DIY braces is that they think if that one guy on the internet was successful then they can do it. There is a reason that it takes years and years of education for people to become dentists, it’s because there is so much to know about teeth and mouths. When people think they can just do something overnight that a dentist takes years to learn, they are wrong. Just because one of your friends was successful doing something, doesn’t mean you will be as well. The only person who can guarantee you results is your dentist.
You Don’t Know Better
Before DIY braces were brought to the public’s attention on the news, teenagers everywhere were doing this without even considering the consequences. Now that DIY braces have publically been warned about on the news, many parents have talked to their children about avoiding these harmful DIY treatments. If for some reason, you weren’t aware of the harm that can occur to your teeth from DIY braces, this might be why you considered them. If you don’t know about the harm that can happen to your teeth, of course, it makes sense that you would try it.
Why You Should Consider Professional Braces
If the above didn’t scare you away, there are plenty of reasons to consider professional braces from your Florham Park dentist. First, professional braces will give your guaranteed results. This means, at the end of your treatment, you will have the smile you planned for. Next, you don’t need to worry about developing infections or losing a tooth from your treatment. Our dentist evaluates the health of your teeth during every appointment so you don’t need to worry about this problem again. In addition, with professional braces, you will have a smile that lasts. This means, following your treatment, you don’t need to worry about your teeth shifting back to their old position. Your dentist will ensure that your teeth stay put through the use of a retainer. Lastly, professional braces are safe!
Schedule a Professional Braces Consultation
Now that you know how harmful DIY braces can be, it’s time to fork over the money for a professional treatment that will guarantee you results and prevent any harm from occurring to your teeth. Schedule your consultation for Invisalign clear aligners in Florham Park by giving us a call or by filling out our online form. Our dentist is happy to answer any questions you might have about braces or why you should avoid DIY braces.