People usually postpone getting dental braces for practical reasons rather than for vanity. The teeth are crowded, and the dentist has already explained why treatment is reasonable, when suddenly this thought occurs: I see patients every week and have video calls all day, so how is this situation going to work?
That concern is reasonable and should be given a direct answer rather than just being offered reassurance. A large proportion of adults beginning orthodontic treatment are employed, and almost all of them continue to work as normal. The following points deal with what actually happens at the clinic, what settles down quickly, and what you can take into account.
The hardest phase is in the first week.
Imagine making a phone call on a Monday morning three days after the brackets were published, experiencing a pain in your teeth that is strange and dull, having your tongue constantly find the wire, and being about to talk for forty minutes to people who had not seen you for two weeks.
What typically occurs is a letdown. You make the call, you talk, and then no one says anything. Two of your colleagues notice but remain silent, since adults usually don’t comment on each other’s teeth. By Wednesday, you had gone for hours without thinking about it.
Most of the concerns people have about wearing dental braces at work occur early on. The discomfort reaches its height within the first three or four days, cheek irritation decreases as the soft tissues become tougher, and feelings of self-consciousness disappear when you realise that everyone else is paying very little attention.
Speech, and how quickly it settles
A few patients detect a slight alteration in the sounds produced by the tongue touching the upper palate, and sibilant sounds may have a mild lisp for the first few days after dental braces.
You are more likely to notice the effect than your audience is, since you pick up your own voice both through the air and through your jaw. Reading out loud every evening for ten minutes greatly accelerates the adjustment process. A voice recording provides a much more accurate account than your own subjective impression, and most people are surprised at how normal it sounds when played back.
By the time they reach their second week, most patients are once again carrying out their normal routine. Braces that are placed behind the teeth usually have a more noticeable effect on a person’s speech at first, and this is a genuine compromise that should be discussed with your dentist rather than a reason for abandoning them.
What a camera actually shows
Video calls cause a great deal of detail to be lost. When you’re using a laptop camera which is positioned below eye level, and there’s a window behind you, your mouth appears as a small dark patch on someone else’s screen. Ceramic brackets in particular become almost invisible at that resolution.
If you are still self-conscious, make three adjustments. Lift the laptop so that the lens is at eye level, since this makes everyone appear better on camera. Position your main light source in front of you, not behind you. Afterwards, stop worrying about it because a presenter who is distracted is much more obvious than a wire.
Business lunches and client dinners
The real difficulty lies in the food rather than in its appearance. Certain foods are really difficult to handle with forks: corn on the cob, whole apples, crusty bread, sticky desserts, and all those that require a firm bite to be taken with the front teeth.
It is better to plan rather than completely avoid such situations. If you order food that comes already cut into pieces, you eliminate most of the difficulty. Grilled fish, rice dishes, softer kinds of meat and the majority of the items found on a Dubai business lunch menu are not a problem in the least. Make sure you have interdental brushes in your pocket so that you can carry out a quick thirty-second check afterwards, and omit the salad leaves which are well known for getting stuck in obvious spots before the meal is presented.
The elastic rings which hold the wire become stained by coffee and karak, but since the rings are replaced at each visit any staining is only temporary.
The kit that solves most office problems
The small pouch can cope with almost all the items that arise during working hours and should include a travel toothbrush, interdental brushes, orthodontic wax, a compact mirror, extra elastics in case you wear them, and lip balm, as the corners of your mouth tend to be drier in the first week.
Wax should be highlighted in particular. If you place a piece the size of a pea onto a bracket which has begun to rub, you will get instant relief and the wax will remain in place until your next visit. However, do not keep it in a hot car since it softens rapidly in the summer heat of the UAE and ends up becoming a sticky mess inside the bag.
Choosing an appliance when you meet clients daily
It is reasonable to take appearance into account when your face is involved in your line of work, and you should not feel uncomfortable about raising this point.
Metal brackets are by far the most versatile when it comes to complicated cases. Ceramic brackets match the colour of the tooth and are almost invisible when viewed from a tabletop. With lingual braces, the front is completely free of the brackets, and this results in a longer period of speech adjustment. Clear aligners can be taken out for a formal occasion or for a photograph, on the condition that you wear them for the rest of the time. The choice you make will determine which of these are viable alternatives. When a dentist explains why a particular option is not appropriate for your situation, he or she is doing just the right thing, and it’s sensible to have that discussion as early as possible. People who are comparing braces in Dubai will discover that all of these options are on offer there, so the factor that should guide their decision should be their clinical situation rather than availability.
Fitting appointments around a working week
The adjustments take only a short time, typically between twenty and thirty minutes, and occur several weeks apart. If you book the first slot in the morning or a late afternoon appointment, you’ll keep the disruption to a minimum. For anyone who works standard office hours, being available at the weekend makes all the difference, and with clinics open every day of the week most of the treatment course can be completed without having to attend a single meeting. If the first fitting is scheduled for a Thursday evening, then you will have the quietest days of the week in which to get settled before seeing patients again.
That’s one more practical thing to remember. Brackets tend to come loose at the most inconvenient times. Make sure you store your clinic’s telephone number in your phone, as in most cases the problems are minor and it’s possible to wait a day or two until a brief repair visit can be arranged. In the meantime, the wax will cover any sharp edges, which is generally sufficient to enable you to carry out the meeting comfortably.
The confidence question nobody asks out loud
Under the practical worries there is another question: shall people regard me with less seriousness?
Experience shows a clear no. When colleagues and clients see the appliance, they only glance at it before going back to what you are saying. A number of adults find that it is enough to casually mention it once during the first meeting in order to eliminate any remaining discomfort for good, while others say nothing and do not notice any difference in the way they are treated.
Conclusion
The majority of professionals regard the first two weeks as a period of adjustment, the subsequent months as background noise, and the final outcome as one that they regret not having begun many years earlier. Working while undergoing orthodontic treatment causes no problems at all, a point which should be kept in mind each time the calendar makes every possible start date seem impossible.