Does this sound familiar?... You just got your new braces on last week. At first you think you are imagining things, but you think your teeth are getting worse! You may have a gap where there wasn’t one before and now one of your lower front teeth is more crooked than when treatment started. Is this normal?
Straightening the teeth is a dynamic process; your teeth will be changing throughout treatment. During the process of alignment, especially during the first 6 months, you may notice that things look worse before they look better. Here’s why:
Although your teeth may be crooked or spaced out when you start treatment, they have usually drifted into a position where they are stable and functional. Your body is amazing at adapting to problems that exist. If you have a lower jaw that is smaller than the upper for example, the top teeth will be pushed back by your upper lip and your lower teeth will be pushed forward by your tongue. We call these “dental compensations”. If the teeth are crowded, the crowding is usually spread evenly among the teeth.
Orthodontic treatment takes place in stages. The first stage is to align your teeth. If you have teeth removed, you may notice improvements in the appearance of your teeth right away. If you do not, you may actually notice changes in the alignment of your teeth that temporarily make them look worse. This is completely normal and necessary since all of the teeth cannot straighten at once. If you have crowding that is treated without extractions, your jaws must reshape and grow to accommodate all of your teeth… and this takes time! In the process of removing dental compensations, you will also notice changes in your bite. These changes in your bite are normal and should be anticipated.
Once your crowding is resolved, or conversely, your spaces are closed, the next step is to level the arches. If you start with a deep bite, the goal is to “open the bite” so that your lower teeth are more visible. If you start with an open bite, we’ll want to deepen the bite so the top teeth overlap the bottom ones. About the same time we address the vertical relationship, we also work to make the width of the upper and lower arches match (coordinate the arches).
The final stage of treatment is to optimize the relationship front to back relationship of the molars and incisors… in other words, your overjet. This may be done with rubber bands or other appliances and can often be the most frustrating part of treatment for most patients. This is typically when we start hearing “When will I be getting my braces off?”
Understanding this sequence will give you an idea of where you are in your treatment. Knowing that there will be transitional changes along the way that may actually make things look or feel worse before they look and feel better will make you more confident that your treatment is going as expected.
Tags: peninsula orthodontics, dr. vicki ross, orthodontic treatment
Posted on June 1st, 2017
Posted in About Our Office
Dental Pro at Home says:
I think everything posted was actually very reasonable. However, what about this?
what if you added a little content? I ain't suggesting your information is not good., however
what if you added a title that grabbed a person's attention? I
mean Help!!! My Teeth Look Worse is kinda vanilla.
You ought to look at Yahoo's front page and see how they create article headlines to grab
viewers to open the links. You might add a related video or a picture or two to get people excited about
everything've got to say. Just my opinion, it might bring your
posts a little livelier.
