EMG Muscle Awareness Training

We finally did it. Now we have a way to measure muscle activity and visually show children what a correct swallow and tongue position should be.

For young children with improper muscle function, we anticipate this new training program will greatly reduce time in braces, sometimes avoiding significant orthodontic needs altogether! It will also make retaining the corrections we achieve with braces more likely and much easier. So what is this new technology?

Electromyography Muscle Awareness Training. Think of it as physical therapy for the mouth. Surface leads measure muscle impulses allowing us to devise a workout for your mouth muscles and retrain the muscles using biofeedback. Every new ortho patient will be screened, so we can assess if your child will benefit from this program.

You see, muscles and muscle patterns are often the root cause of crooked teeth. They exert forces on the teeth and if those forces are not taken into consideration, they will make the braces take longer. Eventually these forces may even cause a smile to relapse to some degree of crookedness if retainers are not worn for life…and who wants to deal with that! If we can correct dysfunctional muscle activity when children are young, then a child may not need braces at all, or at least a much simpler (and shorter) case.

So the question now becomes this: "Do you want to go somewhere that will just straighten your child's teeth, or do you want to address the root cause of why they aren’t straight in the first place?"