Plenty of children get braces when they're young, and parents do it with the hopes that their children will have straight, even teeth for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, this sometimes isn't the case. If you had braces when you were little and grind your teeth today, the hard work you went through to get your perfect smile may be gradually slipping away.

Grinding Damages Teeth

As you probably know, grinding your teeth isn't good for them. Teeth are strong, and when they rub against each other, they gradually start to wear each other down. This means that your upper and lower teeth will slowly lose parts of their outer shell of enamel. Without help, they may become misshapen, which can detract from the way that your smile looks even if your teeth are still straight at the time.

Grinding Moves Teeth

Unfortunately, teeth that undergo frequent grinding often don't stay straight.

When teeth are even with each other and properly spaced, eating normally doesn't cause teeth to become misaligned. This is because each tooth handles a bit of the chewing pressure, and distributes the energy evenly. However, with tooth grinding, you may only be putting pressure on some teeth, and those teeth may no longer be even with one another due to being worn down by grinding.

When this happens, teeth can gradually begin to shift as you grind them. If you had to wear a retainer as a kid, think of it as like the opposite of that. For eight or so hours per night, you're putting pressure on your teeth that is pushing them out of their alignment instead of holding them in as a retainer would.

Two-In-One Relief

If you're going through this issue, you don't have to give up on the smile you worked so far for as a kid. In fact, you can solve the problem with one thing: invisible braces, also known as Invisalign.

Invisible braces aren't remotely like standard braces. They're like thin clear retainers that can be put on and taken off at will, allowing you to eat and clean your teeth normally.

Invisible braces can serve two important purposes here. The first is that if your teeth are already slipping out of alignment, the invisible braces can put them back where they belong quickly and easily.

Secondly, invisible braces cover the entire tooth just like a grinding guard. This will prevent you from causing further harm to your teeth and will stop you from pushing them out of alignment again once your treatment is completed.

Having your teeth get crooked or worse after having braces as a child is unfortunately common, but that doesn't mean that you have to put up with it. Talk to a dentist and get the process started to get your first pair of invisible braces.