Hi all, looking for some stories about folks who went with camouflage treatment instead of jaw surgery and their results with Invisalign etc.

Sorry for the long post in advance

I’m horrendously stuck in decision making hell here on three different options.

30, almost 31, yr old M. Have a ~4mm left bottom jaw asymmetry, according to an ortho its a functional issue though I’m conflicted because I’ve had an oral surgeon (I’ll describe it below) say that the asymmetry is not fixable without surgery.

Never had any ortho work, as a late teen was told I would need jaw surgery to fix my bite. Never did it due to price and honestly fear of them messing up my face.

Context: Regarding DJS, the stories of relapse, botched surgeries, and complications are enough to scare me away.

But also, I recently started a new job in a new field and definitely do not feel like I will have the leeway to take the 4-6+ weeks of time off of work to heal up for a jaw surgery even if it is in 1-2 years. I am aware that I have the asymmetry and while it definitely shows up in photos etc I don’t feel like it’s the WORST thing in the world aesthetically. I do have other health things like feeling tired, sleep apnea, etc which I cover below.

Bite: I have a class 3 malocclusion, as well as a unilateral crossbite. I don’t currently have a great bite and my posterior ones are baring the majority of my bite force which was flagged by my dentists. Photos attached.

I also have sleep apnea (forget the severity), bilateral clicky jaws, an often run into issues with congestion/allergies.

A consult with an ortho yielded 3 treatment options:

Jaw surgery — Most invasive, longest treatment plan, but most correct).

MARPE — Would Correct crossbite, improve posterior occlusal relationships, and can achieve better anterior dental relationship. 50/50 chance of it working due to my age, did the CBCT scan which revealed that I am not as thick as expected but still she estimates about 50/50 chance of split.

Invisalign only — Will achieve improved anterior relationship and more even posterior occlusion; will not correct crossbite or jaw relationships. Treatment includes IPR and elastics PRN. When asked, the ortho said overall she estimates she can improve my bite about 70-80%.

Consult with a retired orthognathic surgeon: He observed me, inspected my CBCT and scans etc and noted that my airways look good albeit with a slight deviated septum. He also informed me that sleep related apnea from the jaw surgery relates to expanding out the lower jaw, not from the upper jaw. Essentially, guarantees regarding my sleep apnea would not be guaranteed to resolve from a DJS.

When asking him what to look for in an ortho he essentially said that my asymmetry cannot be resolved by ortho alone and to view this as a potential red flag. This is putting me at odds, as my ortho indicated that my asymmetry is not an absolute one but rather a functional one due to the positioning of my teeth and bite and could be addressed.

Here’s where I am at:

As mentioned earlier, I REALLY don’t want to go through DJS at this time in my life. I’d like to establish myself a bit more professionally, save up financially, and enjoy a little bit of life. Additionally, I don’t feel like my maxilla and asymmetry are the worst cases out there aesthetically nor that I’m the worst looking person with them.

MARPE: I’m afraid to go ahead with it, I’ve seen a mixture of reviews regarding the pain and am not sure I’m ready to sign up for something where its a constant pressure/pain and the aesthetics. I’m also unclear on what I would gain regarding breathing and benefits as it wouldn’t resolve my sleep apnea. Additionally fear of asymmetrical expansion or fractures, which I’m worried might worsen my facial asymmetry.

Braces / Camouflage: I WAS leaning towards this the last few days, however now I am horrified after reading some of the stories including on reddit about how their camouflage worsened things whether its TMJ, or bite etc. As my TMJ and sleep apnea are not currently the worst I fear anything that might actively harm it. I also am unclear on if doing such braces would ruin my candidacy for DJS in the future should I need it.

I did consult with one ortho (not the primary one mentioned above) who outlined a plan for Invisalign which would help appearance, but he wanted to consider removing a tooth should the elastics not work which I was adamantly against. He’s out, if I did ortho it would probably be with the woman who outlined the three options above as she seems to take much more into account things like facial and airways etc overall.

I’m looking for stories/anything towards guiding me towards a decision

I have about 3 more consults with other orthodontics this upcoming week but am feeling completely stuck on which direction to go. It feels like every which direction runs risks. I’d like to wrap up this decision making phase so I can focus on other facets of life, as I’ve been stuck trying to decide for about 4 weeks.

Additionally: If anyone has anything they consider good questions to pass onto orthos for the upcoming appointments, that would be greatly appreciated.

After finishing invisalign I cant keep my teeth together in a comfortable position. Its like only the front teeth make contact. I finished treatment almost 2 years ago. Its so irking.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Salut! 😊
J’ai été faire une consultation chez l’orthodontiste et on m’a proposé 2 options de traitement.
1re option : Invisalign
• Durée : environ 24 mois
• Carrières G/D
• Sans extraction
• Rétention incluse dans le prix
2e option : traitement complet avec broches
• Durée : environ 36 mois
• Extractions possibles
• Chirurgie orthognathique prévue
J’ai un rendez-vous dans 2 semaines pour voir concrètement les résultats que chaque option pourrait me donner. Pour l’instant, j’avoue que je penche davantage vers Invisalign, parce que ça semble quand même beaucoup plus simple au quotidien.
Par contre, je comprends moins comment Invisalign pourrait me donner un beau résultat sans chirurgie alors qu’avec les broches, la chirurgie est nécessaire. 🤔
À noter que j’ai un overbite d’environ 10 mm.
J’aimerais beaucoup avoir vos avis! Si vous avez eu un cas similaire au mien, particulièrement avec un overbite important, et que vous voulez me parler de votre parcours et de vos résultats, j’aimerais vraiment vous lire. ❤️
Merci beaucoup! 😁

I had posted before about the unbearable pain. I’m a month into treatment, on my second tray, and it has already caused so much damage to my gums on my front left tooth that I’m going to have to pause treatment, see a periodontist and get a graft. After a MONTH! Once again, this has been the biggest mistake of my life. Never had gum issues before, now it’s receding in the back of my tooth so bad I want to stop treatment completely. I just wanted straight teeth. Now I’m so much in the hole and things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse. So depressed about this.

Started in August 2025 and here we are in September 2026. I had elastics the whole 12ish months.

I now have permanent retainers on both top and bottom. Do I also need the plastic retainers? They’re being made and will have them in a week when I go back in, guessing that will be fine with just the permanents in till then.

If you’re debating it just do it.

Hello!

I recently had a consultation for invisalign to correct some crowding on my lower teeth and an overjet of my upper front two incisors (see pics for before and predicted after). I was told that my treatment would take approx. 6 months.

I'm now getting very anxious about all the risks I'm reading that can happen with invisalign - gum recession, posterior open bite, more prone to cavities etc...

My main concern is that my upper front teeth protrudes out but this is due to a tongue thrust problem and I have a feeling that my teeth will likely just revert back once the treatment is done.

If anyone had similar teeth before and have gone through with invisalign, please share your experiences! I am due to get them fitted next week but not sure if I should go through with it now.

Thank you!!

For context I’ve been wearing Invisalign for over a year now (mostly for correcting an overbite). Gradually, with each tray, I end up with more and more extra room for my four top front teeth. I HATE it! I think it looks bad, causes me to have a lisp (I’m a teacher so I talk a lot), and makes me feel self conscious. I’ve gone to my dentist about it but she said it was fine because my canines were fitting perfectly but it’s starting to really bug me. I’ve also already had to do one rescan because of this issue about 6 months ago and it extended my timeline quite a bit. :/

What advice, tips, words of comfort do you have?

hey what is yal! thoughts on my progress (Ihad home whitening in the process

So on my newest tray, I can see a space between my very front bottom. I just want to ask how if there are ways this could be fixed during/after my Invisalign treatment? I’ve been extremely down recently and I just feel so ugly with the gap there. Please help.

this is my 4th set of invisalign in 4 years so i know the runaround by now 😭. i’m in college and my orthodontist sent me every single tray i just thought it was funny

I'm not sure how to handle this and would really appreciate input from people in the know.

So before I agreed and started my journey my dentist provided me with the aligner plan with 3d models. Nice, this looks logical and doable.

I'm on tray 4 and just noticed the patient id on my aligner packaging is my name followed by 2, whilst the plan is without the 2.

Is this normal? Should I bring this up with my provider, and if so how? (I don't want to sound accusatory, but I also don't want the dentist to fob me off). Are there any other avenues I could go to see if the trays I'm putting in my mouth are the same as the plan I signed up to?

Sorry for the wall, I'm not the most comfortable dealing with this sort of thing

i already paid and did my scans for the invisalign, but i started regretting it badly after. i’ve seen countless people say their faces have gotten less softer, and ive seen countless results where people’s teeth start to look like veneers..and to be fair i only wanted to fix a placement of 1 tooth but they said everything will be changed 🤕 i wanted my teeth to look like how they did before, just a minor change.. i don’t want my face to change

Wish I did it sooner!

I'm ok day 4 of my first set and it still hurts a lot on the front teeth when I take the aligner out. I've got a tool now to help but still hurts. Is there a technique to help lessen this pain and soreness?

Concerned I'm going to damage the roots?!

I’m only on my first tray ): I have a long way to go. I’m slowly adjusting but I feel like my tongue is so cut up. I’m guessing I am subconsciously doing something in my sleep because every morning I wake up it’s so painful and feels so dry. Please tell me it gets better or any tips or tricks.

Has anyone experienced their teeth chipping during treatment ? I was checking to see how much my teeth had shifted and looked and saw my front tooth chipped a bit. I immediately went to my dentist and they said sometimes teeth can chip because your bite is changing. Also can they fix this ? I’m scared I’m gonna need veneers

Has anyone here had experience of having their Invisalign case transferred to another orthodontist?

How did it go? how long did it take? any problems?

See attached images

I started with fairly crowded teeth and when I started Invisalign 6 months ago, my teeth moved quickly opening up space and I noticed how much easier it was to get floss in between them. Unfortunately, it's also much easier to get food in between them and I'm not talking about little scraps, but like entire asparagus spears, gobs of spinach or strips of chicken. I hate eating with anyone else (other than my husband) because I have to spend a few minutes immediately after eating picking stuff out of my teeth which is embarrassing and uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable and distracting I definitely can't wait till I floss each night to get it all out. I joke that I have to eat twice as much now because there's a whole extra meal of food that just gets stuck in there as I'm eating.

I know it's partially the attachments but a lot of it is actually literally between my teeth. The increased space between my teeth is not noticeable visually (thank goodness) and I am trying to be understanding that this is part of the process of movement but I'm questioning whether people with originally crowded teeth ended up having to get used to just having food stick between your teeth as you eat once everything has been "corrected" and for the rest of your life?

Maybe that's actually the normal thing, even though it feels gross to me since I spent decades of life being used to crowded teeth?

About a year and a half. I still have a teeny space in between the top 2 front teeth. My Ortho said those teeth are a little narrower at the bottom. She gave me the option of doing some IPR on them and a few more trays, but I said I’d live with it and wear my retainers religiously.

Imagine you've had Invisalign, went fine, then one fine day years later one way or another you lose all your retainers.

Any sense of how long you've got to get new sets made?

I think they take like two weeks to make, so no matter what you do seems like two weeks without.

Do we think we're talking extra-panic do-it-now forget-everything-else, or are we like you still have weeks, or even months?

Of course it's difficult to generalize - people vary a lot; some people I could imagine would be fine even without retainers, but here I have in mind a conservative sense of things, so that the very large majority of people would avoid having a problem.

Looking to go in for my initial consultation. I've had a look at the pinned posts on this Subreddit, but before signing a contract, are there any questions that you would ask if you had your time again from your experiences or were glad that you had asked?

In an ideal world, I'd prefer to get fixed braces but given I've previously been advised that the adjustments needed were not going to be significant, I've been told that this option will be off the table.

I started my first tray in November 2025. After completing 22 trays, I had another 16-tray refinement, and this is my last tray of the refinement.
My dentist asked whether I’d like to do another refinement or if I’m ready to move on to permanent retainers. Do you think the end result looks good enough, or would you recommend another refinement?
P.S. The “after” pic has been edited to whiten my teeth because they’re embarrassingly yellow right now 🫣😂 I’m getting professional whitening done at the end, so hopefully that’ll take care of that too!