Section 4-3. Be careful about sudden changes of teeth alignment

Teeth alignment in the front teeth is suddenly worsened resulting in projecting the teeth. This is mostly associated with distorted bites of the 1st bicuspid on the upper jaw and balance of the back teeth. There is an old saying “Big bright eyes and white teeth” as the key word indicating beauty, and accordingly, distorted front teeth provides great influences on aesthetic attractiveness. Once distorted, it is difficult to revert to the original pattern. Therefore, if we take things easy to treat teeth without paying attention to correction of bites of teeth from systemic points of view, there is a possibility to be fallen into serious situations. This is a 29-year-old beautiful female patient who received dental treatments including implantation of two back teeth about 1 year ago. Subsequently, she felt abnormal sensation and again visited a dental office. After listening to her complaints, the dentist ground the troubled part. Later I wish to talk about in details, but it is alright for a dentist to adjust the bites based on careful examinations from the view point of both oral internal medicine and systemic findings. If the dentist tries to cure the troubles only from the point of view of local observations, “Hazo” closely associated with the whole body responds unreasonable attacks us by counter-attack. If this patient had completely normal teeth alignment, she might have felt abnormal height of the implanted materials at the back teeth. However, in this case, the 1st bicuspid in the upper jaw happened to rotate a little bit to push the front teeth, whereby the changes in the back teeth were replaced by the strong pressure in the front teeth. This front tooth was ground, leading to onset of natural corrective force onto the beautifully arranged teeth under sophisticated balance, and finally inducing changes in teeth alignment to project the front teeth forward. There is no need to mention that her beautiful aesthetic features are somewhat spoiled.According to her explanation, she had had systemic symptoms such as stiff shoulder and pains of cervical muscles and was in the latent state of “Hazo diseases”. Prior to treatment of dental caries, “Hazo diseases” should have been improved. To our regret, the currently available dental medicine paradigm has not been advanced to such a level. All the patients have to do is to select dental clinics which can make correct systemic diagnosis to perform treatment of abnormal bites of teeth. However, now specific scientific societies to occlusion have been established such as Japanese Academy of Occlusion and Health, as well as The Japan Academy of Dental Health Science (previously called as The Academy of Gnat logy and Occlusion) while special books for enlightenment about dental bites like this book were published, thereby contributing to medical progress gradually. Please be relieved in this sense.