If your dentist informs you that your child has congenitally missing teeth, it is important to have an orthodontic consultation as soon as possible. This is especially true if there are missing front teeth. Why Should You Seek Orthodontic Assistance for Cogenitally Missing Teeth? Why is this so important? Often, orthodontically, we can substitute primary teeth into missing permanent teeth positions. Also, often we can move permanent canines into the missing incisor positions. In this manner, we can prevent your child from having noticeably missing tooth spaces, and we can help to normalize the emergence pattern of the permanent teeth. Getting Orthodontic Treatment For Your Teenager If your child is already a teenager, then orthodontically we idealize missing tooth spaces so that an appropriately ideally sized prosthodontic tooth can be placed by your dentist. In this way it is virtually undetectable that a missing tooth situation exists. An orthodontic consultation…
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Why Choose Invisalign?
There are many reasons to choose Invisalign over braces. These include: similar costs, better esthetics, no emergency visits and better soft tissue comfort. Align technology highlights all of the advantages very well. Amazingly though, there is still a better reason that Invisalign should be chosen over braces wherever possible. Invisalign offers the huge advantage of virtually NO PAIN. I personally self-treated with Invisalign and I was amazed that I experienced no pain. Hundreds of others that I treated reported the same thing and they remembered well the tooth soreness from prior braces treatment. Below is a picture of a patient who had Invisalign Teen. Treatment time was only 10 months. If this patient chose to do traditional braces, treatment time would have been 18 months. Having treated over 1,100 Invisalign patients, I can think of only a few who told me they actually felt soreness. I’ve treated nearly 20,000…
Why is expansion of my upper jaw necessary?
Great Question! Expansion is the process of creating growth change — usually to help alleviate crowding which most often prevents the need for extractions. Expansion also can correct a dental cross bite where the back teeth fit inside of the lower back teeth.Not all cross bites, however, require a growth change. Often, the back teeth are tipped to fit inside the lower back teeth. In this case, we simply need to upright the upper molars cheek-wise to make the correction. We make the decision on whether to expand by measuring the width of the upper front teeth and the width of the jaw at the upper 1st permanent molars. The upper jaw should be 35 to 40 millimeters for us to obtain a stable result. So we actually measure to make sure there is a proper proportionality. James McNomara has been teaching this diagnostic method since the late 1980’s and…
Do it Yourself Orthodontists…
Did you know that Smile Direct club was started in 2013 by four businessmen from Nashville, TN? Smile Direct club offers simple orthodontic treatment – limited to the front 6 teeth for mild crowding or spacing. The patient completes an online questionnaire and buys a $95 impression kit. They take their own impression and take 7 photographs of their teeth at different angles. The doctors who are employed by SDC submit the treatment plan to Align technology to make the aligners which are then mailed to the patient. The patient then orders retainers as well which are made by Align. Did you know that Align is the company that makes Invisalign? Here are the issues with SDC treated patients. The patient assumes responsibility for errors in impression taking. It takes a lot of training and practice to be able to take an error free impression. Impressions are less accurate than…
Soda, Braces, And Your Teeth
What’s In That Drink? You probably already know that soda is chock full of sugar, but did you know that it’s also highly acidic? For reference, stomach acid, one of the strongest acids, has a pH of 1.5, whereas water is neutral at a pH of 7. Sodas generally range in acidity from a pH of 2-4. The strong acidity from citric and phosphoric acids is actually the reason for all the sugar—without it, soda would be too sour to drink! Effects On Teeth The sugar and acid in soda launch a two-pronged attack on your oral health. Sugar is bacteria’s favorite food, so you’re giving the bacteria in your mouth a feast when you drink anything full of sugar, which allows them to reproduce faster. You’ll end up with bad breath and a higher risk of cavities as a result. As for the acid, the protective enamel coating your teeth…