4 Causes of Misaligned Teeth

When your teeth aren't aligned well, crooked, and irregular shaped, and they prevent you from eating and speaking normally, you may have a problem. The problem is commonly known as misaligned teeth, also called malocclusions. Some types of misaligned teeth include:

• Crowded teeth
• Crossbite
• Overbite
• Underbite
• Open bite

When you have these issues, you must visit your dental clinic. But before that, here are some reasons for you to understand why these malocclusions are formed.

1) Prolonged Thumbsucking

In the early ages of your life, when you suck thumb for a very long time, it may result in misaligning your teeth permanently. Although thumbsucking is soothing and makes it easier to fall asleep as a child, the pressure applied to the jaw and teeth in the process is enough to misalign them. The same happens when a kid uses pacifiers for a long time. Therefore, thumbsucking and the use of pacifiers should be stopped at the latest by the age of six years to avoid such dental problems.

2) Improper Growth of Teeth

Teeth do not become crooked by chance. The restricted jaw development, which can be detected at an early age, limits the space available for erupting teeth and prevents them from erupting into their ideal natural position. When your teeth don't erupt well, they grow in any direction and result in misalignment. And when one tooth grows improperly and takes away space for other teeth, the new neighbouring teeth also grow in the wrong direction, this overlapping or impacted the entire teeth line.

3) Losing a Tooth Too Early

When you lose a milk tooth or even permanent tooth too early in life, a gap is permanently created in your mouth. This gap provides space to nearby teeth to grow abnormally. In other words, your healthy teeth may start growing diagonally or crookedly as they have available space to cover. This results in misaligned teeth. Visit your dental clinic well in time to get the gap filled so that teeth don't move out of their space.

4) Too Small Mouth

A smaller-than-average mouth means your teeth may become crowded causing them to twist within the gums or displace each other. When your jaw structure is small, teeth don't get enough space to erupt and grow normally. Hence, they grow in any direction and may not even erupt rightly. This way, you will have misalignment teeth as you age.

A misaligned bite, twisted, overlapping, or crooked teeth can have many causes. Apart from the ones mentioned above, misaligned teeth can also be due to inherited traits just as the colour of your eyes or the size of your hands. It is best to visit your dental clinic to find out the cause of this problem, but more importantly, get the right solution to solve malocclusions.