If you have misaligned teeth, chances are that you sometimes feel self-conscious about your smile.
Often, people don’t realize that something has been bothering them until after it’s over, and this seems to be true for many of our patients here at Greater Vancouver Orthodontics, when it comes to their misaligned teeth.
Before Treatment
Misaligned teeth can be a problem in a variety of ways that can impact your health. But many of the same factors that have a negative impact on health can also make social situations stressful or intimidating.
Malocclusions can be an aesthetic issue, of course, but they can also make eating, breathing and even talking difficult. All of these health factors can also make social situations difficult for patients with misaligned teeth.
People dealing with these social problems, especially adults, have gotten used to dealing with them and have accepted them as part of day-to-day life. They often come up with subconscious ways to deal with these issues.
After Treatment
After their orthodontic treatment is complete - or indeed, sometimes even before that - many of our patients begin to notice how much a sense of self-consciousness had been holding them back.
They often comment on how much more confident they feel about small, day-to-day things like having their pictures taken, laughing, eating or talking, than they did before they had their teeth straightened.
Patients who never felt comfortable eating around other people now do so with ease. Those who avoided smiling and laughing in photos no longer give it a second thought.
Some even feel more confident when speaking up and offering their opinions at work because they’re no longer concerned about what others will think of their teeth.