Teeth crooked again after braces, this is why

Your teeth do not stand still. Your jaw changes over the years. The bone and the gums around it change along, and your teeth slowly shift with them.

That also happens to people who never had braces. They simply have no reference point. You still know exactly what your teeth looked like at sixteen, so you see the difference.

On top of that, after a treatment teeth keep a tendency for some time to pull back to their old position. The fibres around your tooth roots have to get used to the new position and that takes time. If that position is not held during that period, the old situation slowly wins it back.

Almost nobody deliberately stops using their retainer. The wire behind your front teeth came loose somewhere and you only noticed much later. The plate broke and you never had it replaced. Or it disappeared into a drawer during a move and never came out again.

From that moment there was nothing holding the new position. Not because you were careless, but because back then the retainer often felt like a tail end of the treatment instead of a part of it.

So do not be ashamed of it. It is one of the questions adults ask most often: how can it be crooked again when I wore my braces exactly as I was told?

It usually starts at the bottom. In your lower front teeth the space is tightest, so a small shift shows up there straight away as a tooth turning forwards or backwards.

At the top it takes longer to stand out, but it happens there just as much. In a photo from the side you see it sooner than in the mirror. For many people that is exactly the moment it starts to nag.

Usually not. That is the part that surprises people.

Your teeth have already been moved in the right direction before. What remains now is in many cases a more limited correction than the whole treatment back then. A few teeth that have turned back, not a set of teeth that has to start over.

What exactly is needed in your case can only be said once your teeth have been looked at. That differs per person and nobody can estimate it from a distance. What does apply to everyone: this time you are not starting from zero. How such a trajectory runs later in life you can read on the page about braces as an adult.

Different from when you were fifteen. A correction later in life often uses clear aligners, a series of trays you put in and take out yourself and that hardly stands out in a conversation.

You wear them about 22 hours a day and take them out for eating and brushing. For your work that means little. Meetings, presentations, being photographed, all of that simply carries on.

Your teeth are scanned instead of moulded, so you do not have to reckon with impression paste in your mouth. Based on that scan you see beforehand how the position would change, so you know what you are saying yes to before you begin.

By treating retention from the start as part of the plan and not as something you get thrown in afterwards.

In practice that is a fixed wire on the back of your front teeth, a removable night retainer, or both. Which variant suits your situation you hear beforehand.

With a removable retainer you wear it most in the beginning, and after that it moves mainly to the nights. Reckon on a longer period, because your teeth need that time to settle.

Have it looked at straight away if something comes loose or breaks along the way, instead of waiting. The sooner you catch it, the smaller the difference that has to be undone.

If you recognise yourself in this, the first step is simple. Have someone take a look. You will hear what has changed since your teenage braces, whether that can be tackled with clear aligners, and what is needed to hold it in place this time.

You can come and meet us with no strings attached and ask all your questions, including how it could come to this. There is no blame in it. You are in good company.