What's this blog about?

What do you do if you want to straighten your crooked teeth? You get braces, isn't that correct?  For the first 25 years of my career, that's how I looked at orthodontics.  Even when I proscribed "Early Treatment" to try and intercept budding problems, the assumption was that, most of the time, treatment would be finished with braces (and by "braces", I mean anything we use to straighten teeth, like aligners, clear brackets, inside braces, removables, etc.).  Most orthodontists practice this way, and most patients look at orthodontics the same way.  You have crooked teeth, you get braces.

There is an underlying assumption in this way of thinking that defines the context of braces: Crooked teeth are a PROBLEM.  Crooked teeth don't look so nice, they're hard to clean, they wear down faster, they stress the jaw joints, etc.  And orthodontics is the SOLUTION to the PROBLEM.  Again, orthodontists and patients agree on this point of view.

But I've come to see a new way of looking at this, and it gives the problem an entirely new context :  Crooked teeth are a SYMPTOM of an underlying problem.  As such, braces are a SYMPTOMATIC solution, but they don't really treat the problem at all.  Just like pain killers are used to dull the discomfort of a headache, a toothache, a stomach cramp, a sore back, or any of a thousand other symptoms, they NEVER really treat the problem: the high blood pressure, the cavity, the infection, or the muscle strain, etc.  Likewise, braces do not directlly treat the underlying cause of the crooked teeth either.

In this blog, I will explore what I have learned about the real cause of crooked teeth and what can be done about it. I'll talk about the controversy surrounding it. I'll talk about how I am shaping my career around it.  And I want to say, right off the bat, NONE of this comes from me, but from what I have learned from people far smarter than I who have been working on this problem for the past 130 year history of modern orthodontics. 

I hope you find this blog helpful. I hope, like the rest of my work, it helps to make the world a little better place.