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Compare the difference between
the before and after profiles
of this patient!
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While our first priority as an
orthodontic practice is oral health and not
the patient's appearance,
there
is one more aesthetic benefit to our Full Face
Functional Orthodontics that we would like to
mention before we discuss the health benefits
of our orthodontics: Beyond just straightening
teeth, our orthodontic approach often
provides significantly improved overall facial
balance to our patients. Because we do
far more than simply straighten teeth, we are
often able to actually enhance the position
and proportion of the chin, cheek bones, jaws,
and nose in relation to each other. We often
hear from our patients, "I
never dreamed braces could help me look this
good!"
Still
not sure?
Click
here
to
see more examples of the functional orthodontic
difference for yourself!!
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We frequently see how a new and improved
beautiful smile can brighten the live's our patient's by helping
them feel good about the way they look, but what really motivates
us is knowing that properly positioned jaws and teeth can
improve the patient's over-all health in ways that they never
expected. Our patients frequently say to us things like,
"Wow, that popping sensation
and stiffness in my jaw has gone away. That has been bothering
me for years!"
or, "I noticed that several months after I got braces,
I started getting far fewer migraine headaches. Is this a
coincidence?" or even
"My wife says that I've been
snoring far less lately. Could this have anything to do with
my orthodontics?" These
are just a few of the comments we have heard from patients
after or even during our treatment. Read
on to learn more about specifically how and why our orthodontics
can benefit you.
There are two serious conditions that
we wish to address that plague many Americans everyday, but
the symptoms are all too often tolerated or ignored until
serious damage or pain ensues. These conditions are
TMD and Sleep apnea.
TMD is a disorder of the joint connecting
your jaws that if left unattended can develope into a very
painful condition in which the damage can be permanent. The
key to avoiding this condition is prevention, not correction.
Click
here
to learn more about the signs and symptoms of TMD (temporomandibular
disorder).
Sleep Apnea, on the other hand, is the
medical term for the abnormal breathing usually indicated
by snoring. Snoring is typically thought of as simply bothersome
and embarrassing to the snorer, but
recent studies have now shown snoring to be far more than
that. Snoring is now viewed in the medical world as an indication
of a potentially life threatening condition called sleep apnea.
A direct link between sleep apnea and strokes
has been discovered.
Click
here to
learn more about the dangers of Snoring.
While seemingly unrelated, TMD
and Sleep Apnea have one major commonality: both conditions
are 85 - 90 % of the time caused by poor lower jaw position.
Only by correcting this poor lower jaw position can the TMD
or Sleep Apnea conditions in these cases be eliminated.
Orthodontics also commonly improve speech and
over-all body posture. We have both observed for ourselves
and heard testimony of improved speech and body posture in
both children and adults after our orthodontic treatment It
is quite common for a patient with a poorly positioned jaw
to unconsciously attempt to compensate for the strain in the
joint and
muscles by hanging their head lower and slumping their shoulders,
causing poor posture and a host of other problems like shoulder
and back pain.
It is simply amazing
to us still how bringing balance to the teeth, jaws, and faces
of our patients can impact their health and their lives in
so many ways!
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