The smile, a sign of well-being and serenity, is our business card and plays a very important role in the aesthetics of the face. However, it happens that some people are not comfortable smiling due to aesthetic problems. Among the most common imperfections we find the Gingival Smile also called Gummy Smile.
What is the gummy smile?
A type of smile is called gingival - or gummy smile - when the gingival component is more prevalent than the dental one. That is, it happens that, in the act of smiling, the upper gums are exposed excessively. This defect can be accentuated in the presence of thin lips.
People who have a gummy smile tend to avoid showing it or at least laugh very timidly and sparingly. Like all defects that affect the mouth from an aesthetic point of view, therefore, the gummy smile has important repercussions on safety and self-esteem. Because of this, it could be important to you to look for a solution to the problem. To do this, however, the causes must first be investigated.
What is the cause of gummy smile?
The gummy smile is mainly caused by excessive lifting of the upper lip due to the hyperactivity of certain facial muscles that perform this function. When your gums as visible, so much so that they overpower the teeth, possible causes are:
* Poor amount of exposed dental surface: the teeth, in the part that protrudes from the gum, are "small" and therefore less visible than normal
* Prominence of the jaw bone
* Deep bite: the teeth of the upper arch exceed excessively those of the lower arch, revealing the gums
* Upper lip short or with hyperactive levator muscles: when you smile, therefore, the lip lifts too much, exposing the gums
How can the problem of gum smile be solved without surgery?
Depending on the underlying cause of the gum smile, the remedies that can be implemented are different. In general, for a long time, surgery was the most common solution, especially useful in cases of poor exposure of the tooth surface. Today, however, it is no longer the only one, to the delight of all those patients who are afraid of the dentist even when it comes to having a simple dental check-up. Let's see the whole range of possible remedies for the gummy smile.
There are two non-surgical ways to reduce the imperfection of the gummy smile: aesthetic correction through the use of botulinum toxin (botox) or the injection of specific fillers.
Botulinum toxin, used for many years in aesthetic medicine with the aim of reducing wrinkles that appear on the forehead and reduce "crow's feet" around the eyes, or fillers (from the English "filling") usually used to smooth out wrinkles and signs of expression and restore facial tone effectively, if injected into certain points of the root of the nose or in the lip, they cause a relaxation of the muscles that cause the gum smile, thus solving the problem.
The aesthetic medicine solutions maintain their effect for about 6 months after which it is possible to repeat the treatments to preserve the desired result. In the presence of thin lips, complicit in accentuating the excessive exposure of the gums, it is possible to intervene with the injection of special lip fillers, usually based in hyaluronic acid.
Orthodontics can also be a remedy for a gum smile. It is necessary to intrude the teeth, that is, to make them move back towards the bone. The gums will tend to follow them and therefore to "shorten".