Benefits of orthodontics
Orthodontic treatment helps improve the function of the teeth and arrange them in the mouth, thus adding a beautiful appearance to them, and improving the health of the mouth in general.
Improve appearance
The main goal of orthodontics is to make the teeth look beautiful and attractive, especially if the teeth are close together and crowded in the jaw, or if they are crooked and crooked. In these cases, the person is not confident about the shape of his smile. Improving the appearance of the teeth is one of the most important benefits of orthodontics known to people, because it makes the person happy with the shape of his teeth and smile. It is known that an attractive smile gives the person a professional appearance in the workplace and makes him appear more attractive in the eyes of others.
Below is an explanation of the ways in which orthodontics improves the appearance of teeth:
- It helps bring the spaced teeth closer together and reduces the distance between them, thus giving them a beautiful straight shape.
- It helps align crooked teeth that have grown randomly in the mouth, thus improving their appearance.
- It also helps to move teeth apart if they are too close together.
Give a healthy appearance to the mouth
Correcting and arranging your teeth makes the process of taking care of them easier, especially if braces are used to treat the problem of misalignment of the jaws. It becomes easier to clean and brush them, and even using dental floss becomes easier, thus contributing to obtaining healthy gums and teeth by reducing tooth decay and gum disease. It is known that tooth decay over time may contribute to the destruction of the jaw bones that support the teeth and work to keep the teeth in place.
Improve the ability to chew and digest food
The shape of the teeth can affect chewing and digesting food. When a person suffers from a condition called malocclusion, also known as a bad bite, which occurs due to the upper and lower teeth not fitting together properly, which leads to difficulty chewing some types of food, and may sometimes cause tooth erosion. Common causes of a bad bite include the following:
- Crowded teeth.
- Protruding teeth.
- Loss of some teeth.
- Crooked teeth.
- Thumb sucking is a habit that often accompanies children.
It is worth noting that orthodontics works to arrange the teeth in the correct way, thus improving the process of chewing food, which in turn improves the digestion of food. When the teeth are arranged incorrectly, they cannot cut the food into very small pieces, and thus the food remains in bites that are somewhat large in size. In this case, the stomach takes longer to digest the food well.
Increase self-confidence
Everyone aspires to have a beautiful and attractive smile. The more crooked and disorganized the teeth are, the more the person tries to hide their smile, and the more this reduces the person's self-confidence and leads to anxiety in him. The opposite is true. The more beautifully arranged the teeth are, the more beautiful the smile and increases the person's self-confidence. He becomes more confident in speaking and showing his teeth and smile. One of the benefits of orthodontics is also changing the position of the teeth, which increases the harmony of the shape of the lips and jaw with the shape of the face.
improve pronunciation
A poorly aligned jaw or teeth may cause some speech problems, due to the tongue not touching the roof of the mouth. The orthodontist determines whether the condition can be treated with braces or not. Orthodontics may improve some cases of speech problems, helping the patient to create complex words and sounds without swallowing, stuttering, or whistling.
reduce tooth erosion
Orthodontics reduces tooth erosion that occurs over time when there are problems with the occlusion of teeth and jaws, by improving the occlusion of teeth on each other, and reducing pressure and distributing it equally on all teeth. Among the problems caused by tooth erosion, and which orthodontics contributes to preventing, we mention the following:
- Tooth wear.
- Teeth fragility.
- Weak teeth.
- Teeth breakage.
- Loss of bone and gum tissue that support the teeth
Other benefits of treatment
There are many other benefits and uses of braces, and the following are the most important ones:
- Orthodontics is used as part of the treatment of cleft lip and cleft palate.
- Orthodontics is used to prevent jaw weakness and muscle pain caused by misaligned teeth.
- Orthodontics helps treat mild cases of sleep apnea, where the orthodontist places a cap-like device on the gums, thus preventing the airways from closing during sleep.
- Orthodontics helps to return the teeth to their correct position, thus facilitating the use of various treatments such as placing a dental bridge, dental implants, or cosmetic dental procedures such as dental crowns, or placing cosmetic veneers to whiten the teeth.
Disadvantages of orthodontics
Teeth need to be taken care of to maintain their health, and the need for attention and care increases when braces are placed; this is because the wires and brackets used collect food residues between them. It is worth noting in this context that braces themselves do not cause harm to the teeth, but the damage occurs as a result of neglecting the teeth, not caring for them and their cleanliness, and eating a lot of foods that contain sugars. Therefore, it is necessary to intensify care to clean the teeth and braces and take care of them to reduce the occurrence of damage. The following is a mention of some of these damages that may affect the teeth after using braces:
- Short tooth root length: In some cases, when the tooth moves to its correct place, part of the bone in the tooth’s path dissolves and new bone appears. If the tooth root length is permanently lost, this may make it unstable and unstable. Fortunately, this condition does not usually cause any problems.
- Tooth movement: Failure to follow the orthodontist’s instructions and not wearing the orthodontic retainer that is placed after removing the braces may cause the teeth to move and cause the person to lose some of the arrangement and correction that he obtained from the braces.
- Dental plaque may be filled with bacteria and cause some problems if not removed, including:
- tooth decay .
- Gum problems.
- Loss of minerals in the enamel layer covering the tooth, resulting in white spots on the tooth.
