How do Braces work to strengthen your teeth
Do you have crooked teeth? Is chewing your food uncomfortable? Are you conscious of showing off your smile because of misaligned teeth? Do your front teeth flare too much or are bent inwards? If your answer to any of the above is yes, you should go visit the nearest dental clinic and have yourself assessed for braces.
Braces is a type of dental treatment that helps harmonise your teeth and bring them to their correct positions. Crooked teeth are also more prone to cavities and gum diseases because they are more difficult to cleanse. Treating this not only helps your smile look better, but also improves your speech and chewing ability.
Traditionally, straightening crooked teeth involved metal braces. Although the principle of treatment remains the same, today there is a wide range of options available in the name of braces. All those of you who avoid getting braces because you are embarrassed of how they look, we have tooth coloured ceramic braces available, that have no metal showing. Also available are lingual braces, which do not show at all. Lingual braces are fit on the inner surfaces of your teeth and hence cannot be seen when you smile. To know if you are a candidate for this option, visit your nearest dental clinic. For those who think that braces look boring, we could spruce them up for you with a lot of funky colourful options in brackets, wires and elastics.
The latest advances in orthodontics has now made it possible to straighten your teeth without having to fix brackets and elastics and wires. These are known as invisible braces or aligners and they consist of a special transparent material that covers all your teeth. They are very comfortable to wear and pretty inconspicuous. This option is now available with every advanced dental clinic; all you need to do is go visit the dentist.
Now that you know all the types of braces that are available, let us understand how braces help correct your teeth position. Metal braces, ceramic braces and lingual braces, all work in the same way. First all your teeth are cleaned and prepped for the brackets to be bonded. Using a tooth coloured material, the brackets are bonded to your teeth surfaces. These brackets are used to anchor orthodontic wires, elastic chains and/or tubes. It is these wires, elastic chains and/or tubes that exert controlled forces on your teeth via the brackets and cause your teeth to shift from their original position and get them to come to a more correct position. The controlled forces exerted on your teeth by the braces will signal the periodontal membrane (the membrane that holds the tooth into the jaw bone) to bring about selective addition and deletion of bone so that each tooth drifts into a better position. Hence they require periodic changing of wires and chains. This is why the braces treatment has to be customised for every patient and even the timeline of treatment varies.
Aligners or invisible braces also work by exerting the same controlled forces onto the teeth, but they do so without having the need to use brackets, wires, tubes or chains. They are designed to form trays that cover the entire tooth, thus engulfing the tooth. They exert direct forces onto the tooth and have to be customised for every patient. They give beautiful results with maximum comfort, but are more expensive compared to the other options.
To know more about Dental braces feel free to visit our doctors at The Maxfac Clinic. We are an advanced dental clinic located in South Mumbai providing a wide range of options to straighten and align your teeth.