We get lots of questions in the comments section. We will answer some of these questions. Hopefully, give you some more insights into some of the more common questions we get about orthodontics. 

Let’s go ahead and jump in here: how much do your teeth move with each tray? 

This is talking about Invisalign. For those who aren’t familiar with Invisalign, you’ll have a series of trays or aligners and when you wear a tray, it’s going to nudge your tooth a little bit. Each tray is programmed to move your teeth slightly. Each one might be programmed to have a certain number of days per aligner. This is really going to depend on how

your doctor sets it up. If you’re using Invisalign, most doctors will prescribe it one tray per week and that’s generally programmed in to have about a half a millimeter of tooth movement in a month and it’s going to be a quarter of that. If you’re trying to move a tooth, it’ll take about two months to get a full millimeter and each tray depending on how they divided that up will be a fraction of that. In some cases, our office will actually slow down the tooth movement and have a patient wear each tray for one to two days. In those cases, it’s only a small fraction of a millimeter that we’re really moving a tooth. It really depends. If you wanted to calculate it, you can see how long you’re wearing each one of your trays. If it’s one week each then you know each tray is moving your tooth about a quarter of a millimeter. If it’s more or less than that, it’s going to be a different fraction.

Hopefully, that helps. This is all kind of pre-programmed on the computer. When the doctor sets up the case, they know how much your teeth are going to move. The ai and the software that’s behind Invisalign or whatever system you’re using. They try to prevent it. They put a lot of safety measures in place to make sure we’re moving teeth at a healthy pace that’s within the biological limits and it’s not going to move the teeth too fast or have too much pressure.