The importance of a daytime appliance

Wearing Reviv to sleep is not enough... you need some support during the day.

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This is an area where I get questioned a lot and so I figured i’d put down my thoughts in detail.

The questions are ones like:

• How important is it to wear my Reviv during the day?

• How long should I wear it during the day?

• What are my options if I can’t really wear it during the day much?

• etc.

Let me address this in today’s post.

Why it’s important to wear an appliance during the day?

When you wear your Reviv at night it is stretching the soft tissue and improving your curve of spee a bit. You are developing a small posterior open bite most likely.

During the day if you aren’t wearing your Reviv at all than things are most likely reverting back to some extent. Especially when you’re first beginning your journey.

Many folks mention things like…. my bite was changed when I woke up but then it reverted back after a little while.

The reason for this ‘reverting back’ is that the soft tissue is going back to where it was and I generally think that is most likely a bad thing. ie. you want to try to avoid this so that you progress faster.

The example of my son

In early 2020 my son was using a Myobrace at night but then wore nothing during the day.

I was hoping that his gains at night would hold during the day. I concluded after some months than he had plateaud and was at times even declining a little bit (note that he also sometimes spit out his mouthguard at night).

But it was impossible to get him to wear a mouthguard during the day when he was at school and so we tried to get him to wear it for an hour or so after he came back from class. Which for a 6-year old was always a struggle.

It still didn’t seem like it was enough. And so this was part of why we decided to put flat composite on his back teeth starting in the second half of 2021.

What are your daytime options?

You have a number of different options for daytime use.

Option 1: Use the Reviv

If you choose to wear a Reviv as your daytime appliance than I recommend it be for a minimum of 2 hours and that you break it up so that you are popping it into your mouth for at least 20 minutes every 3-4 hours.

• Pros: Don’t need a separate appliance and less work is involved than options 2 & 3.

• Cons: Hard to do if you have a job and need to interact with others. Talking to others with a big blue mouthguard in your mouth is very challenging… trust me, i’ve tried it quite a bit!

Option 2: Flat polymorph clipons

This is something I teach in the Skool community and is quite cheap and fast to make. You just need polymorph and you mold directly to the lower back teeth but keep the top flat.

It looks like the video above (courtesy of someone who sent me this video of the one they made recently haha)

You only really need to wear on one side.

• Pros: You can wear during the day and talk + interact with others without them noticing.

• Cons: You should make new ones each week so requires a bit more work. Also you need to take them off before eating.

flat plane splint

Option 3: Flat plane splint (on lower teeth)

• Pros: For folks that don’t like to make their own clipons this is an option and a dentist or lab can make you a splint.

• Cons: More expensive than clipons and you should change it every few months in order to allow the lower teeth to move as well.
  

Option 4: Wear nothing but get very good at stretching

The stretching that I am referring to is not traditional stretching. Rather it refers to stretching of the jaw tissues as well.

But exercise and things like gum chewing will also work to some extent.

• Pros: You don’t need any appliance.

• Cons: You can only do this once you get good at such stretches and these stretches require a daily time commitment.

Do I wear a daytime appliance?

No I do not.

I basically do option 4 as I am pretty good at the stretches at this point. And when you get very good at the stretches than it anyway takes a few hours for the body to ‘absorb’ the pressure that these stretches build up in your skull.

I will often see lines in various parts of my body as this pressure releases and when I don’t feel any more pressure in my head I know that it is time to stretch again.

My stretching sessions are often like 15-20 minutes in length.

Closing thoughts

It is important to wear a daytime appliance to keep your progress with Reviv from regressing.

The good news is that there are a number of options and once you get good at the stretches than you might be able to stop wearing a daytime appliance altogether.

I generally recommend to folks in the Reviv community to go with option 2 (polymorph clipons). It is fast, cheap and not very conspicuous.

Whatever option you choose just make sure to be consistent. This is a long-term game of discipline.

For people that have worked with me they know that the thing that perhaps defines me more than anything is that I am structured & methodical like a machine.

I wasn’t like that before this decade of iterating on this process. This stuff made me that way. For better or worse hahaha.

Try to put yourself in a similar mindset. While also being open to testing other things that help accelerate the process.

That is how you turn this thing from your weakness in life… into your superpower.