How a Chipped Tooth Led Me to Invisalign

"After I chipped my upper front right tooth, I consulted with Dr. Seifi about why this had happened to me, suddenly chipping a front tooth after 32 years and from no trauma at all.

The consultation first began with addressing the stress fractures in the teeth (see last post), which did point to the effects of chronic nail biting as one factor… but also and more importantly, it showed there was something out of alignment with my bite causing a poor connection between my upper and lower front teeth, and that was the main culprit. The dental term is "malocclusion."

invisalign express rockville mdShe pointed out that I had a kind of box shape to my 4 front lower teeth where they flared out on the ends. This set up a stressful contact between my upper teeth as they connected with my lower teeth. The result was chips in the edges of those upper and lower teeth, stress fractures and also gum recession from the constant rough impacts when they closed together.

It was quite a lot to learn in one consultation, I felt like CSI Miami had just exposed the true cause of the crime… in a total of 3 minutes! And I remembered that there had been times when I had been just talking or something and suddenly out of nowhere my teeth came together funny and they felt like I had bitten on a spoon- that real weird hard nerve pain you get after biting into something metal. And I also remembered that I had chipped my lower front left tooth pretty good a year and a half ago, had gotten a bonding to fix it, and then broke the bonding again… The clues added up. My bite was off and it was causing damage to the structure of my teeth and causing them to chip!

Dr. Seifisaid Invisalign Express would handle it in about 5 months with the Invisalign clear trays. The benefit was it would prevent future chipping, gum erosions, teeth breaking from stress, the need for crowns and veneers, etc. I had never knew there was so much science in dentistry- cause and effect type stuff. I thought if something broke or something there wasn't much you could do about it. I'm glad I was wrong!

And that’s the story of how a chipped tooth led to Invisalign."

by Shawn