Look closely at someone who has lost their teeth and you may notice something beyond the smile: their chin sits much closer to their nose than it used to. Dentists call the height of the lower third of your face your vertical dimension, and in a recent video, Dr. Kendall explained how losing it changes the way you look, and how restoring it can take years off your appearance.
What Is Vertical Dimension?
Your teeth do more than chew. Together, the upper and lower arches act like pillars that hold your nose and chin a set distance apart. When those pillars are lost, whether from missing teeth or from years of grinding your teeth down, the lower part of your face collapses in on itself. That collapse is what dentists mean by lost vertical dimension.
How a Collapsed Bite Changes Your Face
The effects show up in the mirror. Wrinkles deepen around the mouth as skin loses the support underneath it. The lower third of the face gets shorter, so a naturally oval face starts to look rounder. Most people chalk these changes up to aging alone, when a big part of the story is simply a bite that has lost its height.
Restoring that vertical dimension can really take years off of the way that you look.
Two Ways to Restore Lost Height
If your natural teeth are still healthy enough to save, that is the first path Dr. Kendall recommends: crowns across at least one full arch, upper or lower, can raise your bite back to where it once was. When teeth are missing or too worn to rebuild, a full set of fixed teeth on dental implants does the same job. With Teeth in 24 Hours, your new smile is designed around your face, at the proper height, from day one. That is also part of why so many patients who move from dentures to dental implants tell us they look younger afterward.
The Payoff: A Younger-Looking Face
Bringing your bite back to its proper height supports the skin around your mouth, which softens wrinkles. It lengthens the lower third of your face, which reads as thinner and more youthful. And it restores the comfortable jaw position your muscles and joints were built for. Cosmetic and functional benefits, from one correction.
Restore Your Bite's Height in Longview, Tyler, or Shreveport
Whether your case calls for crowns or a full fixed smile, our doctors at Texas Sedation Dental & Implant Center will measure what your bite has lost and show you what restoring it would look like, with your fixed smile backed by our Love Your Smile Money Back Guarantee. Schedule your complimentary Ultimate Smile Assessment, a $500 value that includes a 3D CBCT scan, and see the difference for yourself.
