Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi,
I wonder if anyone can help me.

My top teeth started moving forward about 4 years ago (before they were perfectly aligned) and now I have 9mm overbite on my teeth (so my ortho tells me). I would like to have the overbite sorted but another problem I have been experiencing for the past 8 months is a speech problem. I sometimes find it difficult to pronunce certain words. It's as though talking is no longer effortless. Strange thing is that noone has noticed it but I feel as though I am not pronuncing some words properly. Has anyone had a similar experience? Could this be because of the overbite? I went to see orthodontist and he said this could be because my tongue is no longer in the correct position - could this be right? I am only asking as he did not seem to be that sure himself. The main reason why I want to get my teeth sorted now is because of the speech problem as the overbite is not that bad and is not really bothering me but I am not sure if the overbite is causing the speech problem. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks

I'm not sure if this helps you any, but I have an open bite and a cross bite, and I do have a bit of a lisp and a slight problem with some words. My ortho told me that this was definitely due to my bite problems. I'm hoping all is going to be corrected once my braces come off, and I have surgery. Good luck.

Especially if your concerns are not ortho per se, it might be advisable to have a consult with a speech pathologist. They are very well trained in issues of the mouth that affect speech, though not ortho, but it sounds like a consult would be in order anyway.

If you are in the US, the web site (which has a referral database) for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association is:

www.asha.org

Sorry, I'm not familiar with who provides these services outside the US.

Good luck.

i have an open bite and have problems with pronouncing 's'. I slide my jaw forward and to the left everytime i have to say that letter! lol

Unless I'm wrong, bambulka indicated this problem has only arisen in the past year or so. It'd be one thing if s/he had always experienced this, but rapid onset of a problem like that seems to me to deserve specialized attention.