Why braces are needed

Braces are a great way to straighten your smile, but they also come hand-in-hand with a world of health benefits. Visiting your orthodontist in Stourbridge will not only straighten your cosmetic smile but also change your dental health for the better. Did you know about all these reasons why braces are needed, and their many health benefits?

Boosting self-confidence

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Some people need braces to boost their self-confidence, because they don’t like the appearance of their smile. Studies repeated year after year have shown that smiling can boost your self-confidence, happiness, and even your immune system. Even if you don’t particularly feel like smiling, forcing yourself to smile has been shown to trigger positive effects all over your body. In this case, happiness and health combine in a nice relationship. This means that if you’re hiding your smile because you don’t feel good about your teeth, you could be tricking yourself out of a boosted immune system and mentality. Braces are needed here to make your smile the exact reason you’re smiling in the first place.

Improving mouth and jaw function

Braces are needed when misaligned teeth and your jaw are starting to affect your mouth’s function. This can cover a wide range of considerations: your speech, chewing, and comfort can all be affected by how your bite fits together. Braces can help straighten teeth that protrude or are at irregular angles that affect the way you speak. Also, misaligned teeth can cause your bite to be laboured, applying a lot of pressure on certain parts of the jaw rather than equally distributing it. This can not only impact the way you eat and chew, but it can also become incredibly uncomfortable for your jaw bone. Improper jaw function can lead to tension in the neck, shoulders, and even headaches. Straightening your teeth with braces can correct these issues, restoring proper mouth function and less wear and tear on your jaw.

Protection against gum disease, bad breath, and decay

Braces are needed to close gaps in the teeth that can leave us prone to developing gum disease and decay. When our teeth our overcrowded and overlap, they create little nooks for food and sugars to get caught in. This debris attracts bacteria to feast there, the by-product of which erodes our protective enamel. Something similar happens when our teeth have irregular gaps; the bacteria can cling to our exposed gums, heightening the chances of developing gum disease. These areas can be difficult to clean, so bacteria can easily manifest and harm us. By closing these gaps and lessening hard-to-reach crowded areas, we make our teeth easier to clean and lessen the nooks for bacteria to cling to. Bacteria feasting on sugars also produce foul-smelling toxins which cause bad breath, so by limiting their ability to thrive we can also achieve fresher breath through braces.

Braces introduce a world of health benefits to your mouth outside of their primary teeth straightening function. We all know them as giving us the superior smiles we deserve, but you probably didn’t realise how much they achieve for us. This just goes to show that dental health and dental happiness can combine to create smiles that aren’t only straight and stunning, but well-maintained. Straightening your cosmetic smile works wonders for your happiness, but it also ensures the continued and optimised dental health we wish for all of our patients.

We offer some brilliant brace options such as like traditional fixed brace, the invisible Invisalign, and the fast-acting cosmetic Six Month Smiles. Get in touch with us today on 01384 376336 to book your first appointment.

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