If you’re considering Invisalign treatment, then you may be about to join almost 12 million people who have already taken this step towards a better smile. You may also be one of the 28 million adults in the US who currently smoke.
Naturally, you may have one pressing question when pairing these two realities – ‘Can I smoke with Invisalign?’. Here at Dunegan & Cole Orthodontics, we have experience overseeing Invisalign treatments for people from all walks of life, including those who smoke and vape. In this article, we’ll provide everything you need to know about smoking with Invisalign.
Smoke and Invisalign: What You Need to Know
Can you smoke with Invisalign? The simple answer is no, at least not when your clear aligners are in place. As well as staining your aligners, smoking can lead to risks including gum disease. Ideally, you should take steps to stop smoking before you undergo Invisalign treatment. But does that mean Invisalign is no longer an option if you do continue smoking? Not necessarily.
When you begin treatment, our experts will advise you on the importance of wearing your aligners for at least 22 hours daily to ensure results. This provides you with two hours during which you can remove your aligners for meals. Light smokers who smoke during these removal windows and brush their teeth before replacing clear aligners may still enjoy notable straightening benefits.
Heavy smokers should generally avoid this as they may end up taking their aligners out too often and delaying treatment or preventing results. In this instance, it’s always best to speak with our team to decide on the best course of action.
The Impact and Risks of Smoking with Clear Aligners
Many adults opt for Invisalign because of the near invisibility of clear aligners. Unfortunately, the risk of staining is one of the main issues when smoking with Invisalign and can give your teeth a yellow appearance. Smoking with Invisalign can also result in prolonged treatment times, especially if heavy smokers exceed the recommended two hours of removal time each day, or if heat damage permanently misshapes plastic clear aligners.
Smoking with clear aligners also poses potential dental health risks for the wearer, which most notably include –
- Tooth decay: Smoking while undergoing Invisalign treatment can increase your risks of issues including tooth decay and even gum disease if nicotine gets caught between your teeth and the plate of your clear aligners.
- Root resorption: Ordinarily, your bone breaks down to move your teeth during Invisalign treatment but then rebuilds itself in a straightened position. Smokers are at increased risk from a rare complication known as root resorption where, instead of adjusting the bone, the body breaks down a tooth’s root to move it. Tooth loss can follow.
How Smoking Affects the Effectiveness of Invisalign
Regularly smoking with Invisalign can affect the effectiveness of your treatment in a variety of ways. Most notably, the need to remove your aligners before smoking can prevent you from wearing them for the required 22 hours each day and thus delay results. The heat from smoking habits, especially weed and vaping, can also distort and permanently damage Invisalign aligners in some cases. It’s also worth noting that, in rare cases, smoking can result in an oral environment where you may experience comfort or fit issues with your clear aligner.
Can You Smoke Weed with Clear Aligners?
Most advice about smoking with clear aligners revolves around cigarettes, but can you smoke weed with Invisalign? Again, this isn’t advised. For one thing, many people will smoke tobacco at the same time as weed, and this opens them to all of the risks discussed. People who smoke weed are also more likely to remove their aligners for longer periods while they smoke, which could prevent them from seeing an improvement after treatment.
Can You Vape with Clear Aligners?
Over 9 million people now smoke vapes which, while initially marketed as a way to stop smoking, have since been found to pose health risks of their own. If you’re wondering, can you smoke vape with Invisalign, the answer is largely the same as with cigarettes. Vaping can also cause discoloration to clear aligners. People who vape also tend to spend longer smoking at any time, meaning that vaping poses an especially prevalent risk of exceeding daily Invisalign removal windows of just two hours.
Tips for Avoiding Smoking-Related Issues with Invisalign
It’s important to avoid smoking-related issues with Invisalign with the help of advice that includes –
Stop Smoking
The best way to avoid smoking-related issues with Invisalign is to stop smoking. This is the only way to ensure that you don’t leave your clear aligners out for longer than you should. It’s also a great way to ensure healthier, stain-free straight teeth after treatment.
Maintain Oral Hygiene
Improved oral hygiene is vital during any Invisalign treatment, but is especially important if you’re a smoker. As well as removing your clear aligners to smoke, you should brush your teeth well after smoking or vaping. You should also floss regularly to avoid potential issues like gum disease, tooth decay, and root resorption.
Keep Your Clear Aligners Clean
It’s important to keep your aligners clean to avoid staining and also ensure dental hygiene. Because Invisalign aligners are made of clear plastic, you shouldn’t clean them with hot water or abrasive methods. Instead, clean them using tepid water and an Invisalign cleaning product like Retainer Brite, which our experts can advise you on.
Remove Your Aligners
If you need to smoke, it’s always best to remove your aligners, as long as doing so doesn’t mean wearing them for less than the required 22 hours a day. For heavy smokers, this may mean limiting the amount you smoke to fit within meal periods where aligners are already removed.
Speak with Our Experienced Professionals
As Blue Diamond Plus Invisalign providers, we can confidently say that we treat more Invisalign patients here at Dunegan & Cole Orthodontics than any other provider in the area. This means we’re used to providing treatment for a wide range of individuals, including smokers. Book a free consultation with our team today to find out everything you could hope to know about safely smoking with Invisalign.
