WILL MY TEETH GO BACK TO HOW IT WAS BEFORE, AFTER THE TREATMENT?
WILL MY TEETH GO BACK TO HOW IT WAS BEFORE, AFTER THE TREATMENT?
RETENTION From DIGITAL ORTHODONTICS - Solo Edition by Dr. Bak Nguyen
Yes, unfortunately. And this is of natural course. Your teeth will relapse because you are human and alive. All orthodontics treatments, braces and aligners are temporary. Our body keeps growing at the cartilage joint. In the face, that means the ears, the nose, and the chin will always be growing throughout our lives.
The chin is advancing because of the cartilage at the other end of the lower jaw, the condyles. As children, we grow, having our lower jaw catching up with the upper jaw. Well, in adulthood, the same phenomenon keeps happening, only at a much slower rate.
For this reason, as our lower jaw is moving forward, it will push the lower anterior teeth in a collision course to the back of the upper anterior teeth. As a consequence, the lower anterior will collapse and start to shift. It is then, a matter of weeks and months before the upper anterior teeth match the crowding of the lower anterior.
The matching of the upper to the lower is inevitable because of the forces they are submitted to, between the tongue pushing forward and the lips pushing back. The teeth will respond to that couple of forces until they find support from one another.
This is why all orthodontic treatments will be outgrown eventually unless retention and maintenance are kept through the years. It is not a relapse, even if that is the term that we are using, it is the continuous adaptation to our growing body.
And no, wisdom teeth are not responsible for the relapse or crowding of the lower anterior. As a fact, people without wisdom will still experience the lower crowding over time. It is because of the continuous growth of the lower jaw forward.