“ I have gaps in my teeth and what do I do?”
We get that on a regular basis and I still remember this one patient said to me, "Oh, this gap is so big that I can drive a bus through it." That's funny. It's funny what people say these days, and it's quite true to some degree because the tongue is such a sensitive organ that even the smallest holes feels like the biggest of holes there!
So, I can see where the patient is coming from but that's how annoying gaps can be.
- Your tongue is going to keep playing with it all the time and could potentially affect your day to day life.
- Confidence levels because if you don't like the way it looks, you probably won't smile.
- And studies have shown that when you don't smile, you don't portray as being confident and that could affect other things in life as well.
Well I guess coming back to the topic,
“What can I do to fix these gaps? How do I close those gaps?
I guess before we start, talking about all the options, the general options on how to fix this. This advice is obviously general in nature. It's hard to find out what works for you without having to see what's the preexisting condition as it is, because everyone is different, everyone's needs are different everyone's ways of approaching it is different as well.
So going back to the topic now, I normally like to say this first, yes it's important to fix the problem, but in my opinion, it's more important to fix the cause, why? Because if we're not fixing the cause if we're just addressing the problem only then as long as the cause is there, the problem is gonna keep happening over and over and over again. So you're going to have this constantly coming back to fix the same issue over and over again, which could cost you time obviously, because you have to make drive here or to your local professional, but also cost-wise as well. So it's important to figure out what the causes are, but I guess that's another topic altogether, but today let's talk about how are we going to fix gaps.
Now, there are generally two ways of fixing gaps, one restoratively by placing things over the top, or orthodontically by moving the teeth to permanently close those gaps.
- Restoratively
- Fillings
- Veneers
- Crowns
- Upside: Quicker & Cheaper
- Downside: Addressing 1-2 teeth at a time limits how nice the end result will be. You may need to address a lot of teeth which could make this option very costly as well.
- Now also we normally say, if you've got gaps everywhere else, and you just trying to, you just want to close the two front teeth. And if we do that, what happens is those two teeth might look big, bigger than the other teeth. So you might not, yes the gaps will be closed, but it may not look as nice as you'd like it to be. Sometimes even passing off those two teeth looking a lot bigger than what it should be. And in some cases, depending on the materials as well we may have to drill quite a bit of your tooth hole. So you're losing tooth structure as we are closing gaps at the same time.
- Orthodontically
- So now the other option would be to move teeth orthodontic ally or move it bodily. So just pretty much move the two teeth together. Well how do we do that? Goes without saying, using braces or clear aligners, like Invisalign and whatnot, to close the gaps up.
At Tooth Heaven, we use multiple brands different brands to do it. And there are many options ranging in terms of, from the cheapest to the most expensive. And we'll go through every pros and cons of every single thing and let you decide whatever you want.
But I suppose the going back to moving the teeth bodily the downside of moving teeth there is the time because it's going to take a lot longer because your teeth got to move. So it could take you months or sometimes up to two years to move things around.
More so of course the cost, although as I mentioned earlier, depending on how many gaps you have, the cost might be a lot more restoratively and it might be almost the same as, or even cheaper orthodontically that restoratively. So depending on the materials and types and gaps and what problems you have and what you want most to the achieve.
It may be cheaper or maybe around the same cost. But I guess the upside is, is that of course we’re moving your teeth we are not just moving one or two teeth, we’re moving everything else.
So in other words, you are fixing everything else at the same time. Of course the side bonus is it looks nicer because it will solve everything. You can chew better too, because your teeth will start connecting a lot better and not hitting on weird angles and grinding it off too. And you don't have to shave teeth off too, not like the other option where you may have to shave some teeth off.
So I guess, there's a lot of things to consider when it comes to closing gaps and there's no one way or a hard fast rule on how to close gaps, because just like everyone is different every option is, every way of approaching every single person is different as well.
So how we work at Tooth Heaven, as I mentioned earlier, is we don't like to tell people what to do.
We find that our role is purely just to advise you to point out what the, to try to figure out what the causes are and try to come up with all the options we can think of to fix it from the cheapest to the most expensive, and then telling you the pros and cons of every single option, and then letting you decide whatever you want, and then we'll just support whatever you choose there.
So look, I hope this video has been helpful in some way or form and thank you for watching and until the next video. Thanks, bye now.
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