Hi, I am Dr. Brian Orcutt, and I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you about straight teeth. Now there are a lot of different ways to straighten your teeth. You can use Invisalign or braces, and there are numerous different brand names out there that you can use, and they all pretty much work the same. My preference is Invisalign for different reasons, but they all work pretty much the same. Now, as far as the reasons go for straightening your teeth, there are many reasons why you should have straight teeth. So our motto here at this office is Straight teeth last longer. And so what I mean by that is that when your teeth don’t touch properly, whether it be in the back teeth or the front teeth, bad things tend to happen over time.

And some of those bad things are gum recession, broken teeth, cracked teeth, which end up needing root canals or extractions, sometimes implants, a lot of heavy wear. A lot of times people end up with gum disease when the teeth don’t touch properly. In fact, that’s where gum disease starts in the first place. If teeth don’t touch properly, the bone gently wears away over time, making it hard for you to clean your teeth, and eventually, the bacteria grow in that area, those pockets and that’s where gum disease starts.

So what happens when the teeth don’t touch right in the back? So, over time, and this is typically a very asymptomatic disease process, but your bone sort of melts away gently around the roots. And as the bone melts around the roots, your gums follow the bone. The gums can’t recede without the bone receding first. As the bone and the gums recede, we call it gum recession. And what typically happens is the roots get exposed. Once the roots are exposed there, they can get cavities very easily. But what also happens, a lot of cold sensitivity can happen. People start to crack their teeth. Once you crack your teeth, you need crowns. Or hopefully, if you catch it in time, you need a crown. If it waits too long, a lot of times you end up breaking the tooth, which means you need a root canal or sometimes even to have the tooth extracted, and then you get an implant. So there are lots of bad things that can happen if your back teeth aren’t straight. And what we focus on here at Orchid Family Dentistry is we typically encourage people to do Invisalign. We think Invisalign works faster and we know it’s much more gentle than metal braces, and we get the same outcome as you would with metal braces. You could eat anything you want to with Invisalign, you can keep your teeth a lot more clean than you can with metal braces. You know, if you have a social occasion, you can pop ’em out and have a nice night on the town too, and then put ’em back in when you get home. So, there are lots of advantages with Invisalign over metal braces in my mind.

What sets us apart here at Orchid Family Dentistry is after we straighten your teeth, and I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years now with Invisalign, what sets us apart is that we pay particular attention to the way the back teeth touch after we straighten your teeth. Now, Invisalign and metal braces will get you like 90 to 95% of the way there as far as the way the teeth touch, but it doesn’t get you a hundred percent. You have to balance the bite afterward by polishing the enamel in certain ways. And we use special technology that helps us to determine when we’re done balancing the bite. It’s taken us a lot of training to get to that point, and there are very few people here in the country who actually do that, and we’re proud to offer that to our patient base.

And that’s what sets us apart versus most orthodontists and general dentists who do move teeth. So if you have any questions about that, feel free to give us a call. Look us up online at orcuttfamilydentistry.com. We’re happy to answer any questions you might have. Go out there and get some straight teeth, okay? It’s only for your benefit. Alright, take care. Bye.