how come despite being straightened via braces or invisaligners, our teeth always naturally want to shift back, even if the original position was full of spacing or crowding?

Question

I know for some of us who don’t have naturally straight adult teeth that the way they grew in pre-treatment is technically *our* “natural”, but why do they still want to move back even if the original position was excessively spaced or crowded? Wouldn’t the ortho treatment make the teeth more “comfortable”, for lack of a better term?

In: Biology

Answer 1

One of the current theories about our jaws is that our jaws are significantly under developed due to our diet.

If you look at ancient skulls, and protohumans the jaws are much more pronounced. This is because we spent much more of our days chewing tougher foods so our jaws and muscles developed to be much larger than today.

So in that sense modern humans have evolved like a Persian cat or a bulldog with a flat and deformed face.

Despite having small jaws our teeth are still programmed to grow as if our mouths were much wider so they come out crooked because there isn’t enough space for them.

That’s why in orthodontics they often remove teeth to make more space. Our jaws just aren’t big enough to support all those teeth.

This theory also helps to explain a lot of chronic breathing and respiratory problems like Sleep Apnea. Our throats and sinuses are too small because our jaws don’t develop properly. That and orthodontics might be making the problem worse by forcing our teeth and palate up and back into our mouths while our bodies are still growing.

If this theory proves to be correct then orthodontics are taking the wrong approach, fixing a symptom (crooked teeth) rather than the underlying problem (too small a jaw and palate).