As with everything in life, many factors go into how attractive a person is, do they not? The same is true of a smile: many factors end up determining whether a smile is beautiful and natural.
Would you like to know what makes a smile beautiful, and how a gummy smile affects it?
- The first thing is that the smile is wide. The right smile width is essential if a smile is to be beautiful. In the work we do at Clínica Peydro we always aim for the Full Mouth Smile, so that patients show off their beautiful teeth to the full.
- It is also very important that the teeth are correctly aligned. Our smile improves enormously as soon as the dentist manages to put our teeth in the right position. On top of that, aligning the teeth does not only improve appearance: it is also good for our health. With well positioned teeth we improve hygiene, for example, because we can brush more effectively. But that is not all. Over time, having badly positioned teeth affects the health of the gums and can lead to losing healthy teeth. Many people think that having orthodontic treatment is purely a matter of appearance, but the truth is that the vast majority of cases have medical needs that go beyond the esthetic ones.
- Finally, for a beautiful smile we have to establish the correct relationship between the patient’s lips, teeth and gums. That can be complicated if you have a gummy smile and the dentist treating you is not an expert in solving this kind of case.
On the correct relationship between the tissues (lips, teeth and gums), we are going to show you a very clear example that will help you understand how important the relationship between the things we mentioned above is. In gummy smile cases it is easy to see the need for a perfect correlation between the soft and hard tissue. Someone with a gummy smile will not see a perfect smile unless we reduce the amount of gum they show when they smile. The patient whose before and after we are including in this post came to see us with a gummy smile. She showed 2 to 3 millimeters of gum every time she smiled, and it was something she strongly disliked. When someone smiles and shows more than 3 mm of gum, it is because there is a strong imbalance between the proportions of their teeth and their gums. Her smile was very narrow and the angulation of her premolars and canines was negative. That means her teeth were tilted inwards instead of outwards. On top of that, the patient had buccal corridors (which happen when there is too much space between the teeth and the cheeks), something very common in gummy smile cases. With orthodontic treatment and the right esthetic dentistry techniques we solved the esthetic problem the patient had. With orthodontics we produced tooth movement that came with a remodelling of the soft tissue and the gum. That movement usually solves gummy smile problems. After orthodontic treatment at our clinic, in which we applied the Peydro protocols, we achieved the results you can see in the photograph. Our patient no longer shows the gum she used to. She now has a full smile in which the buccal corridors are gone, and a wide smile (Full Mouth Smile) balanced with her soft tissue and in perfect harmony with her face. We have eliminated the gummy smile and achieved a healthy, natural, beautiful one.
