attachments – My Invisalign Blog

Need help on how to remove Invisalign braces? Read on:

I used to have beautiful fingernails before I started wearing Invisalign. They weren’t long and glamorous exactly, but they were long enough, healthy enough and manicured enough to look feminine and as if I at least took a little care of myself.

No more. Since I transferred back to full time wear of Invisalign removing my Invisalign braces has transformed my previously healthy looking nails into broken, torn, ragged shadows of their former selves. It ain’t pretty.

I must confess that over the last week things have become easier, but my first week back in full time aligners reminded me just how difficult it can be to remove aligners at the beginning of Invisalign. I remember the claustrophobic feeling of terror as I clawed at my mouth in a restaurant bathroom the very first week I ever wore them.

Fortunately, having been through all of this before I know that in a couple of weeks removing these things will be as easy as taking off a T shirt, so there isn’t quite the same level of fear this time around. However, I thought it might be helpful to new users to compile a list of tips for how to remove Invisalign. Please, please feel free to add more tips via the comments form. Alternatively, if you think I’ve got them wrong, please set me straight!

How To Remove Invisalign Braces – Top Tips:

Make sure your mouth is warm.
Make Sure Your Mouth Is Warm

Trying to remove Invisalign after a very cold drink is harder. Don’t ask me why, but it’s true! Somehow the plastic feels less pliable. It also helps if your fingers and the inside of your mouth are drier. If possible, open your mouth for a few seconds before attempting to remove them. Yes you’ll look odd, but it’s worth it. (Don’t drink a warm drink with your aligners in to help though- it can distort them.)
Start at the back.
Start at the back and work forward

Lift the aligners off the molars on each side first, then gradually work towards the front. Alternatively some people find that it is easier to work from one side of the mouth to the other. The wonkier the tooth, the harder that section of Invisalign are to remove. Start by lifting off the easier bits and get to those bits last. The same is true of areas with a lot of attachments. Tackle those bits last. In those areas hook your fingernails under the edge of the aligner and lift it up and over the attachment or difficult area.
Try a paper towel.
How To Remove Invisalign – Tip 3 Try A Paper Towel

Lots of people find that thick paper towels increase the grip on the aligner. Taking either a paper towel or a piece of kitchen paper in your hand place it over the tooth, grasp the aligner firmly and pull off the molars. Do this also for the opposite side and finally the front section. Replace the towel as it gets damp. The increase in grip can sometimes make a huge difference.
Try surgical gloves.
Image wikimedia

Many Invisalign patients report that surgical gloves work the same way as paper towels to increase grip on aligners. Many dental assistants also swear by them apparently. In this case the thick rubber gloves that you use for cleaning your house won’t do the trick (urgh!) what you need is the very fine type that you buy in boxes of 50 or 100. These allow you to feel what you are doing, but still increase grip.
Use an aligner hook.
An Aligner Hook

Some lucky patients get these given to them by their Invisalign provider for removing Invisalign braces. However they are also available on Amazon here and here. Looking similar to a crochet hook but designed specifically for removing clear braces they hook under the edge of the aligner and lift it away from the tooth. They are especially helpful for people with attachments when they are first fitted.
Another implement:
Not authorised by Invisalign!

Before I even get started in this one I would like to point out that it is certainly not Invisalign approved and might well result in damage to your aligners. Other Invisalign users have however reported success with other implements such as crochet hooks and even the edge of a pair of tweezers. Bearing in mind that your Invisalign are expensive I would personally probably skip this method, but each to their own.
Give it time:
Wait Before Trying To Remove Invisalign

One thing that people tell you constantly when you first get Invisalign is that removing Invisalign braces gets easier with time. Of course, when people told me this I used to secretly believe that I would be the one exception to this and my aligners would be difficult to remove forever. Of course, what I soon realised is that quite literally every hour counts. If you try to remove your new aligners very soon after they are inserted for the first time it will be very difficult. Waiting even an additional hour could make it much easier. If you are ravenous and desperate to eat I can understand that you may be cursing me on reading this tip, but if there is any way that you can, stopping and waiting a while could make your aligners much easier to remove.
Change aligners in the evening:
Change aligners last thing at night

Similar to tip 7 for how to remove Invisalign, inserting your new aligners at night has two benefits. Firstly it means that you get to sleep through the stage when they feel tightest and most uncomfortable. Secondly, by morning your teeth will already have shifted and the aligners will therefore be easier to move. Popping them in last thing at night, accompanied by a mild painkiller is probably the way to go if you think they will cause you trouble.
Speak to your orthodontist:
Speak to your orthodontist or dentist

Some orthodontists don’t put on the attachments until the third aligner. This allows you four weeks of perfecting your removal technique before the attachments are fitted. Once they go on it does become a lot harder, so this period of practice can be really helpful. Also, when your attachments go on ask whether you can wear the template for a day or two to get used to removing it before changing to the proper aligners. The template is softer and much, much easier to remove than a normal aligner. Also, I thought that it shifted the teeth a tiny bit too, so that also helps to make it easier when it comes to time to remove the actual aligners.
Relax:
It’s easier if you relax!

Remembering my first day in Invisalign I know that relaxing was a long way down a very long list of things that I wanted to do; a list that started with ‘Get these aligners out of my mouth and never, ever put them in again’. The truth is though that the feelings of panic and claustrophobia make the aligners much, much harder to remove. Taking a deep breath and trying to relax, even giving up and taking ten minutes before starting again can be the difference between success and failure.

Hopefully these tips will be helpful to someone else having difficulty removing Invisalign braces. As I said above if you have any other tips on how to remove Invisalign please feel free to share them via the comments section and I’ll update this page as and when necessary- thanks.

Looking for advice on how to remove your Invisalign trays? Click here

This week was another milestone in my treatment as it was time to remove my Invisalign attachments or buttons. I have now reached 30/34 on my first run of lower Invisalign braces (only 4 more to go!) and set 9/9 of my first run of Invisalign refinements on my upper arch- in other words, the first run of my upper refinements are now finished! To mark this momentous occasion I had a long appointment with my orthodontist to evaluate how my upper teeth are now looking, and also, joy of joy, to remove my upper Invisalign attachments.

For those of you as yet unfamiliar with all the details of Invisalign, attachments are small tooth coloured blobs of material that are glued or cemented onto teeth during Invisalign treatment. Their purpose is to provide additional “grip” for the aligners so that more difficult or complex tooth movements are possible. They can be used on any number of teeth, depending on the preferences of your Invisalign provider and what movements the teeth need to make. Some lucky people have none, some have a large number, I have 5. You can see some of mine in the picture below:

My orthodontist decides to Remove Invisalign Attachments

Throughout my treatment, whilst I haven’t enjoyed having attachments exactly, I have easily tolerated them to the point that not only didn’t I feel them in my mouth any more, I didn’t see them when I looked in the mirror either. So I was fairly relaxed about having them removed- I was happy to do it, but I wasn’t yearning for it exactly. In fact, given that they have been solidly attached to my teeth for the last 15 months and have endured all manner of brushing, tugging and scraping and still stayed resolutely attached, I was afraid that getting them off might be a minor ordeal.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that let I let my orthodontist lower me back in his dentist’s chair, one hand adjusting his medical face mask, the other brandishing a large, sinister looking dentist’s drill. My fear wasn’t allayed by him telling me, with only a little relish in his voice, that this was going to be noisy.

I don’t know whether you have ever had any fillings, but my teeth are riddled with them. So I am pretty familiar with the feeling of the dentist’s drill and the vibrations that go through your head as they buzz and scrape noisily through your teeth. This was what I was expecting with the removal of my attachments.

I am relieved and excited to report however, that it is really not that bad. Yes, there is a little of the same sensation of vibration as the attachment is drilled, but because it is on the outside of your tooth and the drill is not contacting with any of your tooth’s own structure, the vibrations do not travel through your head in the same way. Also, the removal of each attachment seemed to take no more that 15-20 seconds of drilling, compared to the 30 minutes to an hour that I have endured with some of my larger fillings, so although there was some vibration it had barely started before it finished. After the initial drilling was completed, my orthodontist switched to a smaller polisher and ran it across the tooth’s surface where the attachment had been, just to remove any last traces of the cement- and it was finished! The whole process of removing my attachments was over in less than five minutes start to finish.

As my orthodontist adjusted my chair back into the upright position and told me to rinse my mouth I was so surprised that it was over that I told him “well THAT was remarkably painless” to which he looked at me bemused, and replied “Well what did you expect?”
I didn’t really like to run him through the scenarios that had been coursing through my head prior to my appointment – if you google remove Invisalign attachments very little shows up, so I had filled in the details myself.

The attachments removed and my teeth in all their naked glory we were able to get onto the important business of discussing how my teeth look. Removing the attachments has altered the way they appear (see pics below) but hasn’t changed how I feel about what needs to be done. I told him all of my concerns (explained with pictures in my previous post about set 29 before and after pictures) about how the front tooth needed to rotate a little more and how I think the molars have been thrown into shadow.

He listened patiently, had a very thorough examination of my teeth from every angle, and then told me that he could see what I was talking about, that he agreed that my arch could be widened a little more by moving out my molars, and that we could look at it in the next refinement. He did caution that as my teeth have already moved so much that there was a limit to what could be done whilst still keeping my teeth in the jaw bone, but that he would do his best. One of the things (other than experience) that I think is so important to look for in an orthodontist is their willingness to listen to your opinion. I think I have been very, very fortunate with mine that not only is he willing to listen, he will happily rethink his approach if you tell him that you would prefer to do it another way.

Close Up No Attachments

Within my Invisalign contract I have the original run of aligners included, plus three runs of refinements. I have used one refinement correcting my upper arch whilst the bottoms were still completing their first run, so my orthodontist and I agreed that we would wait until I have finished my lower arch first run of aligners before we start the next set of refinements. That means that both arches can be tackled simultaneously in the same series of refinements. In the meantime, over the next eight weeks I will be wearing my upper aligner only at night whilst wearing the lower one for the usual 22 (ahem) hours a day for the next 10 weeks. According to my orthodontist this is the best compromise between keeping the upper aligner intact and still wearable whilst not letting my teeth relapse too much until the next series of aligners. All in all I am thrilled with how my teeth are now looking and excited to get them finished off. Roll on 10 weeks time.

Look no upper attachments- shame about the molars in shadow and the ugly crown at the front that needs replacing though…

My Invisalign Blog

My Invisalign Braces Experience

Top Ten Tips For How To Remove Invisalign Braces

How To Remove Invisalign Braces

Getting Invisalign Impressions

A Day In The Life With Invisalign