I wore Invisalign braces from January of 2022 to early 2023. They require a lot of brushing and maintenance while wearing them.

Here’s a few things I did along the way which made that easier.

1. Create brushing stations

You’re going to brush and floss a lot. (Like a lot.) Anytime you eat or drink anything besides water you must remove the Invisalign trays, brush your teeth and trays, and then floss.

To make this easier:

  • Buy several sets of toothbrushes, mini toothpastes, and flosses. Use them to create tooth cleaning stations in your house, so that they’re never more than a room away. (This helped me a lot because our house has multiple stories.)
  • Create a go-pack with toothpaste, toothbrush, and floss. Put it in your bag when you leave home.

Yes, it was more money to buy a bunch of toothbrushes and set up everything, but I brushed my teeth 2,000+ more times in 2023 because of Invisalign. These steps saved me a ton of mental energy and annoyance.

2. Buy extra Invisalign storage cases

Stash extra cases in every bag you take with you when you go out.

It sucks to get to a restaurant and have no place to safely stash your trays. I’ve heard of people getting their trays thrown away because they wrapped them in a paper napkin which was thrown away at the end of the meal.

3. Buy Polident

I brushed and flossed constantly but still developed pretty bad Dragon Breath™ as Sinah called it. 🐲🔥

This went away once I started regularly (4-5x a week) cleaning my trays with Polident.

I would do this from the day one if I did it over again. And I do it today with my retainer trays.

4. Your trays may get a white discoloration on them

This is from food particles and other gunk sticking to them. This happens more as you start to change your trays infrequently.

I found these cleaning tablets are good for removing it.

I continue to use it on my retainers a few times a month.

5. Be prepared for discomfort the first week or two

The first week or two is the worst of it and hurt a fair bit. I took Advil a couple of times to manage the discomfort.

After that, my body got used to it and it was annoying but not bad.