Why Bite Correction is Important

Have you ever tried to drive a car when its axles aren’t aligned properly? It’s a lot like trying to function with orthodontic issues—like an overbite, which is when your front teeth overlap more than they’re meant to. After all, your car’s axles and your jaw both have ideal alignments that allow them to move the way they’re meant to. When your jaws don’t fit together correctly, it can impact both their function and appearance.

We often think of orthodontic treatment as a way of straightening teeth to gain a beautiful, more confident smile. While it certainly helps your smile look its best, orthodontic treatment does so much more than that—it actively helps protect your teeth and jaws from oral health issues that problems like an overbite can cause. Here are five reasons you should have your overbite corrected.

Protect Your Oral Health

Overbites can make it harder to brush and floss your teeth thoroughly, especially when they’re accompanied by other orthodontic issues like overcrowding. When you correct your overbite and straighten your teeth, they become easier to clean thoroughly. Overbite is the amount of overlap of the front top and bottom teeth. Severe overbites can cause gum tissue impingement if the lower teeth bit against the roof of your mouth resulting in gum recession. Orthodontic treatment works to reduce this overlap so that your gums stay healthy and pain-free!

Simplify Basic Tasks

Did you know that our teeth are a major part of forming words and sounds? It’s so normal for us that it’s easy to overlook, but there are a surprising number of sounds that we make by pushing our tongues against our teeth. Everyone’s teeth need to overlap a little bit so that they can function properly, but when they overlap too much—or not at all, such as in an open bite—even simple tasks like speaking or eating can become more difficult. While deep overbites don’t generally interfere with the way you speak, the opposite, an open bite, can pose more of a problem for both eating and speaking because the upper and lower front teeth do not meet at all.

Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be permanent! When you get braces or clear aligners to correct your bite, your newly aligned teeth will make eating and speaking simple—just as they should be! You might need a little practice to correct speech-related issues, but once your teeth are aligned you’ll have every element necessary for success.

Prevent Enamel Erosion

When your teeth overlap too much, they can slide past each other causing enamel wear. This doesn’t happen to everyone with an overbite, but when it does it can lead to the need for dental work to replace the missing enamel. Correcting your bite prevents this, protecting and improving the function, health, and appearance of your teeth.

Benefits for All Ages

It’s easier to correct an overbite on preteens and teenagers because they’re still growing. Dentists can use this during treatment, encouraging a child’s jaws to grow in a way that will aid in correcting their bite. This is particularly helpful when the cause of orthodontic issues involves overcrowding or a difference in the size between upper and lower jaws. Since adult mouths have finished growing, it’s harder to treat their overbites—but it’s not impossible! Orthodontic treatment to correct an overbite is still a great option for adults and its benefits remain the same no matter how old you are.

Finding Your Ideal Orthodontic Treatment

Modern dentistry has several different orthodontic treatments to meet everyone’s different treatment needs and preferences, so you should be able to find a treatment that works for you. Depending on the severity of your overbite, you can correct it with traditional braces, clear aligners, or a combined orthodontic-surgical plan. Clear aligners can resolve most of the same issues that braces can, so braces and clear aligners are both great options for most people.

If you have an overbite, aligning your jaws so that your teeth fit together the way they’re meant to is one of the best things you can do for your long-term oral health. It goes beyond making your smile more beautiful, working to improve and protect the health of your teeth and gums for years to come. If you’d like to learn more about orthodontic treatment and how it could benefit you from a dentist in Omaha, NE, feel free to schedule an appointment at any time.