Your teeth will look "straight" to a lay person because the only thing you are really seeing is the alignment of each tooth in relation to the one next to it.Lalaloo wrote:Wow, i am really impressed. I am only in my 7th day with braces, but seeing MrsCharisma's pictures I was wondering why do we have to wear braces for 18-24-26 months if the teeth are strenghtening in only 9 or 10 months. I am wearing braces for crowded upper teeth. If they will look good in less than a year, can I ask my ortho to remove my braces (and put my fixed retainer on, of course) since they are not working on my overjet or something else?
The complicated part of orthodontics isn't making the arches aligned, its making your bite come together in a functional way. If your bite was perfect once your teeth were aligned, you teeth would have never become crooked in the first place. Your teeth become misaligned because they have to adapt into a functional bite when your jaws aren't perfectly aligned.
The year or so of adjustments after teeth look "straight" is where your bite is being corrected so that the result will be stable. If you didn't have a good bite, your teeth would just relapse to where they were before in order to find a stable bite.
There is no "stabilizing period" for your teeth - that period is the year after your braces are off when you are wearing your retainer for the maximum time. The dr. will be moving your teeth all the way up to the day of deband.
