How Braces Can Protect The Future Health Of Your Teeth
Posted on: 14 April 2018
Chances are if you think about braces, your mind goes to how braces correct the alignment of teeth and can make a smile look great. However, that's not where the abilities of braces end. Braces can help to protect the health of your teeth long after they've been taken off and your alignment corrections are complete. Read on to discover what braces can do for you during and after your teeth alignment is corrected.
Misalignments
When teeth are misaligned, crooked, or crowded, they can change the way a smile looks. Crooked teeth can make smiles look less appealing to others, but they can also have a big impact on your teeth.
When a person has all of their teeth, and those teeth are healthy and evenly spaced, the pressure is distributed across all of those teeth evenly when that person bites down. If just one tooth is misaligned, however, the pressure becomes unbalanced, too. Instead of evenly distributing the pressure across all teeth, it may put more pressure on the neighboring teeth of the crooked one.
Excess Pressure
Pressure is a problem when it's unbalanced. Teeth are designed to put up with a lot of pressure, but only when teeth are all performing their job adequately. If you have too much pressure being put on one or more teeth in your mouth because they're misaligned, it may cause some serious problems.
The issues include both an increased risk of decay and a higher risk of developing major damage to the tooth, like chipping or breaking. Decay is more common because excessive pressure can break down the tooth's enamel, which helps to protect it from bacteria and plaque. In either case, it's bad news for your dental health if you have crooked teeth. Without corrective treatment, you could potentially lose one or more teeth simply because of pressure and a misalignment in your teeth.
How Braces Fix It
Braces are designed to fix everything about the alignment of your smile. Your upper teeth will be aligned with the bottom teeth, and all of your individual teeth will have their orientation straightened, and they'll be evenly spaced with your other teeth. This will ensure that your teeth don't sustain damage from being placed under excessive pressure for years.
Braces can make you look good and help you to keep your teeth healthy and safe in the future. If you're tired of having misaligned teeth and are worried about your overall oral health, visit an orthodontist to start the process of getting braces. Click for more information on choosing a dental office near you.
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