Today I was listening to a Rachmaninoff concerto, something which I had begun to play at 18 when I got to college and was asked by my piano teacher why I wasn’t a piano major. Forward 20 years, and I’m struggling to play songs that I played with ease and admirable technique at 10 years old, after just a year of lessons. Why? Because I wore 5 years of ‘traditional’ orthodontics while growing an entire foot. I grew in restraints, such that my palate and skull did not keep pace with the rest of my body, and what is worse, I was given a headgear, which yanked my upper palate into the top and back of my skull, compressing cranial sutures, compressing (look at a diagram of the skull) brain matter, tissues, muscles, nerves, and veins.
From the time I wore headgear, onward, my neck posture was never the same. My neck moved as far forward as my maxilla was yanked back, in my body’s attempt to preserve breathing space. I lost part of my lower lordosis, and wondered why, in dance class, I suddenly lost inches upon inches of flexibility. My shoulders were constantly locked, and my concentration went from bad to worse. I began to suffer with chronic sinusitis. Over time, year by year, I lost facility in my right arm. Talent meant that I could ignore it, but by 22, I gave up piano, so confused and overwhelmed that my right fingers wouldn’t move as fast. At 39, I’m spending everything I have to maintain a posture that is in no way comfortable, safe for my neck, or stable. I gave up my opera career (and it really was a career) 3 years back.
Think about it: an orthodontic headgear is primarily used on those who have significant facial mal-development. This means that those who require a headgear already have an overbite and crowding in their upper jaw, which has to do with a lack of proper growth in the upper jaw and the uppermost parts of the jaw. For the lower jaw to come forward properly, the cheekbones, palate, and upper jaw in general must be developing at pace with the rest of the body. Because of serious asthma and allergies and ensuing open-mouth breathing, mine did not, so I had crowding in my upper jaw. What the headgear did was take an already vitally serious issue, and make it many times worse, so as to create the appearance of normalcy in my mouth.
Instead of helping me develop the upper part of my face and encouraging the lower jaw to come forward, they pulled with great force the upper part of my face/jaw backwards, to pull teeth backwards, against the direction of growth, in order to make room for crowded teeth. What they should have done is expanded the upper jaw to help it grow, and make room for crowded teeth in the logical direction. Because my upper jaw is now set further back that it was supposed to be, my lower jaw is forced backwards because it too cannot be where it is supposed to be, because it cannot go more forward than the upper jaw. This creates compression in my TMJ and makes the problem even worse. Now, when my lower jaw wants to move further forward to a place where the TMJ can operate comfortably, my lower jaw has to come out in front of it, but if I do this, I cannot chew or speak. Try to place your lower jaw in front of your upper jaw and see what happens when you try to chew and speak, it becomes impossible. In any case, because I do not chew, swallow, or speak in that position, I have to force my upper jaw backwards and after having done this for years, the TMJ joints are fully dysfunctional. Even the standard medical community has agreed this was caused by headgear, and is a problem so bad that any surgeon worth his salt has said no to touching it, since so much is in disarray and the problem is anything but clearcut, unilateral, or even bilateral.
So of course, for 25 years of my life, I have been further retracting my lower jaw so as to chew, speak, and appear normal. It’s a terrible way to live. X-rays show that I have 35% of the breathing space of a normal adult in nasal and pharyngeal cavities. This most certainly explains the chronic fatigue and sinus infections I had as a teenager. It also explains the sleep apnea I was diagnosed with years ago.
Even if an orthodontist that still “believes” in tooth extractions and headgears would tell me “yes, but you might have had a sleep apnea even without orthodontics because you had an overbite,” I could answer, “but does that make it right to pull my upper maxilla backwards, cramping an already cramped breathing space?”.
Dr. Hermann Sailer looked at me. He is one of the foremost orthognathic surgeons in the world. Without me saying anything, without reading the forms I had just filled out, he said “victim of headgear.” He showed me exactly where headgear retracts the upper jaw into the skull on my x-ray, and made it quite clear and obvious how this forever alters the growth pattern such that the face grows even longer, and loses its horizontal development.
It’s now been more than 20 years since I was a teenager that I wake up choking at night, and the orthodontic community needs to answer to this. Five years of allowing someone to restrain my growth and pull hard on my skull while compressing everything within could not have been a good thing by any means. For the past century, we’ve had alternatives to headgear and growth restriction, such as maxillary expansion and even oral exercises to help develop the lower jaw forward. The BioBlock and Orthotropics have been around for decades, the Crozat has been around since the 1920’s, the ALF has been around for decades and there are many others. So if an orthodontist tells you that limiting the forward growth of your upper jaw, or extracting teeth to make room is the only answer, I urge you to think twice.
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You will get the answer whether they work on patients or not and obviously patient will give you testimonial.
No they were not. They were close to your MAXILLARY SINUS. The roots of maxillary 1st, 2nd, and sometimes 3rd molar are very close to the floor of the maxillary sinus. This is true whether or not patients had any form of orthodontics or not. This is why sinus pain often imitates toothache pain.
The Crozat is an antiquated appliance that provides poor control of movement It does not expand bone in any way nor does it create more space except by tooth tipping. That is why it is not used anymore. It was a tooth-tipping device, no more.
I always felt like the headgear remove too much space and my tongue was being forced back and caused it to press against my front teeth. I thought I had got used to it but now that I’m older I’ve realized that I unconsciously let my lower jaw hang down and slightly forward to accommodate for the lack of space. My mouth is still uncomfortable and squished when I keep my jaws closed together. I have TMJ as well. I feel like I should have had an expander because my molars are set very narrow and touch both sides of my tongue which has actually caused indents and marking to form on my tongue.
I had my wisdom teeth extracted when they were barely starting to grow in because I thought they were causing headaches, but when the headaches continued I looked at my own xrays and noticed the roots of my back molars were almost in my nasal cavity. I’m not a dentist and haven’t seen other xrays but those roots were higher than the others. I would confuse the headaches with sinus headaches but the pain was focus just above the roof of my mouth.
I also have a problem with a nerve in my neck that causes pain in my left shoulder blade. It always start right where the headgear band pressed against my neck.
I’m glad this is being talked about otherwise how would they know what is happening to patients beyond the time of the orthodontistry.
2. Not sure what you mean by “underbite.” Normal ortho finishing goal is 1-2 millimeters overjet and 1-2mm overbite. Perhaps you mean you have end-to-end occlusion.
3. A late growth spurt of the mandible sometimes messes up occlusion, and has nothing to do with headgear. Have seen this happen many times after finishing an ortho case perfectly. You never know how late a child will grow. Often growth surprises us.
4. Most clinicians have not used anchorage nor distalization headgear since the late 1980s.
5. It is impossible to know how your occlusion would have turned out with no treatment at all.
6. The possibility of treatment as an adult exists. I have done ortho on a patient as old as 74.
Read my last post again. Then read it again. Then read it over and over until your get it into your head. Don’t just make stuff up in your head.
1. The last time I remember headgear being used by a sizable number of dentists was the 1980s. (Unless you are talking about reverse pull headgear, which protracts the maxilla forward in very young maxillary deficient patients.) We have been using Herbst and other appliances instead for a long time. You ARE beating a dead horse to death.
There was also high-pull headgear, intended to intercept excessive maxillary descent and gummy smiles. Compliance was never good and it had limited benefit, so we have to resort to surgery as our only remedy for that.
2. We never got distalization of the entire maxilla with headgear. With 16 hour a day wear, the most we could usually get was anchorage of the molars to decrowd the anteriors when premolar extraction was unavoidable.
3. To my knowledge, there are no scientific studies that correlate chronic sinus problems with either extraction orthodontics or headgear. It is a figment of your imagination. Allergies and thus sinus problems usually occur with more age with a hyper-functional immune system. You must think that just because sinus problems usually surface AFTER orthodontics, orthodontics necessarily causes them. There is no causation.
Too many cases were done by premolar and even molar extraction in the past, it is true. This started to change in the 1980s. It is impossible to do some orthodontic cases without extractions. Expansion has its limitations, especially in adults. Never having done orthodontics, you cannot comprehend that fact.
Mark Twain once wryly observed that it is easier to fool someone than convinced them that they have been fooled. You are the perfect example of what Twain was talking about.
True professionals in any field will acknowledge when something from the past was wrong, but it should never be something that is callously swept under the rug. Your decrease in your quality of life, a life that you would have had, should non of this had been done deserves to be heard and if there are dentists and orthodontist worth their salt they will work to find ways to fix the wrongs that have been done in the past.
The dental communities response here is truly disappointing but it reflects what so many of us know, that many of them are strictly in it for the money. There’s damn good ones out there, but they are harder to find than the egotistical money sucking versions in dentistry.
Blaming chronic sinus problems on childhood headgear would be quite a stretch. We might as well blame ingrown toenails on headgear while we are at it.
I wonder if there are ways to help reverse the effects of headgear, any device or procedure that can help undo the effects? If anyone knows of anything please post, thanks.
NOBODY uses a Croat anymore and for good reason. They are difficult to fabricate and adjust, and offer poor control.
There are a lot of things that can cause sleep apnea.
Severely crowded cases often cannot be treated without extractions. Sorry, that is a fact.
It has destroyed my quality of life and im on disability too early. My jaw/tmj is killing me cuz I have a tooth that needs to be pulled or root canal, which will make everything worse.