I had never given my teeth a second thought until one day about four years ago. I was taking a stroll along a pier in Wexford, having spent a romantic weekend with my then boyfriend. He said something funny; I threw back my head and laughed out loud. He looked into my eyes and said: "What's wrong with your tooth? How come it is so brown? I have never noticed that before."

I was shocked. Indignantly, I told him where to go, and then sulked for the whole journey back to Dublin. As soon as I got home I called my sister and debriefed her, fully expecting her to join me in calling him every name under the sun, but she didn't. She said: "But it is really brown, and it kind of sticks up. It looks a bit weird."

Time went by and I put it to the back of my mind. Then a couple of months later I went to visit my dentist, Con O'Leary.

I mentioned to him the trouble I had with keeping my front middle tooth clean and he told me it was because my teeth were crowded and suggested I consider getting braces.

Vanity

Adults with braces are not uncommon. Hollywood stars like Whoopi Goldberg, Gwen Stefani, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz all wore metal braces as adults, and much as I admire them for playing the long game in the vanity stakes, as a 30-something woman, I just couldn't countenance wearing train tracks.

Also, even though the idea of having perfectly straight teeth was really growing on me, I really didn't think they were bad enough to justify having wires on them for a couple of years.

(Such denial! If your boyfriend, sister and your dentist suggest your teeth need attention, you probably need braces.)

However, I had since accepted a marriage proposal from the aforementioned boyfriend, and I kind of liked the idea of having a perfect smile for my wedding.

My dentist told me about a course he had just completed with Clearstep, a company who produced clear, plastic braces that were virtually invisible.

You can take them out to eat, drink and clean your teeth. These are similar to the ones Cheryl Cole used to get her set of pearly whites after Pop Idol, so I thought 'What the hell, I'll do it. If it's good enough for Cheryl, it's good enough for me.'

Ireland, along with the rest of the western world, is experiencing a boom in cosmetic dentistry. Most dentists administer systems like Clearstep, which addresses such problems as crowding (my problem), gaps between teeth, overbite, underbite, overjet (buck teeth), and crossbite, among other problems.

Patients with more complicated problems, however, are referred to an orthodontist, a dentist who specialises in straightening teeth and addressing deformities.

There is no data currently available on the number of adults seeking braces, but according to Paul Dowling, President of the Orthodontists' Association, anecdotal evidence suggests that 30pc of orthodontic patients wearing braces are adults, and of those, 70pc are women.

If you include all of the adults like me who can have their teeth straightened without being referred to an orthodontist, that is a whole lot of adults.

Trends

Adults can be a lot more difficult to treat than children for a number of reasons, not least being that adult teeth are more difficult to move than a young person's.

According to Dowling, when it comes to orthodontic patients, braces are generally used with some other restorative movement like implants and bridging, which are becoming increasingly common for adults addressing teeth that had been pulled out earlier in life.

Dowling also sees geographic trends: "In some areas of the country, pulling problem teeth would have been more prevalent than others. For instance, 20 years ago in rural areas there mightn't have been as much support if a tooth was in trouble.

"It might have needed specialist root-canal treatment, for example, which might only have been available in Dublin. I have worked in different regions and certainly in the more rural areas dental treatment was more rudimentary."

People are now less happy to wear false teeth, says Dowling, who believes television and other media to be a huge influence on people seeking treatment.

"All the American television we are constantly subjected to has had a huge effect on people seeking dental care of all sorts.

"Also, when the Celtic Tiger was roaring you saw more what I would call 'non-traditional patients', like plasterers and mechanics, coming in, that I hadn't seen previously or since.

"More people were coming in for treatment from all walks of like. You definitely saw more males."

According to O'Leary, a process like Clearstep is extremely popular with his adult patients, especially males.

"In my experience, it is very rare that a man would get train tracks. I have a significant portion of men patients using Clearstep. Women don't seem to mind wearing train tracks as much."

Well this one does -- I didn't want my mouth to look worse before it looked better.

The first step of the process was to take an x-ray of my teeth. Then an impression was taken with a rubbery, plasticine-like substance. It wasn't pleasant, but it took no more than two minutes a set.

Then the x-ray and the moulds were sent off to the lab and all I had to do was wait for my braces to arrive.

In the lab, a set of eight trays were produced, each designed to move my teeth about 0.25mm over two weeks.

Mould

Each stage involved eight sets of trays, and after each stage, I had to go back to the dentist for another mould to ensure that the teeth were moving as expected.

The principle is the same as a fixed brace or any other expansion technique -- the tooth moves in response to small increments of pressure. "Will it hurt?" I asked my dentist. "No" he replied. Did he lie? Well, he did and he didn't.

A few weeks later I got a call telling me my braces were in and I went down to Cork to collect them. According to Clearstep, my treatment would take about a year-and-a-half. Sometimes treatment can take as little as six months, depending on the problem.

I have to admit that I was a bit nervous. There were eight sets of trays in a box, marked one to eight. Sixteen weeks. The first set went on easily. It felt a bit funny for a day or two, but I quickly got used to it. This is going to be easy, I thought.

After two weeks, I went to tray number two. It was almost as easy as tray number one -- just a slight bit more pressure but nothing you would notice after five minutes.

I got cocky. Con had told me to put the new trays on at night so that you are asleep for the first eight hours or so, but when it came to tray three, I thought I knew better than the dentist.

After brushing my teeth on the last morning, I put braces number two back in the box and grabbed braces three. I put them in before rushing out to catch a train to work. On the train, my mouth was on fire.

The pain was intense. It became unbearable, I wanted to take my braces out but there was literally nowhere to hide.

There was barely room to stand in the carriage, not to mind doing anything discreetly, but I didn't care.

To the bemusement and, I am sure, disgust and horror, of my fellow commuters, I just opened my mouth and took my braces out. The relief of it.

Lesson learned -- always use a new tray for the first time at night.

This aspect of the system -- that you can take the braces out whenever you wish -- is both a blessing and a curse.

It is a blessing, because you can take them out to eat, drink, etc, and take them off for a special occasion -- I didn't wear mine on the day of my wedding -- and a curse because you have to be very disciplined and not forget to put them back in.

Treatment

If you neglect to wear them for a couple of days, you can throw off the rest of the treatment and have to start your two weeks again.

In the two years that I wore mine, that was the only time I ever felt pain. There were occasions when the teeth were a bit tender for a day or two, but on the whole, it was pretty painless.

I am finished now and absolutely chuffed with the results. For a while, I smiled for absolutely no reason, a few times at very inappropriate moments, just so I could display my pearly whites.

Thankfully, that urge has abated. However, as with all braces, I will have to wear a retainer every night to stop the teeth from moving back.

"You can put a tooth anywhere you want to if you spend a long enough time at it," according to O'Leary, "the problem is keeping it there."

My sticky-out tooth is still very mobile, due to the fact that the gum around it has receded from the years of crowding, and once gums recede, they never come back.

I asked Con if there was anything I could do about that, and he recommended a permanent brace that sits behind my teeth (which I am currently considering) or a gum graft (which I am not).

"You would want to be particularly obsessed. The success rate for gum-grafting procedures isn't all that great anyway, but there is a procedure where you can have repositioning of the gum."

My dental hygiene is now top notch and I strive to wear my retainer every night. Having spent the time, money and effort in making my teeth look as good as possible, I am determined to keep them that way. Because like Cheryl Cole -- I'm worth it.

www.clearstep.co.uk

www.totaldental.ie

- Yvonne Hogan

Irish Independent