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Candid aligners treatment is most often performed using an orthodontic appliance. Most patients associate the braces with colored rubber bands (ligatures). They appear in metal braces, which – apart from the abovementioned rubber bands – also consist of other elements, i.e. locks (clamps) glued to the surface of the teeth and a wire attached directly to them. Both the locks and the wire are available in silver or gold.

Do you care about an even, healthy smile? Nowadays, orthodontic appliances are used by patients of all ages. Aesthetic orthodontic braces have been developed for people who care about discreet treatment. Orthodontic treatment is waiting for you and you wonder which braces will be better for you? Find out the difference between aesthetic and metal braces to make the best decision for you.

Metal braces are popular with patients for several reasons. Compared to other appliances used in orthodontic offices, it is the cheapest. Since these types of braces are made of high-quality stainless steel, they are reliable and perfectly cope with the elimination of various malocclusions. However, due to the aforementioned colored ligatures, this type of apparatus is most often chosen by young people – pupils and students.

Aesthetic braces – what do orthodontists propose?

Aesthetic appliances are as effective as metal appliances. However, as the name suggests, they guarantee a discreet treatment. The visibility of these devices is much lower, because other materials than stainless steel are used for their production. The group of such devices includes:

sapphire (crystal) cameras 

They are transparent like glass,ceramic and porcelain appliances – they are equipped with brackets with a milk color,self-ligating braces – instead of colored ligatures there are special flaps.

Proper selection of the coating of brackets and arch makes the orthodontic apparatus invisible – it blends with the color of the teeth.

Each aesthetic apparatus is an ideal solution from the point of view of people performing serious, prestigious professions. If you want no one to notice that you are undergoing orthodontic treatment, you can use even more discreet braces. These include, among others Lingual braces, which are distinguished by the fact that the brackets are attached to the teeth from the palate and tongue. As a result, they are not visible from the outside.

Clear Aligner overlays are a specific type of orthodontic appliance. These are transparent overlays that are used when correcting malocclusion in adults. Although the aligners are discreet and comfortable, they are not for everyone – they can only be used to correct certain malocclusions.

Orthodontic appliance for an adult – aesthetic or metal?

The answer to the question of whether a metal or aesthetic braces will work better depends primarily on the patient’s preferences. Do you care about straight, straight teeth? If the orthodontist decided that you can undergo treatment with an orthodontic appliance, he will most likely offer you both metal and aesthetic braces. You decide which one you will feel better in.

Don’t you want your coworkers to find out that you are undergoing orthodontic treatment? In such a situation, an aesthetic apparatus will be a better solution. Sapphire, ceramic, self-ligating or lingual braces are most often chosen by traders and sellers as well as people in managerial positions.

Aesthetic versus metal braces – treatment time

Patients who require an orthodontic appliance are informed about the duration of treatment. Which orthodontic appliance to choose – aesthetic or metal – to shorten the treatment time? Aesthetic appliances are made of materials other than traditional metal. Therefore, the treatment time may be longer. People who want to achieve results quickly should opt for a lingual apparatus. As its components are personalized, healing time is shorter. As a result, control visits may also take place less frequently.

Rarely has a medical technique jumped with such impetus from the field of health to the world of aesthetics. Braces, those wires that when smiling become the nightmare of adolescents, have evolved driven by a growing market of adults willing to visit the dentist and put on a dental appliance to improve their well-being and beauty .

Today it is possible to leave the dentist’s office with invisible orthodontics, made of sapphire or porcelain, without damaging the smile.

In this Groupon guide, in addition to explaining the different types of orthodontics that your dentist can advise you, we will inform you of the duration of these treatments, their results, the particularities they have in children and adults and their prices . In addition, you can find some tips to keep them in good condition for as long as you have to wear them.

What are braces and what is orthodontics?

Orthodontics can often be confused with a beauty treatment like any other. As indicated by the Spanish Society of Orthodontics (SEDO) , the concern for dental straightening “makes the public forget the importance of the biological foundations and functional objectives of this dental specialty”.

Its purpose, beyond achieving an individual and detailed placement of the teeth, seeks to correct the alteration of the jaws, the face and, above all, functional disorders of chewing.

The deviation of the upper or lower half of the denture, its position too lopsided, advanced or delayed, can mean that the bones that support it, the jaws , are poorly located, which, consequently, leads to problems to start swallowing .

But it is true that, since the symmetry of the features is one of the main objective parameters that we can enunciate of beauty, an unbalanced face, or a disorderly smile are less beautiful. With the pursuit of a health objective, orthodontics achieves, as a secondary effect, an aesthetic purpose . Even so, it is important not to get confused: orthodontics does not aim to locate dental arches to the consumer’s taste, but in the most functional position possible.

However, even with a side effect, it is understandable that the results obtained in this area have sparked the interest of many adults who might not otherwise make efforts to correct deficiencies in this area. The problem is that for an adult, making the smile less attractive while the treatment lasts is surely a real setback.

For this reason, little by little, the search for greater functionality in the appliances used has been added to the effort to make its fundamental components less and less conspicuous: the brackets .

To understand the importance of these elements, the braces, it is convenient to imagine the orthodontic appliance as a hunting bow. The piece of wood bends when the hunter prepares to shoot the arrow, but given its elastic condition, when it stops exerting effort, it recovers its original shape, dragging the rope with it until it also takes it to its starting position. In the same way, the usual orthodontic treatment uses a tensioned wire that, as it slowly regains its shape, drags the teeth with it to another location.

It is easy to assume that for the teeth to move, like the bowstring, they must be held in some way to the bowstring. The brackets are the elements in charge of this function. These are individual pieces adhered on one side to the tooth surface, while on the other, traditionally by means of an elastic, they continue to be connected to the wire.

It is necessary that they be highly resistant pieces to face both the tension of the wire and the teeth (reluctant to change their position), so that, until recently, they were only built with metal. Currently, thanks to technical advances, it is possible to find models made from porcelain or sapphire .

However, even being the most important, appliances that include braces are not the only tools available to orthodontics. Sometimes, at the end of the relocation of the teeth it is necessary to use other appliances called retainers to ensure that the natural tendency of the teeth to regain their initial position does not prevail.

In addition, an alternative has recently appeared that replaces the brackets with transparent plastic covers, initially marketed by Invisalign  and that achieve the same purpose of moving the dental arches to their optimal place.

Types of brackets

The metal brackets, the wire -or arch- similar in color to the clips, and the white elastic band that held both pieces, still exist, but today they are one among many other options. For the little ones, fun variants have emerged, such as elastic bands in various shades . The trend in adults is precisely the opposite: to make the braces go as unnoticed as possible.

It is this field that has grown most fruitfully in recent years. Today, depending on the budget and the recommendations of each dentist, the patient can choose, for example, to use sapphire braces or to place the orthodontics on the back of the tooth. Next, we detail the main types of brackets that have emerged as alternatives to the classic metal appliance.

1. Ceramic aesthetic brackets

The metallic color of traditional braces is impossible to disguise on the tooth. Painting them entirely white to camouflage them, as wire is sometimes painted, is not a good solution either. While the archwire is periodically replaced , the brackets are preserved from the beginning to the end of the treatment. During the year and a half that they remain fixed, apart from the deterioration that the paint layer may suffer, the discolorations of the teeth and the stains would make them considerably striking.

Therefore, the most common option to improve aesthetics involves a change in the material with which they are built. Currently, to achieve this purpose, two types of ceramics are usually used, sapphire and porcelain . We then order these materials from lowest to highest degree of visibility.

• Sapphire brackets

Literally, it consists of making the braces with a precious stone. They are built with pure monocrystalline sapphire (zincorn), a material that, as indicated by Dentalia , provides interesting advantages, beyond its transparency and resistance: it does not stain , as long as good hygiene is maintained, nor does it wear out.

The Ferrus Bastos Clinic adds that its polishing process provides a smooth contour, increasing comfort for the patient. Unfortunately, it requires a daily and deep dental cleaning and its price is considerably higher than that of normal braces.

When choosing this option, it should be remembered that, although they are transparent brackets, the wire normally still has a metallic color. For this reason, it is advisable to replace the traditional wire with another painted white , so that it is difficult to distinguish it from the teeth.

• Porcelain brackets

They have nothing to envy to the previous ones in resistance and their molding also makes them really comfortable for the client. However, unlike sapphire, porcelona is not transparent . Its white color makes it easy to camouflage these braces with the enamel of the teeth – which is why they are also called invisible braces.

However, they stain more easily than those made with glass, so it is necessary to carry out careful hygiene to avoid staining and yellowing throughout the process. In their favor, apart from aesthetics, they count on the fact that porcelain reduces the risk of causing irritation or ulcers inside the mouth.

As with sapphire brackets, it is convenient to change the traditional wire for a white one.

2. Plastic aesthetic braces

Plastic is a material that can be in any color we choose, so using it to make white braces seems like a logical consequence. However, from the Ferrus & Bratos clinic they  warn that, among the aesthetic materials used in orthodontics, this is the one that resists stains the worst and, consequently, the one that stains the most.

In addition, plastic does not transmit stress, given its deformation capacity, with the same efficiency as metal or ceramic, thus reducing the effectiveness of orthodontics. In its favor, however, it can be argued that it is the most economical option when braces are intended to go unnoticed.

3. Lingual or incognito orthodontics

Sooner or later someone had to stand, bearing in mind that the intention is to make the appliance invisible, why it is placed in front of the teeth (vestibular area) instead of behind (lingual area). The answer is the brackets on the inside , placed on the back of the teeth and consequently imperceptible from the outside.

The main advantage is obvious: it goes so unnoticed that this technique has earned the nickname of “incognito orthodontics” . In addition, adds Sanitas , its location facilitates the normal cleaning of the teeth and prevents the appearance of stains when removing the appliance. Its main disadvantage is that its placement requires a highly skilled dentist , which increases the price between 30 and 40%. In addition, the change in location causes irritation to the tongue in some patients and slightly lengthens the treatment.

4. Damon brackets or self-ligating

Better known by the main brand that markets it, Damon , unlike previous models, this type of orthodontics does not aim to increase the aesthetics of the smile, but rather to reduce the treatment time . Bracket-based orthodontic appliances, apart from these braces, need a wire or arch and small elastic bands.

Damon orthodontics, and the other self-ligating orthodontics, replace traditional braces with others capable of fixing the wire by themselves using a small tab, without the need for elastics . In this way, less tension is wasted – and remember that this tension is responsible for moving the teeth – making the system more effective and significantly shortening the treatment.

In addition, it reduces the number of visits necessary for the dentist to readjust the arch and makes it possible to attack a greater number of malocclusion problems without the need to previously extract teeth. Finally, the absence of gums, collaterally, ends up providing an aesthetic advantage, because less food remains on the brackets.

A modern and more technologically advanced solution is Empower Clear permanent self-ligating transparent appliances. The arch of the apparatus is attached to the latches integrated with the lock,  Teeth Aligners which allows for smoother movement of the teeth subjected to pressure and reduces the friction associated with itCosmetic (aesthetic) apparatus is an alternative for patients who prefer a less visible apparatus. Locks in these braces are made of transparent materials (sapphire locks) or in the color of teeth (ceramic locks). 

Their biggest advantage is less visibility. They are strong and durable, but not as much as metal zippers. Since they are more fragile than metal brackets, during treatment, parts of the bracket may break or become detached and then have to be replaced with new ones. For this reason, the size of cosmetic brackets is slightly larger compared to steel alloy brackets. Due to the stronger connection to the tooth, disassembly is more difficult. In the past, the enamel was often damaged during the removal of brackets for this reason, but fortunately this problem was greatly reduced with the introduction of special engineered disassembly tools. However, despite some disadvantages, their aesthetics and invisibility are highly appreciated. Unfortunately, the price of the aesthetic braces is much higher than in the case of traditional brace

Metal Braces

Fixed metal braces with ICONIX brackets, are white gold-colored brackets, resistant to flaking and color abrasion, ligature brackets. Compared to metal locks, ICONIX looks very aesthetic.Aesthetic

Fixed aesthetic appliances (often called cosmetic appliances) are appliances that are less visible on the teeth because their brackets are milky or completely transparent. The biggest advantage of aesthetic appliances is that they adapt to the natural color of the tooth, so you can forget that you have them on your teeth.

Radiance Locks

Radiance locks are made of crystalline clear sapphire, a material of very high resistance and durability. Fixed, aesthetic, sapphire, ligature braces, completely transparent, which makes them harmoniously harmonize with the color of the teeth. Thanks to the use of extremely resistant and solid materials, Radiance sapphire locks do not change through all stages of treatment and do not discolor.Transparent ceramics are used for the production of Clarity ligature brackets – thanks to this the device is discreet and the patient does not feel embarrassed. They are as effective as metal zippers, but have a huge advantage –  Teeth Aligners they are almost invisible. The ceramics used in the production of Clarity brackets are undoubtedly solid and durable, making them extremely resistant to damage.

Self-ligating brackets

An alternative to ligature brackets are self-ligating brackets, which do not have ligatures (rubber bands), and their operation is based on the action of alternative flaps that keep the orthodontic arch in the brackets.Metal self-ligating brackets, compared to classic braces, brackets without ligatures are smaller and gentle on the cheek and tongue. Despite the reduced pressure on the teeth, the self-ligating braces ensure high treatment effectiveness. This is done thanks to the “passive slip” mechanism in the active flaps, which allows the teeth to smoothly and gently move into the correct position. Compared to classic appliances, it also shortens the frequency of follow-up visits. It is a type of orthodontic appliance that has no age restrictions. It can be used by both younger and adults.
 Sapphire locks are made of colorless rock crystal (sapphire monocrystals), thanks to which they adapt to the color of the patient’s tooth, harmonizing with any shade of enamel. This ensures very good aesthetics. They are especially recommended for patients who have very  Teeth Aligners light teeth. Crystal locks show high strength and excellent translucency. The active part of the camera is a metal wire connecting the individual elements. To improve the aesthetics even more, you can use white composite arch, coated metal arches. However, they can only be used for minor defects. The bow is fixed with aesthetic ligatures (white, pearl, transparent). Their disadvantage is that they can discolor quickly in patients who drink large amounts of coffee and tea.