Any try CrystalBraces?

[BA5]

CrystalBraces are like Invisalign, but they advertise "straighten your teeth at home". You make your own impressions, mail them in, and get a set of trays. I guess it's cheaper. Their faq says if you only need minor movement with 8 trays would cost $998. Moderate movement with 15 trays is $1,698. Complicated movement with 20 trays is $2,198.

I searched this forum, so I guess no one's tried them. I'm considering it.

Are there any other "at-home" or cheap ways to straighten your teeth?

I notice this place has DYI retainers:
http://doityourselfdentalimpressionkit.com/retainers
They have traditional or clear retainers.

Thanks

[bbsadmin]

NOT a good idea. Very risky and will get you into more trouble than you would want.

Take a good look at their website. Very cheaply done with lots of cheap clip art. No dentist would recommend that you do business with this company.

An "at home" or "cheap" way to straighten your teeth? Why in the world would you want to risk your dental health like that? To be quite frank, you would have to be crazy to try anything like that unless you, yourself were a dentist or orthodontist.

[phasesofbeauty]

I heard of them a few months ago. To be honest, I did seriously think about it for I am cheap. But, I don't feel that it is cheap enough to risk my teeth for. If they were charging only a couple of hundred dollars for the moderate program, then I might have considered it. But, they are charging as much as some doctors do for Invisalign Express. So, forget that! What if you get the aligners and they do nothing? They say you get your money back for the trays that you don't have. Some help that is if you have already wasted a lot of money on the ones that you do have before you realize that they are not working. The cheapskate in me was tempted...but in the end I passed and I now have Invisalign Express. If you want to be cheap, get a few orthodontic consults and go with the cheapest one. That is not ideal but it is better than doing the online braces. Or, depending upon how bad your teeth are, you could get by with a product like Simpli5 or MTM (minimal tooth movement)

[BA5]

Thanks for the comments.

I asked them if they can use elastics and they said no. I know I need elastics to fix my problem, so CrystalBraces are not an option for me.

I also agree with phasesofbeauty that I don't think they are cheap enough, considering everything.

[freysmiles]

Unfortunately, dentistry has been successful in commoditizing many of the services we provide. General dentists have been advertising "cheap" orthodontic treatment for years, while sending their own family to an orthodontist of course. Now we have at-home teeth straightening products so things really have reached the lowest common denominator.

What needs to be communicated to the public is what an orthodontist actually does because it is certainly a lot more than just straightening teeth. Your orthodontist is not just pushing teeth around, but modifying the boney and soft tissue structures associated with your teeth, jaws, and face. Thus, how and where teeth are positioned have a huge impact on facial appearance, aging, and, as we are now finding, on sleep disordered breathing and other health related issues as well. In fact, your orthodontist is usually the very first person to make any major treatment decisions about how someone's facial form will develop into adulthood, which is a huge responsibility and requires an immense understanding of how someone's face will develop and age.

I doubt that people who understand the value of orthodontic treatment will be really fooled into putting their care into the hands of companies like this, but there is a small role for these products to play in the market for instance someone who had comprehensive treatment by an orthodontist, lost a retainer, and now has slight shifting that needs to be addressed cheaply.