If your bite doesn’t feel normal, you might need an occlusal adjustment. If you are like many people, you might never have heard the term occlusal adjustment. However, the term merely refers to adjusting your teeth when they come together when closing your mouth.
People with fillings or crowns remember how awkward it was biting when the restoration was higher than their other teeth. At that time, the periodontist in Houston might have requested you to bite on Mylar paper to identify the high points and file the problematic teeth until you found biting comfortable.
The Procedure for Occlusal Adjustment
If you encounter problems with your bite and visit the Houston periodontist, they will perform an occlusion analysis asking you to bite down on Mylar paper to obtain traces of color in specific spots where excessive contact or pressure is present. The occlusal adjustments procedure involves targeting the precise locations to remove microscopic layers of the teeth to ensure a correct bite and alignment.
In some cases, occlusal adjustments, Houston might recommend fixes like crowns or fillings as replacements to ensure optimal contact. Teeth sitting far below the tooth line benefit from crowns when height improves.
When Would You Require Occlusal Adjustment?
Occlusal adjustment becomes necessary when your teeth do not align correctly to create oral health issues later. For example, you might become affected by problems like temporomandibular joint disorder, broken teeth, gum recession, and bruxism.
The adjustment becomes necessary to change the force you use when chewing. For example, if you have misaligned teeth, you tend to use more excessive pressure than required, damaging the joints. Fortunately, the occlusal adjustment helps alleviate the situation to improve your health dramatically.
Benefits of Occlusal Adjustment
Occlusal adjustments have many benefits because it helps prevent jaw pain resulting from an uncomfortable bite and can prevent bruxism. This condition causes clench and teeth grinding. In addition, the adjustment can improve problems with your temporomandibular joint by reducing the forces you apply when eating foods every day. Best of all, it enhances the appearance of your teeth.
Occlusal adjustments also result in long-term comfort and health benefits because the periodontist might also make changes to your bite using dental restorations such as orthodontics or suggest oral appliances like night guards. Night guards are worn when sleeping to prevent damage to your teeth associated with grinding and clenching them.
Protruding teeth are standard with malocclusion and misaligned bites. However, the problem causes additional issues besides making chewing uncomfortable. Excess contact between your teeth results in chipped or broken teeth. Malocclusion and misaligned bites also cause bruxism resulting in grinding and clenching of your teeth. You might also experience receding gums, jaw soreness, bone loss, tooth loss, headaches, neck pain, and damage to existing dental work.
You might not think the problem is concerning if a couple of your teeth are higher or lower than your other teeth. Unfortunately, the issue can cause additional problems if left untreated.
How to Determine Whether You Need Occlusal Adjustment?
Determining whether you need occlusal adjustment by yourself is challenging and requires help from an experienced periodontist. Perhaps the only way to tell whether you need this therapy is by looking at your protruding teeth or bite problems affecting you to make you feel you must seek treatment for the problem from the specialist.
Occlusal issues don’t have over-the-counter remedies and require help from a periodontic specialist in treating problems described earlier in this article. If visiting your dentist doesn’t scare you, seeing a periodontist should be a similar experience. After taking impressions of your teeth to identify the specific areas where you might exert excessive pressure when performing everyday activities, the specialist treats the condition by filing down parts of the tooth structure impacting your bite.
When you receive an occlusal adjustment from the Houston periodontist, you help yourself by getting your teeth aligned and correcting the way they fit together. In addition, you prevent a host of problems that accompany this issue if you leave the condition untreated. Therefore whenever you experience pain or discomfort in your teeth, gums, and jaw or think you might have symptoms of malocclusion, you must consider seeking treatment for the condition from a periodontist to help alleviate the issue and prevent significant damage to your teeth and your quality of life.
Dentist South Houston who performs such treatments to help you alleviate the problems you experience with your teeth by adjusting your bite.
