Balance and symmetry are extremely importance concepts when it comes to your oral health and bite function. They’re also complicated concepts that can be impacted by a variety of different issues with your oral health and structures, some of which may be serious enough to require oral surgery to correct. Today, we take a look at a few of these impacts, and what it could mean for your oral health if your bite becomes imbalanced in one of these ways.
The shape or symmetry of your jawbone is off
Your upper and lower jawbone structures form the foundations of your smile and bite function. Therefore, it’s natural that certain issues with these structures can have compounding impacts on your bite’s overall balance. For example, if your jawbone is malformed or is asymmetrical, then it can impact the other parts of your oral health that control your bite function. This can include putting too much stress on your jaw joints, which can lead to a bite dysfunction known as TMJ disorder. It can also include increasing difficulty and discomfort when biting and chewing, damage to the chewing surfaces of certain teeth, and more.
Your oral structures have reacted poorly to tooth loss
Tooth loss seems like a simple problem to address, and in many ways, it is. The problems associated with the loss stem from the empty space in your smile that it creates, and addressing them requires replacing the lost tooth to filling the space with a custom-designed restoration. However, there are consequences to losing the root of the tooth, as well, and these can include changes to the mass, density, and shape of your dental ridges. In addition to the loss of your tooth, this can also lead to problems with your bite’s balance and function that can only be resolved by rebuilding your smile with a lifelike tooth replacement.
You’ve developed too many teeth on your dental ridge
While losing a tooth can negatively impact your smile and bite balance, the same is true with the presence of too many teeth on your dental ridge. Most frequently, this involves the growth and development of wisdom teeth, or third molars, at the ends of dental ridges that are already full of teeth. The lack of space can create crowding problems that lead to the impaction of one or more wisdom teeth, and the force of the impaction can push your other teeth out of alignment. Extracting the impacted teeth as soon as possible is the best way to avoid or minimize the impact that they can have and restore your healthy bite function.
Learn if oral surgery can correct your bite imbalance
Find out what your bite imbalance could mean, and if you might need oral surgery to correct it. To learn more, or to schedule a consultation, call Santa Rosa Oral Surgery in Santa Rosa, CA, today at 707-545-4625.
