yee-owwch
So a note to all of you interested in Invisalign. Do NOT skip the essential step of taking something for the pain BEFORE you put a new set of trays in at bedtime.
I woke up this morning with a symphony of hell in my mouth. My alarm rang and the first thing I noticed was how much my teeth hurt. The evening before, I decided not to take advil before I put in my new trays as a test.
So after eating a quick bit of leftovers last night, I popped my new trays in, turned down the heat, and curled up under the blankets with the cats. My teeth were aching a bit, but nothing tremendous. Until this morning.
Ouch I say. Ouch.
I saw a Frontline (or maybe it was POV or Independent Lens) once about the science of surgery and the whole scheme by insurance companies to get you out of the hospital as quickly as possible after you’ve been cut open. Researchers found that pain management for large incisions can be managed more effectively if you use anesthetic injections on the incision, even while the patient is already asleep.
The theory was, in brief, if you never inflicted pain on the pain receptors because you numbed them before you cut, as the incision site healed, the pain receptors would report less pain than if you just knocked the patient out and cut them open. It has something to do with how cellular trauma opens more pain channels, or makes the pain receptors more likely to fire after they’ve been traumatized. Really fascinating stuff (yes, I’m a total geek).
Current procedures, or at least when I saw the documentary (which was a few years ago), usually involved putting the patient to sleep, but didn’t take the added step of using local anesthetics at the incision site. According to the insurance companies, who pay for it all, why use a local when the patient isn’t going to feel it anyway?
The researchers indeed found that local anesthetics did help, and thus the patients recovered faster, using far less pain medication and experiencing quicker incision healing times.
I suppose that was a long way of explaining why, before you put your trays in, you should take something for the pain. It seems to me, by the same theory as the incision example I mentioned, if the pain receptors in your gums are less stressed while the initial movements are happening during that first night of a new tray, by the time the medication wears off, they won’t hurt as much.
I seem to have proved it with my mouth.
Truth be told, it isn’t THAT painful. It’s more of an ache. But for the next set of trays (set five) I move to, I will take something before bed. For set six, I think I’ll repeat the experiment to see what happens.