Have you ever been reluctant to smile or thought your teeth could be straighter? Maybe you have pain in your jaw, or you believe your teeth simply do not fit together correctly. These are not merely cosmetic concerns. They may indicate that your oral health could benefit from orthodontic treatment. But how can you be sure whether you will have braces in the future?

This is not a choice to make lightly and alone. Awareness of the typical signs and symptoms that indicate the necessity of orthodontic treatment and recognizing the time to see a professional are the first steps to a healthier and more confident smile. So, how do you determine that braces are the way to go? Let us take a look.

What is Malocclusion?

When the top and bottom teeth do not fit together correctly, dentists and orthodontists will call this a malocclusion, or a bad bite. Imagine the teeth as cogs in a machine. The whole system can malfunction when they do not fit precisely. This not only affects the appearance of your bite but can also impact your overall oral health and well-being. According to the American Association of Orthodontists (AAO), a proper bite is essential to healthy teeth and gums, effective chewing, and comfortable jaw movement.

In addition to the aesthetic concerns, a crooked bite may cause many problems. Crooked or crowded teeth are notoriously hard to brush and floss effectively, which makes them prone to plaque accumulation, which increases the risk of tooth decay and gum disease. The uneven distribution of chewing forces caused by the misaligned bite may cause excessive wear on some teeth or even chips and cracks. It may also strain the jaw joints (temporomandibular joints or TMJ), causing pain, headaches, and difficulty opening or closing your mouth.

Furthermore, certain types of malocclusion can impact speech patterns, making it difficult to pronounce certain words. This can be open bites, like the front teeth not fitting together, which can affect how you bite into food and even cause mouth breathing, which comes with health complications. Understanding these consequences, how you bite into food can cause mouth breathing, which comes with health complications.

Vital Visual Signs That You Need Braces

Since you know why a proper bite is vital, it is time to become your oral health detective. Although only a specialist can diagnose the necessity of braces, a simple examination in the mirror might provide some typical visual indicators. However, the following possible symptoms can indicate that you need an orthodontic assessment.

Crowding or Crooked Teeth

Crowded or crooked teeth are one of the most typical and easiest to recognize indicators of a possible necessity to wear braces. This happens when the jaw is not large enough to accommodate all the teeth, causing them to twist, overlap, or push on one another. This may appear visually as teeth clearly out of alignment, rotated, or heavily overlapping with other teeth.

Mild crowding may include only slightly twisted teeth, often evident in the lower front arch. In contrast, severe crowding may cause teeth to be pushed entirely out of the dental arch or even impacted (unable to erupt). Crowding is not just an aesthetic issue. It is a significant problem for oral hygiene. If the teeth are closely spaced or overlapping, cleaning all the tooth surfaces is tough, using brushing and flossing.

Crowding forms excellent harboring places for food bits and plaque, causing a higher likelihood of tooth decay and gum disease. Attempting to floss between crowded teeth is difficult. When the floss is stuck or hard to move around, these spaces will not be thoroughly cleaned, and therefore, the risk of bacterial growth and cavities increases.

Moreover, badly crowded teeth may interfere with the functioning of the bite, causing uneven wear or excessive pressure on individual teeth. Although some online resources may indicate that overcrowded teeth can be fixed without braces, like by performing extensive bonding or veneers, the issue is usually only cosmetic, rather than correcting the underlying alignment issue. Almost inevitably, orthodontic treatment is necessary to establish the correct spacing and alignment of teeth in any case of crowded teeth, particularly where this affects oral health and the bite.

Spacing or Interspaces Between Teeth (Diastema)

At the other end of the continuum of crowding, we have gaps or spacing between teeth, also called diastema. This is any visible space between two or more teeth and can vary in size, from a small, subtle gap to a large, prominent space, most commonly between the two upper front teeth. Whereas gaps are a distinct feature that some people do not mind, excessive spacing could indicate underlying problems that influence oral health and performance.

These extensive gaps could impact the bite, whereby the neighboring teeth could shift, further misaligning with time. Gaps that are too wide could also predispose gums to injury by hard foods, and a lack of tooth contact could also reduce chewing efficiency. The most common causes of diastema are:

  • An incongruence between jaw size and tooth size, for example, small teeth in a large jaw
  • Loss of teeth, creating excess space
  • Habits, including long-term thumb-sucking in childhood, that move teeth forward

Oversized labial frenum, the strip of tissue linking your upper lip to the gums, is another common cause of the gap between the two front teeth. When this tissue runs too far down between the front teeth, it may not allow the front teeth to close.

Although gaps can be masked with cosmetic bonding or veneers, an orthodontic assessment may be needed to see whether the spacing is causing a problem with your bite or is a symptom of a more complex dental condition that would be better treated in an all-inclusive fashion.

Overbite and Overjet

In evaluating your bite, two common types of misalignment often occur:

  1. Overbite
  2. Overjet

Although they are applied interchangeably, they indicate different relationships between your lower and upper front teeth.

An overbite is the vertical overlap of the top front teeth in front of the bottom front teeth when your mouth is closed. Some overbite is normal. Ideally, the upper teeth would cover 10 to 20 percent of the lower teeth. When the upper teeth overlap much more than this, it is called a deep overbite, occasionally resulting in the lower teeth biting into the gum tissue behind the upper front teeth.

Overjet, however, refers to the horizontal extension of the upper front teeth beyond the lower front teeth. This is what many people term buck teeth. An overbite refers to the vertical overlap, while an overjet refers to the horizontal distance between the upper and lower incisors. You can usually observe an overjet by peeking at your profile: the upper teeth will significantly protrude in front of the lower lip.

Both deep overbites and pronounced overjets may cause functional problems. A severe overbite may wear the front teeth too much on the biting surfaces and irritate the gum tissue behind the upper teeth.

The upper teeth are more prone to injury or fracture due to falls or impact when there is a large overjet with the teeth protruding significantly. The two conditions could also cause jaw pain or discomfort as the jaw is pushed into an unnatural position to counter the misalignment. Addressing these bite issues is essential to enhance aesthetics, safeguard teeth, enhance chewing ability, and eliminate any possible jaw complications.

Underbite

An underbite is a special malocclusion in which the front lower teeth extend further out and in front of the upper front teeth when the jaws are clamped together. The “bulldog” appearance is often used to describe this condition because the lower jaw is over-protruded compared to the upper jaw. As opposed to the overbite, where the upper teeth are too far forward, covering the lower teeth, the underbite brings the reverse of this effect, where the lower teeth are more visible.

The given bite problem may cause severe functional difficulties. It can make chewing inefficient and complex, particularly with foods that must be incised with the front teeth. The improper contact can also result in faster and uneven wear of the front teeth and may result in chips, fractures, and sensitivity in the long run.

Moreover, an underbite usually indicates a skeletal imbalance: either the upper or lower jaw (or both) has grown disproportionately. The skeletal component may affect the aesthetics of the face, even making it look older than it should, due to the prominent lower jaw. Since underbites often result from how jaws grow, treating them early and using interceptive orthodontics can be advantageous. It will help them develop properly and possibly prevent more intensive treatment as an adult.

Crossbite

A crossbite is when one or more upper teeth are positioned in front of the lower teeth when you bite down. Just think of placing a lid on a box that keeps slipping inside instead of resting on top, rather than staying on top of the box, and this is what teeth do in a crossbite. This malocclusion may involve single teeth, part of the teeth, or the whole arch. Two types exist:

  • An anterior crossbite, in which the front upper teeth bite behind the lower front teeth and look much like an underbite but may involve only a few teeth
  • A posterior crossbite, in which the upper back teeth bite inside the lower back teeth

The consequences of crossbite are not only aesthetic. A posterior crossbite, particularly a unilateral one, may cause the jaw to move to the side during closure, which will cause asymmetrical jaw development in the long run. This may lead to the visible asymmetry of the face.

Also, the wrong biting relationship may exert unnecessary forces on the teeth involved, resulting in overuse of the tooth enamel. The continuous friction may also lead to gum recession around the affected teeth, exposing the tooth roots, which makes them sensitive. Treating a crossbite ensures the jaws develop evenly, avoids unbalanced tooth wear, and safeguards gum health.

Functional Signs and Symptoms

Although visual signs are a decent place to start evaluating yourself, there are cases when you cannot see that you need orthodontic treatment when you look in the mirror. Instead, your body may communicate via different functional signs and symptoms that there is a bite issue.

These are non-visual signs that tend to be associated with how your teeth and jaw move when performing everyday tasks like eating and speaking, or they can take the form of pain that you may not directly attribute to your bite. These are less obvious symptoms that can be as important as crooked teeth.

Hard to Chew or Bite

Do you habitually bite your tongue or the inner cheek when you eat? Have you ever chewed food automatically with only one side of your mouth? These trivial discomforts may be necessary signals of a bite problem. Misaligned teeth fail to meet, making it difficult to chew and grind food effectively. Rather than a smooth and synchronized chewing action, your teeth can clash or not meet, resulting in inefficient chewing and possible damage to your soft tissues.

This chewing problem may be caused by an array of malocclusions, including open bites where the front teeth do not touch, crossbites where the teeth are clashing in the wrong direction, or extreme crowding, which prevents teeth from making any contact.

Once chewing becomes a challenge, it may affect digestion and even the enjoyment of food. Constantly chewing on one side of the mouth also causes your teeth to wear unevenly, placing an overload on the jaw joint on the same side. A sure indication that your bite is off balance is when you find eating increasingly uncomfortable or inefficient.

Pain, Clicking, or Popping of the Jaw

Chronic jaw pain, the clicking or popping sensation when you open and close your mouth, or a cracking sound near your ears are all possible indicators that your temporomandibular joints (TMJ) are strained. These joints, which are located on the sides of your head in front of your ears, are the ones that connect your jawbone with your skull and are essential when talking, chewing, and yawning. Although several factors may cause TMJ disorders, an uneven bite is one of the most widespread.

When your teeth are not fitting together correctly, your jaw muscles and joints are forced to overwork and be in abnormal positions to compensate. This chronic tension may result in inflammation, muscle fatigue, and TMJ pain and dysfunction.

You may have headaches, ear pain, tenderness in and around the jaw, and pain when opening your mouth wide. Although orthodontic therapy using braces may go a long way to improving TMJ symptoms by resolving the underlying bite problems and helping the jaw to settle into a more balanced position, a complete TMJ diagnosis is complicated and usually involves the assessment of a specialist. If you experience these symptoms, it is essential to consult a dental professional.

Speech Impediments (Lisp)

The position of the teeth is essential in how you produce sounds when speaking. For example, sounds like “s, z, t, and th” depend on the contact between your tongue and teeth. In case of any severe gaps between the teeth or the teeth being severely misaligned (having a prominent overjet or an open bite), your tongue may struggle to make the necessary contact to produce certain sounds. This tends to cause a lisp or other impediments in speech.

It usually involves the tongue protruding between the teeth due to an open bite, in which the upper and lower front teeth do not touch. Likewise, big spaces (diastema) may leave space for air escape regarding pronunciation. Although it is often necessary to engage in speech therapy to help rectify entrenched speech habits, it is sometimes the case that the root cause of these difficulties, which is dental misalignments, can be addressed through braces. In these cases, the severity of these problems can be reduced or even eliminated. Orthodontics can give the tongue the proper anatomical structure to make sounds effectively and precisely by aligning teeth into the correct position.

Children and Teens Need Braces Too

According to the American Association of Orthodontists (AAO), children should undergo an orthodontic check-up at 7 years old. This early assessment does not necessarily mean that braces will be put on. Nonetheless, it does allow for the early evaluation of possible issues that may be addressed in the early stages, which is commonly referred to as Phase 1 orthodontics.

A child's jaw and facial bones are still growing during this age, which is why this age is a good time to guide the child's growth, correct harmful habits like thumb-sucking or mouth breathing, and prevent bite problems.

Among the signs that parents should look for are:

  • Early or late loss of baby teeth
  • Problems chewing
  • Mouth breathing
  • Thumb-sucking beyond age five
  • Crowded or blocked-out teeth
  • Jaw shifting or clicking
  • Upper and lower teeth that do not meet correctly

Timely treatment may allow space to accommodate permanent teeth, minimize the need to extract teeth later, make future treatment easier, and even enhance a child's self-esteem by correcting visible problems. It is about preventative care to precondition a healthy, well-aligned adult smile.

Find a Dentist Near Me

Choosing whether to get braces is a significant milestone in achieving a healthier, more confident smile. Although in-home tests can give preliminary indications, do not forget that a qualified Hawthorne specialist should make a final diagnosis.

Contact the Ganji Dental team today at 310-643-8045 for an assessment of whether you need braces. Our skilled staff will properly evaluate your needs and advise you on the best options to give you your unique smile.