Question about elastics - HELP!

[Painfulvanity]

Hi, I am 40 yrs old and do not yet have braces, however I have a quadhelix appliance. My ortho glued some brackets on the outside of my upper molars and on the inside of my lower molars. She is trying to widen my teeth and at the last visit she put elastics on (the right side only) attaching them to the upper/outer teeth and running the elastic to the inside of the lower teeth to try and pull the bottom teeth out. First of all, has anyone had this done?

I always thought elastics were used on the outer top to outer bottom, sometimes crossways, etc. The second problem is that by having the elastics on one side only it pulls my lower jaw because there is no counter balance on the other side. I hope I am explaining this well, because I am hoping this is a common practice that works. Please help? Thanks

[Clo]

Hi,

yes, I had that even several times.
You can see it on this picture :



I had it on my left side only and later on on both sides. Mine were attached
to my second molars. It worked to tip my lowers out a bit. In my case, the
elastics there were very heavy, but still I did not feel this unbalance thing.
But maybe it is because I have elastics in all sorts of configurations for so
long now. I guess within some days you will not feel this anymore. After
some days, I did not feel them not at all anymore. And to ease your mind,
of course this works. And even very quickly !

Good luck !

[Painfulvanity]

Hi there and thanks for taking the time to reply and for the pics.

Much appreciated!

[chrisd]

this can be done to correct a crossbite too