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Silly question but...
Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 8:53 am
by Briggsy
I have a top tooth (adjacent to the my inscisors) that is behind my bottom teeth. The ortho said there is no problem about bringing this forward.... surely at some point this tooth will be the only tooth touching the bottom teeth before it moves forward enough to sit in front? I this is the case... how long will it be before I can bite together again? (The ortho said my overall treatment will be 10-14 months in total) It is already on the move and I just can't see how I'll be able to eat anything when its half way between where it is now and where it'll end up... any one shed some light on this for me please?
Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 9:40 am
by Andromeda
I had the same problem, it was my upper right lateral tooth. It wasn't very far behind the bottoms, just barely so I didnt think it would be much of a problem. It actually didn't even start out that way, it just got that way somehow during treatment. My ortho didn't bring it forward til just very recently and then he said it wouldn't come forward anymore and it was done moving. Well it was hitting on my lower teeth at that point and it was just about the only tooth hitting when I bit down so it was super frustrating. It wasn't directly on top of the lower tooth, more like a little forward of it but not enough that they didnt still touch - so the back of the top tooth was hitting on the front of the bottom tooth and not allowing me to fully bite down on my other teeth.
I am due to get my braces off on June 2 so little over a week from now, so I finally just went in on Thursday and told him he really needed to do something about it because it was so uncomfortable. He took a sander drill thingy and sanded some of the enamel off the teeth that were hitting and now it feels fine. I have no idea why he said he could not bring the tooth forward any more than it is now and why he had to resort to shaving enamel off my teeth. Your ortho told you it wouldn't be a problem for you so hopefully I'm sure yours will just move into place normally. I think maybe it would take about a month to 3 months at the most probably based on the movement I saw in mine and guesstimating. It is annoying to only be able to bite on one tooth but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't eat properly.
My top teeth don't come very far down over my lower teeth anyway, just barely, so it was only keeping my bite open a small amount. The molars weren't quite touching but they were close enough. I don't know how much your front teeth overlap the lowers so if yours overlap more then it might be a bit worse for you but I wouldn't worry too much since your ortho seems confident and your treatment time is pretty short overall so your teeth will probably get into position pretty quickly.
Sorry for the super-long comment but hope some part of it helped a little. I always tend to think I'm not explaining things right so I keep adding things haha. Good luck and you can always ask your ortho how much time it should take for that one tooth to move from start to finish.
Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 12:28 pm
by Briggsy
Dear Andromea
thanks for that... It sounds like my bite is similar in that my front teeth don't come far over my bottom ones (in fact the top two have sat almost on top but even in 5 days they have come forward. My bottom teeth didn't really need straightening but the Ortho said it would be quicker to pull the top set forward 1mm and the bottom ones back 1mm at the same time rather than just the top ones..... It was only about £300 more, but the idea of a shorter league time appealed (approx 1yr)
thanks again for the explanation
Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 3:27 pm
by Takako
I had a similar problem, but with my molars/premolars. As they've been tipping themselves into a proper upright position they've hit against each other several times, and it is indeed very frustrating! I couldn't eat spaghetti very well during that time because I couldn't chew in the back; the noodles just slipped right through!!!