Dr. Mike Firouzian believes in helping all his patients find the best treatment option for them. This includes people looking for orthodontic treatment. As a cosmetic dentist, Dr. Firouzian offers a variety of ways for his patients in Columbus to get a straight, beautiful smile.
He offers traditional braces with wires and brackets. He offers Invisalign for people who want to straighten their smiles without having the wires and brackets. Dr. Firouzian even offers Six Month Smiles for people who need minor smile correction and want to get it done quickly.
However, Dr. Firouzian also recognizes that these normal orthodontics approaches aren’t always enough to give people the results they need. So he offers other orthodontic approaches, too.
Here’s how to tell when you might be looking for something more than traditional teeth straightening.
Your Child Is Too Young
Not everyone is looking for orthodontic treatment for themselves. Often, we talk to parents trying to help their children.
Sometimes, children have problems that might be helped with an early orthodontic interception. We offer Healthy Start for this situation. This approach, which might start as early as age 2, can help head off problems like:
- Breathing problems
- Sleep difficulties
- Bedwetting
- Behavior problems
- Learning difficulties
- Poor development
- Chronic sickness
These common problems can be related to poor development of the jaws. If your child’s jaws are not growing properly, their airway might also not develop sufficiently. The result could be breathing and sleeping problems, which triggers other problems like bedwetting, bad behavior, learning difficulties, and chronic sickness.
Often, Healthy Start can help your child avoid the need for braces later, while offering good health benefits for many years.
A Dentist Recommends Extractions
Dental crowding and crooked teeth often occurs because there is just not enough room in your jaw for all your teeth. To solve this problem, some dentists recommend extracting your teeth. This makes room, and then the rest of your teeth can be easily straightened.
While this approach works, it means losing your precious teeth. Natural teeth are irreplaceable. Even dental implants don’t quite live up to the full benefits of keeping your teeth. So it’s worthwhile considering whether there might be another way.
There might be. Facial growth orthodontics can help you get enough room in your jaw for all your teeth by expanding your jaw. Although most of us find our jaws stop growing by the time we reach young adulthood, we all have the potential for further growth, with the right stimulation. This is what facial growth orthodontics provides. It applies the proper forces in the right way to encourage the jaw to grow. This works for both the upper and lower arches, so you can benefit whether the extractions were recommended for the top or bottom.
You Have Breathing Problems
We talked about how children might experience breathing difficulties related to poor jaw development. The same is true of adults, too. Many people learn to get by despite breathing problems, until they understand how big their problems are. They might be diagnosed with sleep apnea, find that they have trouble trying to start even a light exercise regimen, or get hit especially hard by even a minor COVID case.
For people with poorly developed airways, even a minor disruption in breathing can show just how marginal their breathing has always been. Fortunately, it’s possible to improve breathing by expanding the jaws, which help shape and support the airway. Traditional orthodontics are not designed to achieve this result. However, facial growth orthodontics stimulates the type of growth that can make it easier for you to breathe while you sleep and while you’re awake.
You Have Bite Problems
There are many potential bite problems you might be dealing with now. One of the most challenging is temporomandibular joint disorders (TMJ or TMD). TMJ not only leads to serious tooth damage and jaw pain, it can cause headaches, neck pain, back pain, and more.
Traditional orthodontics move your teeth to make them straight and attractive. They don’t necessarily help improve your bite. They can affect some cosmetic and functional bite problems like crossbite, overbite, and underbite, but many problems they simply cannot affect.
To improve your bite, Dr. Firouzian offers a special type of orthodontics, called neuromuscular orthodontics. This orthodontic approach focuses on the function of your jaw, including the harmonious interaction between jaws, teeth, muscles, and nerves.
You Are Unhappy with Your Facial Appearance
Traditional orthodontics can improve the appearance of your smile. However, it doesn’t typically improve the appearance of your face. However, facial growth orthodontics can. If you are unhappy because you have a sunken face, receding chin, undeveloped cheekbones, or other problems related to the shape and size of your bone structure, facial growth orthodontics may be able to help.
By stimulating the growth of your jaw and skull, you might be able to achieve the results you want.
Find the Best Orthodontics in Columbus for You
Not sure what orthodontic approach might be best for you? Since Dr. Firouzian offers many different approaches to orthodontics, he can help you find the right one for you. Please call (614) 848-5001 or email us today to schedule an appointment at Firouzian Dentistry in Columbus, OH.
