Having a beautiful smile also means feeling good about yourself and others.
People who have a beautiful mouth tend to laugh in a spontaneous and carefree way, while those who are afraid of having a bad smile try to control their laugh, hinting at it without showing their teeth or covering their lips with their hand, an unequivocal sign of embarrassment.
Often the cause of this situation is not chipped, yellow, crooked teeth or the presence of a diastema, but the so-called gummy smile. But what does this situation consist of? What is the gummy smile?
Despite having perfect white teeth, some people feel uncomfortable because they have a smile line that is too high, that is, when they laugh they show the gummy of the upper arch excessively. Let's find out some more details of this situation. And above all we try to understand how to solve it.
Causes of the gummy smile
The causes of gummy smile can be different and involve different factors.
The gummy smile can result from excessive prominence of the jawbone, reduced exposure of the tooth surface, an excess amount of gingiva or hyperactivity of the levator lip muscles and especially from the position of the teeth.
The upper lip, as well as the lower one, is supported by the orbicular muscle that allows us to laugh, move the mouth, send a kiss or make other expressions with the lips. If when we smile this muscle contracts too much, it pulls too hard on the lip showing more gum than normal.
In some cases, the gummy smile depends on the deep bite, that is, on the defect of the upper arch incisors that exceed the lower ones more than necessary, thus showing a portion of the upper gum.
Remedies for gummy smile
Being a clear source of anxiety and embarrassment, many people look for solutions to reduce the gummy smile, or at least to improve this condition of the teeth. This is a fairly common request among our patients. To solve or improve a gummy smile we have two treatment options:
Surgical solution
Surgery can be chosen to correct a gummy smile. In this case, the operation involves lowering the gum and the underlying bone through a surgical procedure performed under local anesthesia. By removing the bone around the teeth with rotary instruments, eliminating any protrusions and repositioning the gingival tissues, it then becomes necessary to first devitalize the dental elements and then make crowns in these elements, which are then encapsulated.
Another surgical solution to solve the gum smile intervenes on the mucosa of the central teeth and on the muscles of the upper lip. This combination, however, concerns cosmetic surgery. As you can imagine, there is no single treatment plan: the type of intervention to be implemented always depends on the patient's initial condition.
Non-surgical solution
The gummy smile can be reduced through Orthodontics which can also be lingual without brackets. This technique involves resolving the gummy smile simply by intruding the teeth, that is, bringing them "apparently" into the bone. In fact, when we move a tooth, both the bone and the gum follow it in the movement. For this reason, it is possible to solve the problem of the gummy smile simply by moving the gum and bone upwards. If after this movement the teeth are not very visible or too short compared to the position of the lower lip, lithium disilicate veneers can be performed to lengthen them and improve their aesthetics.