Oh my gosh. I'm getting braces.
Are you impressed with your work?
C: Tah-dah!
J: It's good. It's really good. Look.
It's going well.
My teeth are pushing outwards, all these front ones.
And they are so painful and tender!
Brace going well-ish.
Have destroyed the inside of my mouth now.
As you can see, in this close up that is happening right now.
They are both lying side by side with my front teeth.
Here we are again, in Claud's little dental surgery.
In her special room.
We're going to change the wire on my brace.
Because it hasn't yet moved. Well no, because it hasn't moved in two weeks.
My teeth. But they have moved really well so far.
Oh, I feel like I'm in a film noir right now, look at this.
C: I might still put the glasses on.
C: I'm gonna be using this polishing strip.
C: It's very film noir. Isn't it?
J: I know. It's great.
And I now have the wire off. Just brushed my teeth, apparently they are very clean.
C: Yes, she's been doing really well keeping them clean.
See here? Here's my new wire, it's white again.
Yay!
So now you can't see it.
I like this.
C: When I took the wire off, I noticed they looked straighter actually because I think they did move a little bit.
C: Do you think?
J: I think they look really good.
C: Yeah.
J: Thank you.
C: As I said, it's still quite tight there.
So if that becomes a problem, we may have to do a little bit more.
But I didn't want to take too much off to start with to see how much.
Because I mean, you did have straight teeth before.
So they obviously did get into the straight position.
And they obviously can.
Just because your teeth would have grown in size since you had braces.
J: Thank you lovely dentist.
C: You're welcome.
Because I'm going to fancy you more when you've got a straight perfect smile.
J: So rude.
Do you not change yourself for people that you love.
C: I've got, still, like even despite my straight teeth, I still got one that's slightly longer.
See? I think it's that one, slightly longer.
J: Yeah.
It is, indeed.
What are you gonna do about that?
C: Hmm, just leave it.
It will just- I don't know. I was like oh, I'll file it down, but I don't like to take away.
J: No.
C: I'll just leave it. It will wear down in time.
J: By the time we're sixty, you'll have beautiful teeth.
C: Yeah, they will be like really short.
I'll have dentures.
No I won't because I floss everyday.
J: Did you know, you don't actually have to have dentures as an old person?
Your teeth don't have to fall out.
That only happens if you don't look after them.
Mind blown.
I thought it was just something that happened to old people, just falls out.
So today, hopefully, finally, going to twist this little bracket 15 degrees anti-clockwise.
C: What we want to do, effectively want to...
...bring the teeth that way.
J: Yeah.
C: So if that bracket turns...
J: So that's anti-clockwise to mine.
C: So, we need to turn it that way because then it will be putting pressure.
I'm just thinking.
It will then go up.
We need to bring it down. Yeah, so.
Get in the dental chair.
Oh, it's the most exciting bit, isn't it?
Get to sit in the cool chair.
They're almost perfect, almost perfect, my teeth.
I'd quite like it off now.
I thought, hypermobility, I'll be done within three months. It'll just be finished and I can have it off.
Perfect!
No.
No, I'm not sure how my teeth were ever straight.
I had proper braces for ages. How did they become straight, but now they're too big for my mouth. My mouth hasn't shrunk.
But Claud's had to take down some of my teeth so they're a bit thinner so they will actually fit into my mouth.
Beautiful exchange, and then once they're all in the perfect position you have to leave them for a month so that the bone...
... can kind of grow and heal around them
and set in place
They won't move anymore. I think this one might be quite painful.
Here, she's changing the bracket and then the wire will actually tug a lot more so maybe next week I will just be back to eating
soft foods
my soft food diet again
Thank you dentist!
C: Wear these really funky glasses
Wow
J: I look so cool.
C: Now do you want to use this thing? I didn't do it with... I think we can just use cotton wool rolls, probably.
J: What's this? Oh the mouth opening thing. I hate the mouth opening thing so much.
C: It hurt your lips last time.
J: It just scratches them and it's really nasty.
I have teeth. *sparkle sound effect*
Yeah, okay to be fair I had teeth all along and there was just a lot of stuff covering them.
Look how white they are!
Okay, so I have really good oral hygiene.
I have actually been told that by my dentist, and she's not just saying it because she's married to me.
But my teeth were kind of starting to look a little bit yellow due to the brackets in front of them.
The brackets will discolor no matter what you do. I I tried to avoid curry.
I brushed straight after every meal, but they will discolor. It will happen.
Obviously they will discolor a lot worse if you do certain things if you eat incredibly colorful food, artificially colored food.
But if you are quite good with them, they will just slightly,
slightly yellow, whatever, point is, they come off, and you are amazed by the whiteness. *sparkle sound effect*
I can't stop running my tongue over my teeth.
So I had my brace on for nine months.
I know it's called six month smile but they do actually say on the website it can take between six and nine months.
That's because I wanted to make sure that it was completely perfect and they are, oh yes.
I was getting very frustrated with them though and very very ready
for them to come off and no longer be on my face.
Especially for the last week this bracket here on the front tooth had actually come off
because two quick tie wires had been applied either side of it to help it move faster,
but the quick tie wires had pulled the bracket off so the bracket sort of oddly was just hovering above my tooth and
to keep everything in place to make sure that nothing else moved,
I had to wear this which is your Essex retainer.
Which fortunately we had already taken the impressions for and had come back by the time by bracket came off.
This is like a normal
retainer that you would wear to whiten your teeth or
not really sports because it's just one thing but,
it's good for you.
It's lower at the front
To allow that your brace to go on top of it, and then you're given this to wear forever
So now you have to sleep in it.
So I have to wear this every single night for a year. Oh, my lisping, I'm lisping, and then after that
every other night is okay, but generally every night is best
I also have a fixed retainer behind my teeth there are two options for this and I went with the
super cool new modern one. Yeah. When I first had a brace on my teeth when I was a teenager
I had then the metal retainer put behind which is like a thin bit of metal and
There's composite on each tooth which basically cements it on
But it makes it kind of blobby
I'm just gonna take this out, hold on. So I had that metal retainer behind my teeth at the top, but it pinged off three times!
Three times! And then my orthodontist was basically, just like: Yeah, leave it.
Because I have a very close bite
or at least I did before I had this brace and my teeth were obviously just
It didn't matter, that thing was coming off. I really did that incorrectly there
You should watch me teach from behind. So biting and the retainer that was here would obviously just ping off
constantly. It was incredibly annoying the new type of retainer that I have behind my teeth, however,
oh, interestingly,
is, like - it's one flat
panel of composite
Very interesting, so, all of my front teeth
are now semi-stuck together
behind them mmmmm
All the way - my canines and then,
my incisors and my front teeth
So they are all stuck together
And they should just remain beautifully in place. It's much nicer than having the metal
Apparently you get less food stuck behind it yay
Obviously you do still have to be very careful with your dental hygiene do remember to floss and use ?.
It's a lot smoother, it's not going to come off and it's also not going to poke you
I've only had it off for 24 hours now
So biting down does feel a little strange, but
It's obviously something that will get easier with time
And when it comes to the overall outlook appearance of my teeth I am very very pleased
They're so smooth. Claudia also smoothed them down so your dentist will do that first
they'll smooth them down and around them, so you get a nice, a nice feeling.
Sorry I'm so pleased with my teeth
I can't I can't really get over it. Other things appearance-wise these teeth here were the ones that were overlapping like this and
due to that and many years of eating the tooth on this side, which was straight,
have got kind of shorter, you know, they're flatter.
Whereas these ones here that are now straight,
are hanging down slightly lower. So there is the option that I could have the tips of those
filed down so everything is the same, not perfectly the same because that would be unnatural obviously, but just slightly shorter.
Or you can have the other teeth built up with composities, which is look like a filling that looks like a tooth
I think I'm just gonna leave them, and they'll probably wear away. I'll just chew more on this side of my mouth.
All in all, I was very happy with the experience, and I'm very happy with my teeth mmm
Oh, yes, sorry. I've just been doing that everyone mmmm
I'm probably gonna do that for next month. If you see me in the next month I'm probably gonna be like: Hi! I got my brace off.
It's been a while guys. Okay, nine months. I'm allowed to be excited, it's like I had a tooth baby.
I can show off my tooth baby to people
Look at my tooth baby. Do you like my tooth baby? Is that weird? Is that creepy?
No, I don't think so. I would hugely recommend these braces actually, if you have the money,
and you want to get your teeth straightened. In terms of having the retainers that you put in, or the brace themselves...
Having had the last few... kinda like a week and a half with the just Essex retainer. I would say I preferred the brackets,
strangely. I know, wouldn't expect that.
I just feel like the retainer
it can't move - it doesn't move your teeth slowly
It's: here's the shape, your teeth don't fit that shape, you put it on your teeth
And I think that's going to hurt as your teeth have to adjust to this shape whereas with brackets
There are adjustments made a little bit at a time, and it's a bit sore for
24-48 hours
But it's quite a gradual thing and it gets easier. That's just my thoughts on the matter
Probably someone who has had just the retainer style of brace
Might have a different opinion
and might hate the idea of brackets,
but there we go. The downsides of having brackets are obviously that they do there is a certain amount of
interaction with your lip so I'm kind of having to learn to smile again without
Getting my lip over my brace. I'm very unfortunate in the length of my brace exactly matched the length of my smile
So every time I smiled my lips went over the edge of my brace
And then I stopped smiling I would catch my lips and that would hurt I know I know
No, not a good look
But that's only because the ones at the very end weren't the softer brackets that you have in the middle they were metal
metal hurts
So there you go, that was my experience with adult braces
Let me know down below in the comments if you have any questions, and I will try to get to all of them, I promise.
You