BITE RIGHT

A: The main purpose your teeth serve is to chew food. This is accomplished as the food is mashed between the upper and lower teeth through a kind of grinding process. Obviously, the effectiveness of this process will be greatly determined by how efficiently the teeth are able to meet and break up the food particles.

It should not, therefore, be surprising to learn that most of what happens in a dental office has to do with either maintaining or improving the way the upper and lower teeth come together. After all, very few people want to go through life eating nothing more challenging than cream of wheat, liquids or mush.

So, when a tooth is repaired, the main reason it is done (other than to alleviate pain) is to "save" the tooth so that you will be able to chew and bite with vim and vigor.

So, we dentists do a lot of things to keep those teeth chopping in the right way. We fill them (reconstruction), make crowns and bridges (to keep them in place), move them (orthodontia), clean and polish them (to retard decay) and if necessary replace them entirely (dentures). But all of it is done in the name of maintaining or improving the patient's "bite".

For a bite to be considered good, the teeth should gently interlock like the gears on a wheel. All the valleys and groves in the upper teeth should be the reverse of those in the lower so that everything comes together in perfect harmony.

But who's kidding who? We humans have never managed to do anything in perfect harmony... and certainly bringing our teeth together perfectly is not something many of us can do either.

When your bite is not right many kinds of problems can develop. When chewing is not done as well as it should be it can, in some cases, lead to digestive problems, pains in the jaw called T.M.J.( this can feel like an earache), headaches, and may even show up in many areas of the body that teeth do not seem at all teeth related.

Also, the teeth themselves can wear down faster since there is more friction than there ought to be.

An excessively hard bite called "clenching" can cause an array of problems including headaches, imbalance, loose teeth, muscle spasms, and temperomandibular joint disease (T.M.J.). The latter affecting the jaw joints leading to clicking, in the jaw joints and perhaps arthritis in the joint. Usually, clenching occurs at night when you sleep. If you wake up in the morning and your mouth and jaw feel tired like you have been talking all night, "clenching" could be the reason. Another bite problem is also called "bruxism" or grinding. This also has a similar effect on the jaw like clenching. This usually occurs at night but can lead to excessive wearing down of the teeth. To control these and other bite problems we do at our office do a detailed bite analysis and the treatment involves preventative and corrective measures. Bite problems are usually covered by your Medical Insurance and can be treated conservatively in 90% of the cases. If left untreated they can lead to the loss of teeth and even surgery of the jaw.

In the past, dentists repaired worn but otherwise healthy teeth by filing them down and fitting them with caps or crowns, sometimes weakening their structure. Cosmetic dentists can now restore tooth enamel with procedures that not only improve the appearance of teeth, but also strengthen them all in a few almost drilless and painless visits. Techniques include bonding porcelain laminate veneers to the too surface and affixing strong porcelain onlays to back teeth. These dental restorations usually last five to fifteen years.