Why Do I Need Braces?

Straightening teeth does more than change how a smile looks. Misaligned teeth are harder to clean, which raises the risk of cavities and gum disease, and a poor bite can wear teeth down and strain the jaw. Where teeth overlap, a brush cannot reach the surface underneath and floss has to be forced through at an angle, so plaque tends to sit longer in those spots than anywhere else in the mouth.

There is a functional side too, and it is less visible. A bite that does not meet evenly can put uneven load on the jaw joints and the muscles around them, and certain bite problems can make particular sounds harder to form. There is a long-term cost too, since a surface that never gets cleaned properly is where decay and gum disease get their start.

Dr. Najjar can tell you whether your case is primarily cosmetic or carries health implications worth addressing. Both are legitimate reasons to get braces, and knowing which one you are dealing with lets you decide whether treatment is worth it to you.

Nothing dramatic happens overnight, and misalignment is easy to live with for years. The change is slow and cumulative. The same spots get missed at every brushing, and those spots are where cavities and gum disease are most likely to start. The same few teeth take more than their share of the chewing load at every meal. Some of that can be undone later and some cannot: the misalignment can still be treated years from now, though what correcting it takes may change as you get older, while enamel worn thin does not grow back and gums that have receded do not return on their own.

Some people live their whole lives with mild misalignment and never have a problem from it, and Dr. Najjar will tell you honestly if that describes your case and whether braces would change anything. The point of an evaluation is to find out which situation you are in.

Orthodontic treatment addresses both where the teeth sit and how the upper and lower jaws meet. The problems it can correct include:

• Crowding: the overlaps trap plaque where a brush and floss struggle to reach, and decay between the teeth can follow.
• Spacing: food packs into gaps that a tight contact would keep clear, and neighboring teeth can drift into the space over time.
• Overbite: a deep one can bring the lower teeth against the gum behind the uppers, and it can leave the upper front teeth more exposed in a knock.
• Underbite: chewing lands on surfaces that were not shaped for it, and the cause can lie in jaw size as well as tooth position.
• Crossbite: the jaw can shift sideways to find a comfortable close, which loads one side harder than the other.
• Open bite: biting into food can fall to the back teeth, leaving them to carry more of the load than they should.

Much of the alignment and jaw trouble driving those problems can be corrected alongside them. Two people with what looks like the same crowding can end up with quite different plans. The payoff shows in how your teeth look, how well your bite functions, and how easily you can keep them clean.

No, and more adults are straightening their teeth than ever before. There's no age limit for orthodontic treatment, so as long as your teeth and gums are healthy, treatment can be effective at any age. On a page about why braces are needed, though, the question underneath this one is usually not whether treatment would still work but whether the reasons for it still apply. They do not expire with age. A bite that is hard to clean or hard on the teeth presents the same problem at 45 as it did at 15.

Age changes the starting point. Adults more often bring existing dental work, a history of gum treatment, or teeth that have drifted after a loss, so Dr. Najjar checks that the foundation is sound before treatment begins and will work alongside your general dentist where that makes sense. Discretion tends to matter more too. Clear aligners and behind-the-teeth braces come up often in these conversations. Our adult orthodontics page has more.

The American Association of Orthodontists recommends that a child be seen by age 7 for a first orthodontic evaluation. Enough permanent teeth have come in by then to spot developing problems early, at the point when guiding jaw growth is easiest. Age 7 sounds early to a parent looking at a mouth still full of baby teeth, and that is rather the point: the first molars and front teeth are usually in, which is enough for Dr. Najjar to see how the bite is establishing itself.

Being seen at 7 does not mean starting braces at 7. Many children who come in for that first check need nothing done yet, and the visit gives you a baseline and a sense of what to keep an eye on. For the children who do have something developing, a few problems are genuinely easier to correct while the jaws are still growing, and a crossbite is the clearest of them. There's more on our early orthodontics page.

Your case complexity and your lifestyle both drive the answer. Clear aligners suit mild to moderate issues, with removability and near-invisibility in their favor, while braces take on the more complex cases. Braces don't depend on you remembering to put them back in. They're attached, so they keep working between visits, whereas aligners only move teeth while they are actually in your mouth, which means wearing them 20–22 hours a day.

It's worth being honest with yourself about that, and about what you want treatment to feel like day to day. Some people would rather never think about the appliance at all. Others would rather be able to take it out for a wedding or a presentation and accept the discipline that comes with it. At your consultation, Dr. Najjar will recommend the better option, and if both would genuinely work for your case he'll say so and leave the choice with you.

Dr. Najjar starts with an exam of your teeth, bite, and jaw alignment, often using digital imaging. From there you'll hear what was found and go through your treatment options, timeline, and costs. Expect a conversation, since the questions you walk in with are usually the ones worth answering first.

That first visit costs you nothing, in Milwaukee, Greenfield, Beloit, and Roscoe alike. The money side of it gets settled before any treatment begins: we verify your insurance benefits and give you a written estimate with your expected coverage already worked into it, and anything left over can be spread across a payment plan. Our flexible financing options page has the detail to read over later.

There's no pressure. You should leave with the information you need to make a confident decision, and that decision can be to start braces now, to wait and recheck in a year, or to go home and think about it.