The other day I was asked a couple of interesting questions. The question was: How crooked is too crooked to straighten? Are my teeth too crooked for Invisalign? And, it made me realize that one thing that is seldom addressed is what makes treatment for braces an easy as opposed to a difficult case to treat. And, what exactly is too difficult to treat or not treatable at all.
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Chronic teeth grinding or Bruxism
is a condition that many people suffer from but are mostly unaware of.
Bruxism can occur during the day or night but for most people occurs at night. This habit can cause significant damage to the teeth and cause discomfort to the structures that hold your jaw and TMJ in place. Although many speculate what causes people to clench and grind often times there is no clear cause for it and may resolve on its own.
Common signs that you may be grinding your teeth are:
- Flattening of biting surfaces of teeth
- Pain in jaw muscles and temples
- Pain when biting in molar area
- Scalloping or indentation of the sides of tongue
- Scooping out of flat part of teeth along gum line
- Popping and clicking of the jaw
Even America’s taste in beauty has changed over the years. In general, we’ve moved away from the windswept and overprocessed looks of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s as seen with Michelle Pfiefer, Cindy Crawford and Farrah Fawcett, to focus on fresh-faced, more natural looking women like Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Alba and Angelina Jolie.
The New Vs. The Old Standards of Beauty:
- Full natural faces vs. angular faces with high cheekbones
- Round to almond shaped eyes with thicker less arched eyebrows vs. Cat eyes with skinny angular eybrows
- Straight noses with longer bridges vs. perky, ski-slope noses
- Full upper and lower lips vs. angular pouts w/ thinner upper lips and a fuller lower lip
- Natural straight white teeth vs. Bright white ear to ear smile with large uniform flat edged smiles.
In recent years, many celebrities have gone through smile transformations that have enhanced and improved their looks. Others, have had cosmetic dental procedures that leave us scratching our heads:
In deep need of a drastic smile improvement, Nicholas Cage got one and now has the picture perfect Hollywood smile we have all come to recognize.
Looks like “Iron” Mike Tyson traded in the gold teeth for a nice set of natural looking ones. If you ask your local commodities broker, a bad trade considering the price of gold these days, but I’m sure most dentists would agree it was about time. I especially like that he preserved the trademark space between his two front teeth.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear the conversation Hilary Duff had with her dentist before deciding to place porcelain veneers on her teeth. From what I understand, she did have some chipping and wear on her teeth but the initial result was way too aggressive a solution. In my opinion, the latest redo of her veneers is more natural looking.
Katie Price’s first set of veneers were okay to start but her latest set are way too short, flat, and chiclet looking. To make matters worse, she has reported extreme sensitivity in her teeth after having them done.
To improve the situation, I would recommend she dial-it-down a notch with the shade of the teeth and have them lengthened to more natural proportions.
What celebrity do you think has a picture-perfect smile?]]>
I would love to have been a fly on the wall to hear the conversation Hilary Duff had with her dentist before deciding to place porcelain veneers on her teeth. From what I understand, she did have some chipping and wear on her teeth but the initial result was way too aggressive a solution. In my opinion, the latest redo of her veneers is more natural looking.
