Dina said, “I wanted to revise my smile to ensure it was as media-fit as I am race fit. However, it isn’t acceptable to wear braces when you are in the public eye, so I wanted to have Invisalign treatment to realign my teeth – incognito! I wore them for 20 hours a day - I trained in them, I ran in them, I raced in them.
“I am a naturally positive person and am lucky that I do a job that I love, so I don’t have a great number of worries. As an athlete I am keen to take ownership of any concerns and address them directly if possible. For example, I had noticed I would like straighter teeth, so I went to speak with an orthodontist. We agreed that Invisalign treatment to straighten my teeth would not only improve my smile, but just as importantly would not affect my training.
“I told everyone I was having treatment, but they stared at my teeth and said, ‘where are your braces?’ I told them I am wearing my aligners and they peered at me really closely to see if they could see anything.
“It was easy to train wearing my aligners; I had no issues at all with them in. To start with I changed them every two weeks, but because I had had them in for 20 hours a day Raman Aulakh, my orthodontist, advised me to change them for the next set every week, which sped up my treatment considerably.”
Dina’s motivation for her Invisalign treatment was to correct an open bite. She lives life in close up and was conscious that TV and social media means that her appearance is scrutinised as much as her results. However, she needed to find a way to treat her teeth which didn’t impede her work performance. Dina is a smiler too; she lights up a room when she enters, and she felt self-conscious about the way her teeth looked in interviews and in the myriad of images of her posted on social media. However, it was imperative to have a way to correct her smile, which in no way affected her sprinting performance. She wore her aligners all the time – during training and racing, and throughout her media commitments - and raced to the finish line without impediment as a result of her compliance.
For more information please visit www.invisalign.co.uk