FAQ

GT Smiles is a company dedicated to helping dentistry move beyond traditional plastics by providing unique plant- and bio-based alternatives that require no compromise on performance or economics.

It was founded by a group of folks with a lot of experience in traditional plastics for dentistry and who share the growing concerns about plastics waste, potential toxicity, and long-lasting microplastics.

We set out to be part of the solution, and GT Smiles was the result.

You can learn more about the journey to GT Smiles and our goals for its future on our “About Us” page.

GT Smiles integrates with dental providers to help them offer a range of devices – including retainers, aligners, night guards, and oral appliances for sleep apnea – made from either:

• GT FLEX ® PRO and GT FLEX ® MAX – our traditional plastic options that have been proven through years of use by hundreds of thousands of patients and dentists worldwide, or
• GT FLEX ® GREEN – our new plant-based plastic alternative that is 100% free from traditional, petroleum-based plastics.

Most of these types of devices – regardless of the material – should be replaced regularly, so we also offer a complete, end-to-end device subscription solution in which:

• Dentists maintain clinical oversight,
• Patients receive regular, pristine device replacements, and
• GT Smiles handles everything in between.

The whole system is designed to make it as easy as possible for dentists to offer patients a better option for long-term dental health, while also adding a powerful new recurring revenue opportunity for their practices.

We’re a bunch of plastics specialists trying to get rid of traditional plastics.

We know what it takes to make high-performance traditional plastics for dentistry (we’ve sold literally tons of it). And we turned all that knowledge and experience toward creating alternative materials that are free from traditional plastics.

Our patent-pending GT FLEX ® GREEN materials are 100% free from traditional, petroleum-based plastics.

• They include a combination of 100% plant-based, bio-based, and other naturally-occurring components.
• They’re engineered specifically for dental applications like retainers, aligners, night guards, and oral appliances.
• And they’re formulated to help address growing patient concerns about toxicity and microplastics.

As far as we’re aware, GT FLEX ® GREEN is the world’s first material of its kind for these types of dental devices. And it’s already helping patients and dentists who are trying to move away from traditional plastics.

It’s our first solution for helping dentistry move beyond traditional plastic.

Our patent-pending GT FLEX ® GREEN material is a plant-based plastic alternative that is 100% free from traditional, petroleum-based plastics.

It includes a combination of 100% plant-based, bio-based, and other naturally-occurring components. It’s engineered for dental applications like retainers, aligners, night guards, and oral appliances for sleep apnea.

And it’s formulated specifically to help address concerns about toxicity and microplastics.

GT FLEX ® GREEN is 100% free from traditional, petroleum-based plastics.

In material science, a “plastic” is just a special type of material that can change shape when heated and then keep that new shape when cooled.

That’s it. There’s nothing in the basic definition of “plastic” that says the material must have toxic ingredients or generate long-lasting microplastics. Those generalized concerns are tied to a specific type of plastic – traditional plastic – and stem from the petroleum-derived components used in traditional plastic.

Under the basic, material-science definition, GT FLEX ® GREEN would actually be considered a “plastic” type of material. It needs those cool shape-changing features to be usable for retainers, aligners, night guards, and the like. But it contains none of the petroleum-derived components (nor the related helper chemicals like BPA or phthalates) that are responsible for the growing concerns with traditional plastic.

That’s one of the key goals in switching from petroleum-based components (used in traditional plastics) to 100% plant-based, bio-based, and other naturally-occurring components (used in GT FLEX ® GREEN).

But you still have test – and we did.

GT FLEX ® GREEN has been evaluated by independent, third-party testing laboratories for multiple safety-related criteria. The results indicate that GT FLEX ® GREEN is a safe, non-toxic solution for a variety of intraoral devices.

Biocompatibility Testing

Materials used for aligners, retainers, night guards, and the like generally must pass at least the following three biocompatibility tests:

• In Vitro Cytotoxicity (ISO 10993-5:2009)
• Skin Sensitization (ISO 10993-10:2021)
• Skin Irritation (ISO 10993-23:2021 – tests for Irritation)

GT FLEX ® GREEN has passed those three tests plus three additional tests we added for a more thorough evaluation:

• Oral Mucosa Irritation (ISO 10993-23:2021 – tests for Irritation)
• Acute Systemic Toxicity (ISO 10993-11:2017 – tests for Systemic Toxicity)
• Material Mediated Pyrogenicity (ISO 10993-11:2017 – tests for Systemic Toxicity)

Extractables and Leachables (E&L) Testing

GT FLEX ® GREEN is formulated intentionally to be degradable (it’s a required feature for addressing microplastics concerns), so it’s even more important for us to evaluate what might get released from the material as it starts to degrade.

To address this question, we submitted the material for extensive “extractables and leachables” testing.

In these tests, the material is subjected to “worst case scenario” conditions (e.g. much stronger acids than would be present in the mouth) in order to try to get it to degrade as quickly as possible. The resulting mix of extracted and leached substances is then tested for the presence of each of following:

• Elemental Impurities
• Volatile Organic Compounds
• Semi-Volatile Organic Compounds
• Non-Volatile Organic Compounds

These tests found no cause for concern from anything extracted from GT FLEX ® GREEN, even under “worst case” conditions triggering aggressive degradation.

GT Smiles offers devices made from the GT FLEX ® family of specialty materials for dentistry, including GT FLEX ® PRO, GT FLEX ® MAX, and GT FLEX ® GREEN:

• GT FLEX ® PRO and GT FLEX ® MAX are traditional plastic options that have been proven through years of use by hundreds of thousands of patients and dentists worldwide.
• GT FLEX ® GREEN is our plant-based plastic alternative that is 100% free from traditional plastics.

If it seems odd that a company like ours would continue to offer traditional plastic options, let’s be clear: our goal is to help dentistry move beyond traditional plastic. It’s a journey. And it will take some time for all of us to walk the path together.

So as we continue our work to expand access to GT FLEX ® GREEN to as many dentists and patients as possible – and as we continue to develop GT FLEX ® GREEN options for more and more types of dental devices – our traditional plastic materials remain available as tested and proven options for now.

But GT Smiles is focused on further developing and supporting GT FLEX ® GREEN as the better choice for the future.

GT Smiles integrates with dental providers to help them offer a range of devices – including retainers, aligners, night guards, and oral appliances for sleep apnea – made from either:

• GT FLEX ® PRO and GT FLEX ® MAX – our traditional plastic options that have been proven through years of use by hundreds of thousands of patients and dentists worldwide, or
• GT FLEX ® GREEN – our new plant-based plastic alternative that is 100% free from traditional, petroleum-based plastics.

We’ll be adding more custom devices and non-custom devices over time.

And while we stand by our traditional plastic materials as tested and proven options for now, our goal is to have a plant-based GT FLEX ® GREEN option available for every device we offer.

That’s the goal!

We’re working to have a GT FLEX ® GREEN option for all GT Smiles devices:

• It’s already available for retainers; 
• night guards are on the way soon; 
• aligners and oral appliances are in progress;
• and even more GREEN projects are underway.

So if it’s a GT Smiles device and you don’t see GT FLEX ® GREEN as an option quite yet, stay tuned – we’re working on it!

Custom devices from GT Smiles (like retainers, aligners, and night guards) are provided through dentists, based on prescriptions sent by dentists for individual patients.

For custom devices provided this way, dentists determine the final pricing to patients.

Although we can’t directly control the final pricing to patients, GT Smiles works closely with dentists to recommend pricing designed to increase access and – in the case of subscription-based devices – to support ongoing care, making regular replacement of these devices a predictable and affordable part of your healthcare budget.

GT Smiles integrates with dental providers to help them offer a range of devices – including retainers, aligners, night guards, and oral appliances for sleep apnea. In this relationship, GT Smiles acts essentially as a dental laboratory.

When it comes to pricing, our primary goal is to make these devices accessible to as many patients as possible.

Dentists set the final pricing to their patients for these devices. But to enable/encourage accessible pricing to patients, we’ve focused on developing a competitive “lab fee schedule” to dentists – especially for any traditional plastic devices we may continue to offer (to allow dentists to transition toward using more and more green materials on their own schedules), but also for devices made of GT FLEX ® GREEN.

As with most lab fee schedules, ours includes pricing tiers, with increasing discounts based on volume.

If you’re a dentist looking to offer GT Smiles products, please complete the “Get Started” form, and we’ll generate a customized pricing quote for your practice.

As a starting point, check out how we explain GT FLEX ® GREEN to patients. It’s based on thousands of interactions with patients who already reached out directly to us and it’s structured to provide a succinct response to the same key points of concern that almost everyone raises.

You can start with our “Find a Dentist” feature. It lets you search our current list of GT Smiles providers by doctor name, practice name, city, or zip code.

GT Smiles is new, and word is spreading fast. So if you can’t find an existing GT Smiles provider near you, please consider telling your current dentist about us. We’ll be happy to speak with them and see if they’d like to become part of the GT Smiles family.

GT Smiles integrates with dental providers to help them offer GT Smiles products through their practices. But we don’t provide custom devices like retainers, aligners, and night guards directly to patients.

The key word here is “custom”. If a device is designed to have a custom fit for one person’s mouth, you need to start with an accurate three-dimensional snapshot of that person’s teeth. The three ways to get that snapshot are:

1. Physical impressions taken at home by patient (least accurate/consistent)
2. Physical impressions taken by a dental professional (more accurate/consistent, but still problematic)
3. Intraoral scans taken by a dental professional (most accurate/consistent)

Because accuracy/consistency is critical to help ensure that the finished device has a comfortable fit, stays in place, and functions well, we currently use only the most accurate option for making any custom device from GT Smiles: intraoral scans taken by dental professionals.

We’re working on some non-custom devices (devices that don’t need to be custom-fitted to individual mouths), which we may offer directly as well as through practices when ready. But for GT Smiles custom devices, the best current route is through dental professionals using intraoral scanners.

So if you’re interested in getting a GT Smiles device, the first step is to find a GT Smiles dentist.

GT Smiles products are currently available only in the U.S.

But we have partnerships already in place and additional discussions underway for extending availability to other regions around the world – ASAP.

If you’re a patient or dentist outside the U.S. – or a company interested in partnering with us to bring GT Smiles to your country – please contact us.

An intraoral scan is a faster, more comfortable, and more accurate way to get a three-dimensional “snapshot” of your teeth, which is the starting information needed to make a custom-fitted device for your mouth.

Unlike a physical impression – which involves pressing a putty-like material against your teeth and hoping that you don’t gag while you wait for the material to set – an intraoral scan involves a dentist simply moving a wand-like camera device around your mouth.

That device takes a series of super-accurate images (up to thousands per second), which can be stitched together in software to create a precise, three-dimensional image of your mouth.

With physical impressions, even when taken by a skilled dental professional, the material used to take the impression can sometimes form bubbles, shrink, expand or distort – often not immediately, but before the impression is finally used to make a device – leading to inaccuracies, which result in devices that are less comfortable, don’t work as well, or don’t fit at all.

Because intraoral scans are fully digital, there are no problems with physical distortion. And when problems with a scan do occur (usually just from moving the wand a too quickly or missing a few areas with the wand), they’re usually obvious just from looking at the results, letting your dentist quickly take another scan if needed.

In material science, a “plastic” is simply something made of repeated molecules that can be heated to form a new shape and then cooled to retain that shape.

This comes as a surprise to a lot of folks, but there’s nothing in the basic definition of “plastic” that’s concerning in any way. It includes no mention of specific (potentially toxic) ingredients or how long it lasts. A “plastic” is just a type of material with a really useful shape-changing feature.

But when most people say the word “plastic”, they mean traditional plastic, which is the common type of plastic used essentially everywhere. And traditional plastic does have some concerning features.

Traditional plastic is a plastic material made from petroleum-derived components.

It’s the most common type of plastic, used essentially everywhere. And it’s what most people mean when they say the word “plastic” (though there are alternative plastic materials with important differences from traditional plastics).

PET (water bottles), PETG (clear “clamshell” food containers), TPU (phone cases), polyethylene (grocery bags), polypropylene (takeout food containers), and polystyrene (Styrofoam) are all examples of traditional plastics.

Traditional plastics are derived primarily from fossil fuels such as crude oil or natural gas. The abundance of these raw materials makes traditional plastics inexpensive. And the chemistry of these materials (namely, the incredibly consistent molecules you can derive from them) makes traditional plastics predictable (in performance), durable, and long-lasting.

But some of these blessings can also be a curse. Here are the troubles with traditional plastics.

There’s nothing concerning in the basic definition of “plastic”. But the specific chemistry used to make traditional plastic has created two growing areas of concern:

1. Potential Toxicity
2. Long-Lasting Microplastics

Traditional plastic is a petroleum-derived material. Petroleum itself contains a number of nasty chemicals. And some of the helper chemicals (called “plasticizers”) used to make traditional plastic can also be problematic (that BPA you’re hoping is not in your water bottle is one such plasticizer).

Traditional plastic lasts a really long time. Durability is actually one of the core benefits of traditional plastic. But as plastic use has exploded, this blessing has become an environmental curse. Moreover, it means that when traditional plastic breaks down into small pieces (microplastics), those pieces can linger wherever they may end up – including in tissues throughout the body.