drjeff
Well-known member
Okay, here goes with this one (vacation kind of got in the way of me posting a reply earlier 
)
- Orthodontics and cost - per my wife (an orthodontist BTW ) nationwide, you'll see the cost of a case running anywhere from about $3,000 to over $10,000 FOR THE SAME EXACT CASE. Geography and regional "going rates" is what causes the difference (an orthodontist in say rural Mississippi will more than likely charge a bunch less than an orthodontist in say Newton, MA/Greenwich, CT/Beverly Hills, CA) - and remember when considering $$ and geography, during the course of a normal orthodontic case, they'll be between 15 and 30 visits to the orthodontist over the course of treatment for adjustments - feel free to ask your general dentist for a different orthodontist's name in a different area where the price might be different (Trust me, us general dentists don't get upset at this)
- Invisalign and a case like this - General speaking, if teeth need to be extracted to accomplish the desired final tooth/jaw position, then the case is too complicated or invisalign. Additionally, many orthodontists, even with an appropriate case, are hesitant to use invisalign on teens, as for a successful result, invisalign requires 99.99% complete patient compliance (some often quite difficult for an adolescent over a say 2 year time frame) - lastly, most orthodontists charge 25-50% more for an invisalign case than a "traditional braces" case (Those clear aligners cost a heck of a lot more than traditional brackets & wires)
- Tooth position and headaches: TOTALLY RELATED. As we age, often inspite of an orthodontists and/or mother nature's best efforts , teeth shift (total long biological reason for this, but lets just say that tetth want to move towards the midline of your jaws as we age). As a tooth moves, where your upper/lower teeth contact together also change. In an ideal tooth world, all of your teeth would touch at the same time, to spread the bite forces evenly across your upper and lower jaws. If teeth shift in a way where 1 (or a few) hit before the others, then the full force of your bite is distributed 1st through those specific teeth, and overtime, those teeth become very sore to pressure Your brain realizes this (and doesn't like it) and takes steps, in the form of altering the forces placed on the muscles that control the opening and closing of your jaw, to try and get the force of your bite evenly distributed again (think say the right sided muscles work harder than the left sided muscles) - this muscle force imbalance becomes muscle fatigue on the harder working side, basically pulling across the side of your skull, is what causes the tension type headaches (chronic clenchers get the same thing) - muscle fatigue over time can lead to pain This is why for some, especially adults, orthodontic repositioning, can often eliminate a source of chronic facial pain
Hope that helps a bit
)- Orthodontics and cost - per my wife (an orthodontist BTW ) nationwide, you'll see the cost of a case running anywhere from about $3,000 to over $10,000 FOR THE SAME EXACT CASE. Geography and regional "going rates" is what causes the difference (an orthodontist in say rural Mississippi will more than likely charge a bunch less than an orthodontist in say Newton, MA/Greenwich, CT/Beverly Hills, CA) - and remember when considering $$ and geography, during the course of a normal orthodontic case, they'll be between 15 and 30 visits to the orthodontist over the course of treatment for adjustments - feel free to ask your general dentist for a different orthodontist's name in a different area where the price might be different (Trust me, us general dentists don't get upset at this)
- Invisalign and a case like this - General speaking, if teeth need to be extracted to accomplish the desired final tooth/jaw position, then the case is too complicated or invisalign. Additionally, many orthodontists, even with an appropriate case, are hesitant to use invisalign on teens, as for a successful result, invisalign requires 99.99% complete patient compliance (some often quite difficult for an adolescent over a say 2 year time frame) - lastly, most orthodontists charge 25-50% more for an invisalign case than a "traditional braces" case (Those clear aligners cost a heck of a lot more than traditional brackets & wires)
- Tooth position and headaches: TOTALLY RELATED. As we age, often inspite of an orthodontists and/or mother nature's best efforts
, teeth shift (total long biological reason for this, but lets just say that tetth want to move towards the midline of your jaws as we age). As a tooth moves, where your upper/lower teeth contact together also change. In an ideal tooth world, all of your teeth would touch at the same time, to spread the bite forces evenly across your upper and lower jaws. If teeth shift in a way where 1 (or a few) hit before the others, then the full force of your bite is distributed 1st through those specific teeth, and overtime, those teeth become very sore to pressure Your brain realizes this (and doesn't like it) and takes steps, in the form of altering the forces placed on the muscles that control the opening and closing of your jaw, to try and get the force of your bite evenly distributed again (think say the right sided muscles work harder than the left sided muscles) - this muscle force imbalance becomes muscle fatigue on the harder working side, basically pulling across the side of your skull, is what causes the tension type headaches (chronic clenchers get the same thing) - muscle fatigue over time can lead to pain This is why for some, especially adults, orthodontic repositioning, can often eliminate a source of chronic facial painHope that helps a bit
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