How to beat staining food and drink at their own game!
Having Aligner Orthodontic Treatment?
When you’re undergoing aligner orthodontic treatment, your teeth are more vulnerable to stains from highly pigmented food and drink. When you’re wearing aligner trays, those can adopt a bit of a hue, too, if you’re not careful. No one wants that!
At Healthy Smile Pharmacy, we’re here to guide you through how to become a food stain dodging ninja during teeth straightening.
Why do teeth stain more in aligners?
Let's get to the root of it ...
- In the early days, when your teeth are not yet straight, there are more nooks and crannies for pigments to lurk.
- With aligners, there’s less saliva to naturally ‘rinse’ your mouth – but mouth moisturisers like our XyliMelts can help with this - and your tongue and cheeks don’t naturally ‘sweep’ your teeth. The pigment residues from food and drink can stain teeth and trays.
- If your oral hygiene isn’t up to scratch, tooth enamel can become more porous and those oranges, browns, blues and yellows can bed in.
- Orthodontic treatment is not a time for whitening toothpastes. Stick with your VITIS Aligner Brace Daily Care Kit as its medical grade care that you need during this time.
How can you avoid food staining with aligners?
Rather than asking about teeth stain removers when we’re wearing aligners, we need to be asking ...
One: Rinse! Use your specialist VITIS Orthodontic Mouthwash to rinse
Not just for those in between brushing moments, your orthodontic mouthwash is specially formulated to keep your mouth and teeth in aligners tickety-boo when you’ve had a little bit of what you fancy. It helps rinse away food and drink residues that can carry those staining pigments. It also helps neutralise the acid attack that eating and drinking any foods can cause.
Two: Brush! Remineralise and strengthen enamel with VITIS Orthodontic Toothpaste
The stronger your tooth enamel, and the more you banish plaque, the less likely you are to experience stained teeth and aligner trays. VITIS Orthodontic Toothpaste is semi-liquid so gets into all those tight spaces between teeth, delivering re-mineralising ingredients to your tooth enamel while keeping plaque at bay. Just the ticket, right?
Skip a bit of the rainbow and opt for light coloured foods to avoid aligner staining
Your choices are your best teeth stain remover!
While we’re encouraged to eat the rainbow for our overall health, we must be a little pickier when we’rewearingaligners. Deeply coloured natural food and drinks are deeply coloured for a reason – they have natural pigments that make them that way. Artificial food colourings also need a big dose of side-eye during this time.
Three: Make some swaps while in treatment:
Go under the radar where strong food pigments can't find your teeth ...
- Swap darkly coloured berries and cherries for apples and pears. If your teeth are in one of their tender phases – peel and slice, it’s fancier, anyway, right? Citrus fruits are highly acidic so, while they don’t stain, they do compromise your already vulnerable teeth. White grapes and bananas? You’re good to go! Nom nom nom!
- Tomato sauces are out. Creamy sauces are in! Ban bolognaise and celebrate carbonara. It’s the same for tomato ketchup and barbecue sauces – make friends with mayonnaise instead. Don’t get caught out – remember most pizza has a tomato sauce base.
- Tea? Coffee? Their tannin will leave brown stains on teeth. If you miss these brown brews too much, go fancy with milky lattes and rinse with VITIS Orthodontic Mouthwash afterwards to minimise staining.
- Some herbal teas can be surprisingly lurid in colour. Opt for lighter coloured ones so that you don’t get any pink surprises down the line ...
- Raw like sushi? The sushi fish and rice are fine, but the soy sauce isn’t. Eat sushi, of course, but sidestep the soy and decorate with a few grains of salt instead. You also get extra bougie points! Go you!
- Dark chocolate is also a surprise culprit in the suspect line-up. If you love the dark stuff, we won’t mention milk or white too loudly so as not to offend you. Is there a swap? Not a satisfying one that we could find. If you can’t forego it, rinse with VITIS Orthodontic Mouthwash and wait 30 minutes before popping your trays back in.
- Cola and other fizzy drinks often have ahem lurid colours that mostly belong in an art gallery. Go clear, go sugar-free and, even better, learn to love still!
- Is now a good time to mention red wine? Could you bear to swap to white for a while ... (peeks from behind fingers!)?
Keep up the good fight and help remove stains from your aligner trays
four
You opted for aligners because they’re less visible so you don’t want them starting to take on an interesting shade of anything but crystal clear, right? Keep showing your trays the love and pop them in a Soaking Bath with anVITIS Effervescent Tablets.In as little as 15 minutes, you’re helping remove tea, coffee and tobacco stains and keeping your aligners hygienic and fresh. Gorgeous!
Never eat with your aligner trays in
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The only reason this should ever happen is if you have a complete mad moment and entirely forget you wear aligners. When did wearing aligners every get quite so comfortable? Maybe you were having a bad day!
If you do accidentally eat with them in – rinse as soon as you can. If there is noticeable staining, ask your orthodontist if you can have a replacement tray or move to your next tray.
