Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi everyone! I'm new here, and I had an orthodontic consultation this week to get more info and a game plan. I'm 23 and have high/low canines and overcrowding issues I want to fix. I really like my orthodontist's game plan, and I've read a lot of articles on the ArchWired website, which helped ease my fears of pain and discomfort; I have a really low pain tolerance, so I was concerned about that, but I'm confident I can handle the Damon braces my ortho wants to use.

I wanted to ask you all about cross bite elastics. My ortho said that I have a cross bite as well, which I never knew about, and I would need elastics on both sides hooking from an inside hook on the bottom to an outside hook on the top. I read about elastics on the website, but does anyone have experience with this type? Do you find it gets in the way of chewing or talking? Do you get used to it? Thank you!

I didn't have that particular configuration, so I can't comment (although in general, all elastics seem to be an issue when chewing, which is why most people remove them before meals.) This board has been a bit more quiet lately, so you might want to search this forum so some ideas that have come up in the past. If you look at the top of this column, you'll see a search field "Search this forum." I used "crossbite + elastics" (without quotation marks) and I think over a hundred pages came up. Obviously you'll probably want to refine the query . And, apologies if you have already discovered the search function. It works quite well on this site. Best of luck to you.

I have the opposite configuration; hooks on top with bands connecting to the brackets on bottom. I always take my bands out to eat but the hooks will definitely catch a lot of food, especially shredded meat and vegetables and anything that can be punctured (I have a hard time with grapes now, which were easy for me before). They'll also be really uncomfortable when eating anything frozen. For the most part they don't interfere with my speech.

I have Damon braces and love them! Outside of my first week, after my first adjustment, and when I got my crossbite elastics, I really haven't had many problems in almost a year and a half.

I had crossbite elastics for a while. I had a button bracket on the inside of my upper left rear molar, attaching to a hook on the outside of my lower left rear molar. On the right side of my mouth I had a hook on the inside lower rear molar attaching to the outside upper rear molar.

They didn't make speaking or chewing any more difficult at all, except you have to take out the elastics 3-4 times a day, which can be annoying. Taking them out was fine, putting them in was a little more difficult. A couple times I completely forgot about the elastics and bit through and swallowed one of them because I didn't take them out before starting to eat.

They were honestly a non-issue except for having to change them every 2 hours or so, which was annoying.

I am currently wearing crossbite elastics. They tend to give me a lot of headaches but this is not the case for everyone. When I wear them, people have trouble understanding me but only in some instances. As for eating, they do not make eating very difficult as you remove them before eating and replace after eating. The only issue I would say is what the poster above me said about them being annoying to replace so often.