Are Your Teeth Crooked? Here’s Why You Should Straighten Them

If you made it through childhood without ever having to deal with crooked teeth, then you might believe you’re in the clear of ever needing orthodontic treatment. However, the truth is that teeth can grow crooked at any age, and for a wide variety of potential reasons. When they do, correcting their alignment with the right orthodontic treatment will be vital to preventing a wide range of related oral health problems.

To improve your smile’s appearance

Crooked teeth have several different impacts on your oral health, but your smile’s appearance can often be the most obvious one. Teeth are meant to be aligned properly, and when they aren’t, it shows. The degree to which this impact can affect your self-confidence can depend on how severely crooked your teeth are. Yet, for many patients, it’s enough to prompt them to seek treatment to correct it. With the right orthodontic solution, you can successfully realign your crooked teeth by guiding them into healthier and more attractive positions.

To improve your long-term oral health

Besides their appearance, the alignment of your teeth also has an impact on your ability to care for them properly. The crowded and/or overlapping spaces that tooth misalignment creates can harbor excessive buildup of oral bacteria and dental plaque. These hard to reach places can then become ground-zero for chronic oral health conditions like tooth decay and gum disease, both of which results from oral bacteria infection. When you straighten your teeth, you eliminate the hard-to-reach areas where plaque can form, calcify into tartar, and threaten your teeth gums out of reach of your toothbrush and floss.

To improve your bite’s ability to function

Your teeth are meant to do more than make your smile attractive and fight off oral bacteria. In fact, their main purpose is a functional one – to prepare your food for digestion by biting and chewing it. This function relies largely on your teeth being properly aligned so your upper and lower dental ridges can meet each other squarely when you bite down. If they’re crooked, they won’t meet evenly, and this can lead to excessive pressure on your teeth, strain on your jaw joints (TMJs), and much more.

Learn more about straightening crooked teeth

Crooked teeth are something that should never be ignored. Fortunately, we have a range of orthodontic treatment options to help you address the problem and improve your smile. To learn more, call our Cleveland Family Dentistry office in Cleveland, TX, today at (281) 592-1234. We also serve the residents of Kingwood, Conroe, Livingston, and all surrounding communities.