Having overcrowded teeth has usually been equated by the dental profession to having too many teeth. Unless you have more than 32 teeth, as a human being you can’t have too many teeth, even if your jaw feels overcrowded. At Healthy Smile Centre, we have a different approach to orthodontics in Erskineville and the problem of overcrowding, especially in children.

Overcrowding: what we don’t do

If your dentist tells you that the only way to fix your overcrowding, or that of your child, is to extract some of the teeth and then pull the rest back into the resultant gaps, be wary. It’s an easy solution, but it results in a smaller, flatter face, which is not very attractive. Your teeth perform a little known, but vital, function, which is holding your cheeks out. Take away some of your teeth, draw the rest in, and you damage the face. Our orthodontics in Erskineville don’t ever do this.

Overcrowding: what we do instead

It takes more time and effort to find out what the teeth are overcrowded in the first place. When you come to Healthy Smile Centre for orthodontics in Erskineville, we carry out a holistic assessment of your oral and general health. We check out how you breathe, speak, chew and swallow. Are you using your muscles correctly to do all these things? Are your airways properly open? If not, it can affect the growth of your face and needs to be corrected before braces treatment can be looked at.

Bring in your child

We can start to see the effects of children not breathing properly from about the age of 2-3, so it is well worth bringing your wee ones in for a check-up. More and more children are suffering from overcrowded jaws, and this is often caused by eating softer foods than in the past, and also children becoming more sedentary, getting breast-fed for shorter times and even from pollutants in the air. There are other symptoms, including mouth breathing and bed-wetting associated with this. All is not lost, however; we can treat your child to make sure they grow up with a good wide jaw.