Does YOUR child have a crooked bite? They may die early
- A crooked bite can be reversed with multiple dental trips as children grow older
- But regardless of whether it is eventually sorted, it is a sign of early life stress
- Studies have shown these issues make children prone to disease in later life
Stephen Matthews For Mailonline
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If your child has a crooked bite, it could be a bigger problem than you think.
Despite being reversible with multiple trips to the dentist as they grow older, new research suggests it could be a sign of an early death.
Regardless of whether a bite that doesn’t quite match up is eventually fixed, it shows early life stress, scientists believe.
Studies have repeatedly shown that this make children more susceptible to diabetes, heart disease and cancer in later life.
Despite being reversible with multiple trips to the dentist as they grow older, new research suggests a crooked bite could be a sign of an early death
Low birth weight has long been considered the best way to identify early life stress as it is often a sign of poor nutrition in the womb.
It can also indicate health problems or substance abuse in the mother, genetic factors, and problems with the placenta.
As a result, some babies may become sick in the first days of life or develop various infections. They are also prone to chronic diseases as they grow older.
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Others may suffer from longer term problems such as delayed motor and social development or learning disabilities.
But this is only a marker of life expectancy until birth, about 280 days – far short of a measurement useful for the first thousand days.
WHY DO TEETH GROW CROOKEDLY?
There are several reasons as to why some people’s teeth grow crookedly.
Some people’s mouths are too small for their teeth, which crowds them and causes them to shift.
In other cases, a person’s upper and lower jaws aren’t the same size or are malformed, resulting in either an overbite. It can also cause an under bite.
However, most often crooked teeth, overbites, and underbites are inherited traits just as the color of your eyes or size of your hands.
Source: WebMD
University of Washington researchers believe that a crooked bite – caused by a misaligned jaw – may be a much more accurate measurement.
Lead author Dr Philippe Hujoel said: ‘Asymmetries in the skull and teeth have been used for decades by anthropologists to mark environmental stress, but they have only rarely been used in living populations.
‘Such lower-face asymmetries can be assessed by looking at the dental bite in the permanent teeth.
‘An exam that can be completed in seconds and with more certainty than a mother’s recall of birth weight and more ease than a search for a birth certificate.’
After analysing data from 6,654 children, researchers found that one in four had such asymmetries.
However, they had to use data from the 1970s because US surveys disregarded the value of facial asymmetry after this point.
The findings were published in the American Journal of Human Biology.
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