Also called buck teeth, an overbite can affect your ability to bite, chew, and even breathe. While many people with minor overbites don't experience complications, a severe overbite can lead to lifelong breathing difficulties.
Your jaw is also an entry point to your airways, making them an interconnected system. When improperly positioned, your jaw reduces the size of your airway. This can lead to bad habits, like mouth breathing. Children with untreated mouth breathing can experience lifelong respiratory problems.
If left untreated, an overbite could cause significant health complications. These include irreparable damage to teeth from abnormal positioning and possible jaw pain including temporomandibular joint disorders (TMJ).
Unfortunately, overbites not only get worse or more pronounced with age, but they cause a number of symptoms that can get worse with age as well, including headaches, trouble chewing, sinus issues, jaw pain, gum disease, and/or tooth decay.
It is never too late to fix an overbite. The most prominent danger overbite poses to one's oral health is the degradation of the enamel and teeth structure. As long as you haven't lost your teeth, you can always fix an overbite.
There really is no upper age limit for getting braces. As long as you have teeth and they are healthy, you may benefit from orthodontic treatment. Because of advances in dentistry, especially the diagnosis and treatment of periodontal disease (gum disease), patients are keeping their natural teeth longer than ever.
It needs to be corrected, as it can lead to decay, recurring headaches, or gum infections and disease. An overbite is not a normal bite, and therefore can be dangerous to your oral well-being if you leave it untreated.
The Importance of Correcting an Overbite
If you have an overbite over four millimeters, you should get it fixed. Your lower teeth are not visible when you smile or talk. Many people find this unattractive, which can harm your personal and professional life. More significantly, an overbite can cause significant pain.
You can live with an overbite, but letting an overbite go untreated can have serious consequences for your teeth, mouth, and overall health. It's best to correct an overbite to achieve a healthy, straight smile, to avoid gum disease, excessive wear and tear on the teeth, or even tooth loss.
Shortness of breath — known medically as dyspnea — is often described as an intense tightening in the chest, air hunger, difficulty breathing, breathlessness or a feeling of suffocation. Very strenuous exercise, extreme temperatures, obesity and higher altitude all can cause shortness of breath in a healthy person.
Corrective jaw surgery – also called orthognathic surgery – is performed by an oral and maxillofacial surgeon (OMS) to correct a wide range of minor and major skeletal and dental irregularities, including the misalignment of jaws and teeth. Surgery can improve breathing, chewing and speaking.
TMJ problems and sleep disorders have a relationship. One can cause the other, and vice versa. This is because when your jaw is misaligned, it can lead to a blocked airway, especially when you sleep.
Poor jaw position can cause severe pain in an untreated overbite and may worsen. Psychological conditions: Various mental health issues can arise from the appearance of an overbite, as well as the discomfort of the malocclusion itself. Potential problems include low self-esteem, anxiety and a reluctance to smile.
You cannot fix overbite naturally; braces or surgery will be needed to correct an overbite. However, you can prevent some cases of overbite when you cure some childhood habits like thumb sucking, pencil chewing — overuse of dummies for babies.
Overbite is considered normal when the vertical overlap covers 30% of the teeth or is 2-4mm — when it is 4-6mm or more, it is known as a deep overbite or deep bite. When the lower teeth are completely covered by the upper and even go into the lower gum, it is known as a severe overbite.
Braces: About $4,500, depending on the dentist. Traditional aligners: About $5,000, depending on the dentist. Doctor-directed, at-home aligners: About $2,000, depending on the company you choose. Surgery: Between $20,000 to $40,000, depending on the severity of your overbite.
An overbite, open bite and significant spacing between the front teeth are common culprits of speech impediments. However, underbites and crossbites can also restrict the tongue and affect how clearly we speak.
Invisalign aligners can almost always fix an overbite these days. Because of the technological advances in Invisalign design and the ability to attach rubber bands, overbites can often be treated just as effectively with aligners as with traditional braces.
Although the length of your overbite treatment will vary, it will usually take up to two years to completely correct an overbite.
Does Fixing An Overbite Change Face Shape? Yes, fixing an overbite can change the shape of your face. Overbites make your face look asymmetric. Furthermore, they can cause discomfort, and they may also affect speech and make wearing dentures difficult.
From the front, an overbite is noticeable as a misalignment of lips, where the Cupid's bow does not align with the middle of the lower lip. The bodily structure is determined by the shape, size, and alignment of bones, so an overbite can significantly affect your jawline, and by extension, your facial structure.