The thing with being around teeth all day is that you can tend to become somewhat obsessed with them. Sometimes at Amsel & Wilkins, we find that our passion for a really great smile means that even in our private lives it’s impossible not to notice the state of people’s teeth when we first meet them. ‘Oh, she’s got quite some crowding going on there and her incisors never really did descend properly’ or ‘Wow! Now that’s what I call an amazing smile! White but not too white, straight but not overpoweringly uniform teeth.’ Those might be the thoughts going through our minds as we pay for our petrol or chat to new acquaintances at parties.

Sometimes we think, ‘Now if you’d had your teeth straightened 20 years ago, you wouldn’t soon be needing a visit to the dentist to deal with that gum disease that’s forming from all that tartar that’s built up on your teeth.’

Never too late

The thing about braces, is that it is never too late to get straighter teeth. The early teens may be the optimum time for sorting out issues to do with misalignments but that’s because the jawbone is still growing and so it’s possible to deal with misalignments in the jaws, where the teeth don’t meet properly. This is a separate issue from wonky teeth, but wasn’t treated as such back in the day.

Teeth can be moved around in the jaw at any time in life. It’s just a case of applying sustained pressure to the tooth in one direction. After 72 hours of this pressure, the jawbone responds by breaking down bone matter in front of the tooth in the direction of the pressure and building up bone behind it. The thing that takes all the time to move is not the teeth, but the bite. So, in fact, in Banbury you can get straighter teeth in 6 months, rather than 2 or 3 years.

Straighter teeth are healthier teeth because they provide fewer hard-to-clean places for plaque and tartar to build up and harbour the bacteria that lead to gum disease, which causes teeth to fall out.