hey this is dr amanda with straightsmilesolutionstraightsmilesolutions.com
and today we're going to talk about eating and drinking with a liners in
is it a yes can you do it is it a no can you not do it what are the risks what are the benefits
so i'm going to go ahead and tell you more about that now ideally whenever you have clear liners
you carry around your little case everywhere you go it's in your back pocket or it's in your
purse anytime you want to eat or drink your liner should be popped out put in the case
you eat and drink then you brush and floss and put your liners back in with your chewies
that's the sequence and repeat but i know a lot of times it's it's a fundamental change
in lifestyle because we're used to a very snacky lifestyle we're like hey i'm gonna grab a coffee
i'm just gonna eat this quick cookie you know in the afternoon oh what a pain you know i gotta pop
my liners out i gotta brush my teeth i gotta put them back in what if i just had this drink
or this snack with them in what's gonna happen so let's talk about that so first concern of
course and ultimately you should ask your dentist this question but this is going to be my kind of
stock answer having been a dentist for 20 years and an orthodontist we're going on 18
and i'll kind of tell you what i tell my patients now first of all what is food so food for the most
part unless you're eating like i don't know like something super keto you know for the most part is
carbohydrates right that's most of the food we eat in some part and carbohydrates or sugars
they ferment over time on your teeth and become you know with with bacteria that's already in
your mouth and become plaque right and plaque as it gets older produces acid and the acid
causes cavities and gum disease so that's why we always want to brush our teeth after
we eat right now if you add onto that a piece of plastic okay so imagine you had a piece of food
in your house and you had one that was covered by plastic and one that was just sitting out
the one covered by plastic would probably get rotten quicker right it would probably be sweaty
and moldy get more fungus quicker that's because it has more anaerobic environment which is where
allows bacteria to proliferate underneath it so same thing i know that was very scientific but
same thing with a liner so aligners create an anaerobic environment for your teeth and gums
depending on how their trim line is obviously this one has a very scalloped trim line so maybe not
so much for your gums but some do um and if you eat or drink pretty much everything there's some
type of sugars in it except water right um maybe there's a few exceptions like if you ate a piece
of celery you know like most fruits and vegetables do have some sugars but some don't really
um you know then maybe that's okay but uh we don't want to cause your gums to have gum disease
quicker um or your teeth to get cavities quicker or discolored so that's why we don't recommend
that you eat or drink with your liners in and it can happen very rapidly so sure you could eat and
drink and then you could go rinse and brush afterwards and you'd probably be fine right
but you get the idea we wouldn't want it hanging around so as a blanket statement as dennis we just
say no eating and drinking with your liners and also what you're eating and drinking you know some
things that you drink might be hot that's going to distort the plastic if it has alcohol in it it's
going to distort the plastic um what else certain type of oils are going to distort the plastic so
you know in its purest form maybe if you had like i don't know clear soda it's not going to
distort the plastic but it will create the anaerobic environment whereas if you had a
soda with vodka that might distort the plastic right if you had a
iced coffee it's cold it might distort the plastic if you had a hot coffee it might
disturb the plastic but if you had a lukewarm coffee no sugar that's probably fine but it's
going to stay in your liner okay so now you got the idea that was the health part now let's move
on to the breakage part um for the most part with the liners in you're fine to eat and drink
for breakage so it's not really going to cause anything unless you have buttons some people have
buttons those you know you have to be a little more careful but those are stuck on your teeth
anyway so um you know i don't think that's gonna make that much of a difference and you're supposed
to have elastics if you have buttons 22 hours a day anyways so that's that part should be fine
i'm not really that worried about breakage in some ways with breakage attachments are actually more
protected with the aligners on but yes sometimes i do tell parents with patients that are kids that
have the liners that they can eat and drink at lunch time at school only with the aligners on
as long as soon as they come home the parent takes them out and together together they
brush and floss so the most important thing is if you do that the parents will be very
vigilant because if they forget that step and it doesn't get done their kids teeth will get wrong
guaranteed and that's going to be very expensive to restore so i don't normally want to recommend
that unless it's kind of an emergency where the patient just is losing these aligners you
know right and left or something like that um but yeah i mean hey we've all been out
in about and we've forgotten our case and we're like shoot should i just eat or should i not and
there's always a risk of wrapping your aligners up in napkins we've all seen it hundreds of times
from patients where they've thrown them away you know so sometimes it's safer to just leave them in
all right anyways so you can make your own decision hopefully that was helpful and we
didn't even mention the whole staining thing some brands of aligners i'm not going to say which ones
because the owners of this brand get very upset when i say something negative about their aligners
even though it's a proven fact and i've been involved in bench top tests in actual laboratories
that have proven that one certain major brand of aligners stains like crazy so anything you eat
is going to stain them ketchup you know anything that's colored you know so that's why it's nice if
you're changing the liners every seven days is not a big deal but other brands don't stain as
much so it's not much as much of a big deal but if you want to talk to me one-on-one i'll be glad to
tell you which ones staying and which ones don't or you should go to my youtube channel and just
look up staining videos and they're there all right thanks so much hopefully this was helpful