Speech

[ChewyBacca]

Hi

I am considering lingual or ceramic options. Very concerned about lingual impacting my speech.

What's the general consensus? Is speech normally affected for the whole duration of wearing lingual braces, or is this only a temporary thing?

[chrislee]

You will probably have a speech problem through the entire process. however, it will not sound as bad as you get used to it. the first couple of days makes you sound like a 3 year old, but it should be over in a couple of days or so.

[winwired]

Everyone will have had/is having a different experience.

Mine is that speech is terrible with linguals. I'm now in my 19th month, and bar a few weeks early on when I thought things were getting back to normal with my speech, it really has been awful. If I knew at the beginning what I know now (about the speech impact) then I would never have had linguals fitted. But unfortunately the ortho didn't really warn me (they say things like "some people experience speech difficulties for a few days but typically find that they overcome these within a few weeks")... in my case my speech has been a real handicap, and talking was a very important part of my job before (I have now had to give up work, although not entirely because of the braces, but my inability to articulate certainly did not help).

Most people have a better experience but I would say that if speech is really important to you then be very careful and err on the side of caution. Unfortunately there is no way of assessing in advance whether you will be one of the lucky or unlucky ones.

[ChewyBacca]

Thanks for the replies.

So sorry to hear of your problems winwired. I have decided to go for ceramics, as I just cannot risk not being able to talk properly for a year plus.

[iob]

Hey Chewy - I'm probably replying too late, as it sounds like you've made the call to go with ceramics. You probably can't go wrong either way. However, if your only concern about the linguals is a long-term speech issue, have you thought about going forward with linguals, with the assumption that you'll adapt like most in a reasonable amount of time (however you define that), and if it's not working for you, then switch over to ceramics at that point. This was something that I discussed with my ortho, and they were willing to switch/finish with ceramics if needed, and would not charge additional. The primary downside is that you'd still be paying at the lingual rate, and if you wind up switching to ceramic it would have been less expensive - in hindsight - to have just gone that route from the beginning. Good luck with whatever course you choose!

[latebracefaceINCOG]

I am 3 days into a full set of upper and lower Incognito linguals, and the speech is crappiest towards end of day and i am still not used to "s" sounds. I figured out i have a wire that is sharp on one side that irritated my tongue a little, but i just put wax on it and it is perfect....no cuts on the tongue like others described - so far. I am going to get the Ortho to fix it next week, but for now the wax is perfect.