Crowding and its medical implications

  A lot of people think people doing braces is purely for the cosmetic reasons..not so in dentist's eyes. We believe having braces also make oral hygiene easier, and the teeth will last longer because of good hygiene. But there is another reason that even your dentist may not know about. For the image above (Figure. 1), the child obviously has a lot of crowding with baby/adult teeth coming in. We know this kid will need braces, but why is there crowding in the first place? Most likely the kid has a tonsil that swells up quite often which blocks his airway through the nose. When he is forced to breathe through his mouth, it does 3 things. 1.The Air dries his mouth, causing bad breath and gingivitis. 2. The cheek muscles push the upper bone into a V shaped arch form, causing severe tooth crowding. 3.The V shaped dental arch (Figure 2) is narrower for the mouth airway...so even that the kid may have hard time breathing at night, predipose him to heart disease and stroke later in life. Another thing..people that breath with their nose tends to "look" better, because good form follows good function. And all that can be fixed quite easily with early orthodontic intervention, and possible surgical removal of adenoids and tonsils. Copyright Macau Dentist 2013