What Happens When You Don’t Correct a Bad Bite

What happens if you don’t correct a bad bite? In dentistry, we call that a malocclusion. There’s a few different things that can go wrong if you maintain a bad bite for your entire life.

Number one, and maybe the most obvious is tooth wear. If your bite doesn’t interdigitate or come together properly, what ends up happening is your teeth wear and sometimes in an asymmetric or an accelerated fashion that can cause all kinds of problems, including aesthetic issues as well as fractures of the teeth.

Additionally, with this added tooth wear from the bad bite, you can end up with jaw pain or even tooth sensitivity. Both gum recession and difficulty chewing could also follow a really aggressive type of tooth wear. Misaligned teeth and a bad bite can also cause gum recession, leading to increased sensitivity and poor aesthetics. You may even end up having a loosening of teeth for something like this. We see this often in our offices, and this all stems from misaligned teeth and a bad bite.

A couple of other areas where we look at a bad bite. We say, what could come of this is speech problems, when sometimes you have an open bite where the upper teeth don’t really meet the lower teeth on the front of the mouth, you end up with lisp or some type of other speech impediment. That’s something that should be addressed absolutely, and sometimes will involve more significant orthodontic work or even orthodontic surgery. If this is something that you are experiencing or you know somebody, give us a call. We can help you with that too.

A bad bite can lead to occlusal disease. That’s when all of the teeth get worn down and your smile is totally destroyed. Aesthetics are a real good reason why you want to maintain a healthy bite. With clear aligners and a number of other areas, including rehabilitation with veneers, crowns or even bridgework. We can help you fix your bad bite.