You may have noticed a sustained increase in the number of adults getting their teeth straightened in Banbury. Maybe you haven’t, but at Amsel & Wilkins, we certainly have.

There are a few reasons why you might have noticed the steady increase in adults wearing braces. Firstly, you are probably not obsessed with teeth, so you don’t go about your daily business clocking what everyone is hiding behind their lips, like we do.

Secondly, these days, unless someone has got some serious issues with the way their teeth bite together, the chances are they will be wearing a much more discreet kind of braces than the traditional heavy duty metal braces, affectionately known as train track braces.

Thirdly, if just the teeth are being moved, it’s possible to get straighter teeth in 6 months in Banbury, or maybe even less, depending on what the issues are.

Bracket and wire

There are 3 ways to get your teeth straightened. The fixed bracket and wire braces of old are still available, but, if they are only straightening teeth, they can use much gentler forces to do the job. This means they can get away with using smaller brackets, which are sometimes made of clear ceramic, depending on the brand, and the wires can be tooth-coloured. All this adds up to braces that no longer dominate the teeth.

One brand uses this system, but fixes the brackets to the inside of the teeth, next to the tongue. These are called lingual braces and they are invisible. They can also cope with more complex issues than some other discreet systems.

Invisible aligners

These aren’t even braces, but 3D printed mouth guard style aligners. Instead of having wires to tighten, the patient uses a series of aligners, each of which uses the pressure created from not quite fitting properly to nudge the teeth along. A push rather than a pull. The aligners are almost invisible over the teeth, but can be removed, which makes eating, drinking and tooth brushing as easy as ever.

Front teeth aligners

These uses spring-loaded aligner bows that reposition the front teeth only. This removable appliance also doubles as a retainer and treatment can take as little as 6 weeks.

The thing with being around teeth all day is that you can tend to become somewhat obsessed with them. Sometimes at Amsel & Wilkins, we find that our passion for a really great smile means that even in our private lives it’s impossible not to notice the state of people’s teeth when we first meet them. ‘Oh, she’s got quite some crowding going on there and her incisors never really did descend properly’ or ‘Wow! Now that’s what I call an amazing smile! White but not too white, straight but not overpoweringly uniform teeth.’ Those might be the thoughts going through our minds as we pay for our petrol or chat to new acquaintances at parties.

Sometimes we think, ‘Now if you’d had your teeth straightened 20 years ago, you wouldn’t soon be needing a visit to the dentist to deal with that gum disease that’s forming from all that tartar that’s built up on your teeth.’

Never too late

The thing about braces, is that it is never too late to get straighter teeth. The early teens may be the optimum time for sorting out issues to do with misalignments but that’s because the jawbone is still growing and so it’s possible to deal with misalignments in the jaws, where the teeth don’t meet properly. This is a separate issue from wonky teeth, but wasn’t treated as such back in the day.

Teeth can be moved around in the jaw at any time in life. It’s just a case of applying sustained pressure to the tooth in one direction. After 72 hours of this pressure, the jawbone responds by breaking down bone matter in front of the tooth in the direction of the pressure and building up bone behind it. The thing that takes all the time to move is not the teeth, but the bite. So, in fact, in Banbury you can get straighter teeth in 6 months, rather than 2 or 3 years.

Straighter teeth are healthier teeth because they provide fewer hard-to-clean places for plaque and tartar to build up and harbour the bacteria that lead to gum disease, which causes teeth to fall out.