What Does an Orthodontist Do?

A perfect smile is associated with optimal health. Oral health plays a significant role in keeping your overall well-being in optimal shape.

However, malocclusion and misaligned teeth result in dental issues such as tooth decay, periodontal disease, and challenging or painful chewing.

Unfortunately, not everyone has perfect teeth. You might want to consult an orthodontic dentist if you have issues like a bad bite or significant gaps between your teeth.

Orthodontic dentists are professionals with training to identify, prevent, and treat teeth and jaw misalignments. Orthodontists can correct existing issues and have the training to identify problems that might develop later.

In addition, orthodontic treatment is available for people of all ages, from children to adults.

Want Do Orthodontists Do?

Orthodontists help treat the position of the teeth in the mouth using fixed or removable orthodontic appliances such as braces, retainers, and retainers to correct dental abnormalities like crooked teeth, overbites and underbites, crowded teeth or widely spaced teeth, and jaw misalignment.

Orthodontists aim to improve your bite because straight and evenly spaced teeth align correctly with the opposing teeth in the jaw. As a result, healthy bites ensure comfortable eating, chewing, and speaking.

Earlier, visiting orthodontists was associated with children or teenagers needing braces. However, orthodontists help correct teeth problems in patients of all ages.

Reasons for Orthodontic Visits

You must see an orthodontist near you if you are affected by malocclusion or misalignment, a hereditary condition resulting from size differences in the upper and lower jaw or between your teeth and jaw.

Malocclusion results in crowding, irregular bite patterns, and a malformed jaw.

Orthodontists treat malocclusion with braces or dental appliances made from metal or ceramic attached to the teeth with wires and springs forcing the movement of the teeth into alignment.

If you are affected by minor to moderate issues of malocclusion, you can receive treatments with braces without wires or brackets to correct your orthodontic problems.

Unfortunately, if you have a severe underbite or an overbite, you might need corrective surgery to lengthen or shorten your jaw.

To support the jawbone, orthodontists use wires, plates, or surgical screws, and jaw surgery is suggested only after conservative treatment has failed.

When receiving orthodontic treatment, the therapy makes biting, speaking, and chewing comfortable while improving facial symmetry and overall appearance.

In addition, the therapy can separate overcrowded teeth, making them easier to clean and prevent dental infections while easing the pain from TMJ disorders.

What Are the Side Effects of Braces?

When you receive braces on your teeth, you can expect positive and adverse side effects with adult orthodontic treatments.

Some of the positive side effects of orthodontic treatments include:

• Enhanced Oral Hygiene: after receiving orthodontic treatment, you find it comfortable to brush and floss your teeth as your dentist recommends to prevent infections in your mouth. Freedom from the infection encourages you to clean your teeth frequently to have a glowing smile and fresh breath.
• Better Digestion: Orthodontic treatment enables you to chew foods better to improve your digestion without the struggle you experienced earlier with crooked and crowded teeth. Efficient chewing helps improve your digestion to extract the nutritional value of your foods.
• Breaking Detrimental Habits: If you are accustomed to using your teeth to bite fingernails or complex objects or using them to open packages, orthodontic braces will deter you from such habits helping break the harmful practices.

What Are the Disadvantages of Braces?

Orthodontic treatment is not all hunky-dory and also saddles you with specific problems you must look for.

They are:

• Allergic Reactions: you might occasionally experience allergic reactions to the latex or the metal used in braces. Therefore informing the orthodontist treating you about allergic reactions affecting you helps you receive issue-free treatment.
• Tooth Decay and Periodontal Disease: If you expect freedom from dental infections after orthodontic treatment, you must endure the conditions during your treatment because areas of your teeth under the brackets and wires are challenging to clean and become vulnerable to infections increasing the risk of tooth decay and periodontal disease. Therefore you must maintain excellent dental hygiene by investing in appropriate tools to clean your teeth when receiving orthodontic treatment to straighten them.
• Relapse isn’t a complication but the movement of your teeth shifting back to their original positions after removing the braces. Therefore, you must continue wearing orthodontic retainers indefinitely until the risk of relapse stabilizes or subsidies. When left without retainers, your teeth tend to shift back within a week after removing the braces.

You might think the disadvantages of braces are challenging to manage. However, the dental infections and complications you endured with your crooked and malformed teeth are even more difficult.

Therefore getting orthodontic treatment to straighten teeth from an experienced professional is worth the challenge and expense.

The Waterford Dentist is also a specialist in orthodontics with appropriate training in this field.

If you have malformed teeth or a misaligned jaw, you find it beneficial to visit this dental practice to receive orthodontic treatment to eliminate the problems affecting you.