I though I'd spend a few minutes to write a bit about my lingual experience - I remember reading this forum for hours some months ago when I was deciding what to do with my teeth, and the people here have been such a great help for which I'm really thankfull - so hopefully I can give something back and help other people make their decision too.
I'm 28/male, located in Austria/Europe. I've had classic braces for about three years at the age of 12. Unfortunately it seems that my Ortho messed it up, and a few years later my teeth were terribly crooked once again. I really wanted to have a nice smile, but wearing braces (even ceramics) was not an option for me, as I did not want to spend years with a metal smile once again.
Linguals seemed the way to go, but I was worried about the effects on my speech a lot, so I did a lot of research, reading medical publications, message boards etc., and stumbled upon the new generation of lingual brackets from "Lingualtechnik" in Germany (known as Lingualcare in the US). The individually made gold brackets seemed to be a lot smaller than traditional linguals, addressing most of my concerns.
So I found a doctor certified for using them in my area and made an appointment. I also had the chance to talk a patient wearing them, and did not notice anything wrong with his speech - that was when I made my decision to go this way.
All that was almost half a year ago - I had some examinations done, moulds, and after 3 months of waiting time it finally was bonding-day, where I received my upper linguals.
I was able to talk almost normally after getting of the chair, but there were some sounds that did make problems, and my tongue took about three days to adjust to the brackets and learn which new positions to use for those specific sounds. After a week, my speech was 95% back to normal.
I also need to mention that I was the only one "hearing" a difference, nobody I talked to (friends, family, girlfriend) noticed anything about my speech, with or without being aware of my brackets.
The wire which I initially got was a "Flexisoft", not putting too much pressure on the teeth, so I did not have any pain at all, but of course eating was a lot different. My back teeth don't meet anymore, and it takes me about 70% longer to finish my meals than before.
The worst experience so far was the extraction of two upper teeth, and the 1.5 weeks after that, where I was not able to eat anything but soups, porridge and pudding.
That was 2 weeks ago, and today I had my first checkup with my ortho. He said that now that he has got enough room to work with the movement will finally start, I received a stronger wire ("16-22"), some elastic rubber rings and some other weird stuff, and I'm already beginning to notice the pressure.
In about two months I will get my lower linguals and will need to have one lower tooth extracted (ouch). I will let you know about the progress I make
For cost comparison, I'm paying 6800 Euros for a three year treatment with a permanent lingual retainer afterwards. Traditional braces would have been around 5000 Euros in my area.
All in all, I'm soooooooooo happy with my new linguals - nobody is noticing anything, and still when I smile I know that with every second my teeth are moving a fraction of a millimeter into the right position.
So in short: go lingual!!!
