How Correcting Your Bite Can Improve Your Overall Health
At Discover Orthodontics, we're proud to help patients of all ages throughout Burlington, Brampton, and the surrounding areas achieve gorgeous new smiles. Many of our patients seek orthodontic treatment for aesthetic reasons, as a new smile can dramatically improve your appearance and self-confidence. But what many patients don't realize is that the benefits of a new smile affect more than just looks – and orthodontic treatment can have a lasting impact on your overall health.
How Braces Improve General Health
We all know that improving your smile comes with a host of aesthetic benefits, but orthodontic treatment comes with real health benefits, as well. For starters, poor alignment causes the teeth to suffer from uneven wear and tear. This can create weak spots in the enamel, leaving them more vulnerable to cavities. Crooked teeth also fit together poorly, which puts stress on the jaws and often leads to temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ or TMD). This can result in headaches, facial pain, and bite problems that range from mild annoyances to severe, cripplingly painful conditions. Orthodontic treatment can fix these problems by properly aligning the teeth and allowing them to fit together correctly.
The health benefits of orthodontic treatment go even further than this. Crooked teeth offer the perfect hiding places for food, bacteria, and plaque, making them much harder to keep clean. This can increase the likelihood of dental decay, cavities, and gum disease over the course of your lifetime, leading to a host of dental problems. But beyond that, gum disease has been linked to certain systemic (full-body) conditions such as cardiovascular disease: in studies, researchers found that the bacteria found in gum disease were the same kind implicated in heart disease. This suggests a link between gum disease and cardiovascular disease, which might mean that oral health contributes to overall health in ways we are only beginning to understand.
Schedule a Consultation for Braces in Burlington & Brampton, ON
Orthodontic treatment improves the look of your smile, but it also provides lasting health benefits that affect your entire body. If you're interested in pursuing a new smile for yourself, we can help. Contact us today to learn more about how orthodontic treatment can help you improve the health of your smile and body. We'll help you understand your options, choose the treatment that makes sense for your lifestyle, and start on the road to a beautiful new smile!