General Dental And Invisalign Care During The Covid-19 Lockdown Period

Advice from your Wickford dental team.

Invisalign invisible bracesWe hope and trust that our patients are staying safe during this difficult time. The lockdown may be a break from work for some, but for others it will pose a lot of challenges, both financially and mentally. For those who are struggling, there are many articles available which may be of help.

From our perspective, we thought it would be useful to use this blog post to discuss how you can keep your teeth and gums healthy during this ‘lockdown’ phase.

We have also included a brief additional note for Cygnet Dental Practice patients who have started an Invisalign course of treatment.

General oral health advice

For many of us, our lives will have been temporarily turned upside down and our routines will have gone out of the window. There is a danger that, along with it, our oral health care routine may have suffered too. If we are used to brushing our teeth before leaving for work in the morning, that particular time slot may no longer exist, at least for now. Brushing our teeth twice a day is the very cornerstone of good oral health and we advise patients to try to find a new regular time to brush your teeth in the morning especially.

Our evening brushing should still be the last thing we do before getting into bed, but our old morning brushing routine may need to take place at a different time, such as before we walk the dog or do our morning exercise. Everybody is different but if you can find a regular slot to brush your teeth, you are more likely to maintain a regular routine.

Take care with what you eat

These are tricky times and we will all cope with it in different ways. Many of us will spend more time watching TV or generally relaxing where we can. With this often comes a desire to snack. Whilst some snacks, such as crisps etc, aren’t especially harmful for our teeth (though not ideal from a general health perspective), we may also find that we are eating more cakes or chocolate. The additional sugar consumed by doing so could result in an increase in cases of tooth decay.

Please bear in mind that our Wickford dental practice is currently closed for all but urgent emergency dental advice (please see https://www.cygnetessexdental.co.uk/#corona ). A mild toothache is unlikely to be treated at this time and may have to wait until we are reopened unfortunately. Even a mild toothache can make this already difficult period seem to last longer than it already does, so making sure that you clean your teeth well and avoiding too many sugary foods will hopefully help you to avoid this.

Invisalign wearers

A number of our patients will have started their Invisalign treatment before we closed the practice. They will be naturally concerned that they won’t be receiving the same one to one monitoring as would be the case under normal circumstances. We will, of course, resume our personal service as soon as we are able but we hope that you will find the following advice useful, and remember that you can still call us if you have any concerns.

If you are running out of aligners, we may be able to provide these as long as no other intervention is required. You can contact us and we will review your situation and advise if this is possible. If this is not possible, we may advise that you wear each tray a little longer than normal. This will ‘stretch’ out the treatment time for each tray and delay the point where you run out of them. When this final stage is reached, we may suggest that you wear the last aligner at night time only to prolong its effect. We will of course evaluate on a case-by-case basis as much as we can.

Remember that if you are wearing your aligners for longer than usual, you will need to take particular care to clean them well as they will become less hygienic if you don’t. Please follow the cleaning advice that you were given when you started the treatment. Again, if you have any questions about how to maintain your trays correctly at this time, please don’t hesitate to call us.

If a tray breaks, this may be replaceable, although delivery times may be longer than usual. We will do all that we can to help you in this situation and advise you to call us for more information.

The Cygnet Dental Practice will be open again as soon as we have received the appropriate advice that it is safe to do so. In the meantime we ask all of our patients to follow the advice from the government. We don’t know how long this ‘lockdown’ period will last but it is there for a reason and will help to slow down and eventually defeat this dangerous virus.

Hopefully, the above advice will help you all to keep your teeth and gums healthy and free from problems. If you do require urgent emergency dental care, you can still call us on 01268 733078 where you will be triaged and advised what to do next.

Until we are able to see you all again, please take care and stay safe!