#orthodontics

[bulkypants]

…who else is wearing wire retainers and diapers?🫢😬

[chemlock]

Forensic Odontology Overview

Forensic odontology is a subspecialty of dentistry that has its main focus on the identification of deceased victims. In simplest terms, there are two aims in forensic dentistry. The first one is the identification of the dead, and second is the identification of an assailant who has used his or her teeth as a weapon. But how? Let's see.

Let's start with corpse identification. Teeth can be used to identify corpses, as no two oral cavities are alike, and teeth are unique to an individual. The dental evidence of the deceased recovered from the crime scene is compared with ante-mortem records for identification. This is used in cases such as mass casualties, burn victims, or severely disfigured/decomposed corpses.

Forensic odontology can also be used to determine things like age, race, and sex. In cases where there is no blood or other DNA sources, teeth can also be used.

Age is determined by looking at X-rays of the permanent teeth and tooth roots within the bone. The crown of a tooth forms first, followed by the root, and scientists estimate age by comparing the stage of tooth formation in the X-rays and bone with known dental growth standards.

Race is found by comparing the shapes of the different teeth. Determining race using teeth isn't easy, but using common dental characteristics as indicators (like Caucasoids usually having narrow “v-” shaped arch giving rise to crowding of teeth) we can get a good guess.

To determine sex, we rely on sexual dimorphism. Generally, male teeth have significantly greater quantities of dentine than females, while female teeth are found to have greater enamel thickness than male teeth. This isn't always fully accurate, but when combined with other factors, it helps give an idea.

None of these are perfect, but they can help give us a good approximate description, which is better than none.

Now, Bite Mark analysis.

There's 4 steps to bite mark analysis. Photographs, saliva swabbing, impressions, and tissue samples.

In order to make a good comparison, a balanced, color, scale photograph should be made of the defendant’s teeth (which can be used for testimony in court) and of the victim’s bite. Because the dental expert will need to know the scale shown in the picture, some method of measurement (such as a ruler or tape measure) photographed alongside the bite mark and the defendant’s teeth is necessary. A plaster cast of the defendant’s dental impressions can also be used to prepare a plastic overlay. The plastic overlay is used to mark the points of contact and forms a representation of defendant’s bite marks or a pattern of the cutting edges of defendant’s teeth. This representation can then be compared with a scaled photograph of the bite mark on the victim as a means of determining common points of identification.

If the bite area was swabbed and saliva recovered, and it was a positive match to the subject, that could help identify the assailant, but it's not often that DNA can be recovered.

Bite analysis has its issues, as tooth marks are not always transfered accurately, and sometimes there's not enough difference in bite marks to tell reliably. Bitemark analysis is more often used for excluding someone as a potential assailant. Say the mark shows imprint of fully intact frontal incisors, and the proposed biter does not have all their front teeth. This means that the person being accused is not the probable assailant. This could also be used to tell if the bite was self-inflicted. But bite mark analysis is often not admissible due to it having been found to be unreliable in some cases. People have been rightly and falsely convicted because of it, and it can be an unreliable method for forensic examination.

As with all areas of forensics, it's under dispute for its reputability. Bite mark analysists have been shown to be unable to consistently agree on whether the bitemark was even human. Even minor distortions could lead to the mark matching a number of people.

And here's a little bit of interesting history I came across in my travels :)

There are many "first" uses of forensic odontology in history across the web, but as far as I can find the first documented use of teeth for identification began during 66 AD, with the Agrippina and Lollia Pauline case. (There's a bit to it, find it here.)

Recorded forensic identification in India started in 1193, where Jai Chand, a great Indian monarchy, was destroyed by Muhammad's army, and Jai Chand, Raja of Kanauji was murdered and he was identified by his false teeth.

Dr Ascor Amoedo is reputed as the father of forensic odontology and documented the first case of dental identification in which many individuals lost their lives in a disaster. 126 people were charred to death due to a fire accident in Paris 1897, and were identified using their teeth.

In 1979, a double bite mark played an important role in convicting Ted Bundy of murder as he'd bitten one of his last victims.

[anfisawheel]

my braces

[hgirasol-blog]

[runawaymarbles]

orthodox??? i know having braces adjusted is never fun but that doesn't mean you need to post your dr's home address online. smh.

[moiderahart]

haha hi! money!

[littlefleamart]

(source)

[hoodiewearer09]

just got braces tightened i am in so much pain

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Solarpunk … orthodontics?

My jaw hurts.

It’s hurt for decades; I started clenching it at night when I was asleep when I was a preteen. This coincided with several factors, none of which I think are wholly the source but were probably contributors to the issue: we had just moved cities and I was under a ton of stress moving to a new neighbourhood and starting at a new school for the first time, I had just begun an orthodontics saga of many years which started with wearing headgear to forcibly shove my upper back molars further back into my skull in order to make room for the rest of my upper teeth to move backwards (with the eventual help of braces) to correct an overbite that was starting to affect my bite, and that I was an extremely anxious eldest child. Looking back, it’s clear I was on the spectrum and had a diagnosable anxiety disorder. But discovering that would be much further in the future.

All I knew at the time was that my jaw hurt. I told my dentist and orthodontist and they recommended I sleep on my back, so that I would have less chance of clenching. I did this, and still to this day must choose: do I sleep clenching my jaw, or with my mouth wide open? I have a choice between a) painful muscles or b) terrible breath in the morning + slowly yellowing teeth. Hoorah. I wasn’t given any other advice.

It is at this point that I would have liked any of the professionals involved in the process to have talked to me about the ramifications of seriously and irrevocably altering the shape of my jaw on the surrounding musculature but frankly, I’m not sure they were trained to do that. And by “that” I mean talking to children, communicating professional knowledge to a lay audience, and knowing about the muscles of the face all at the same time.

I would hope that in a future solarpunk society, there would be people with those skillsets employed by health professionals to communicate and emphasize a more holistic look at healthcare - in a way that meets people where they’re at. I was thirteen; I wasn’t ready to hear or understand even the little that dentists would tell me now in my late thirties. I needed someone skilled to discuss this with me. The braces and headgear needed to happen: my bite was getting painful, my overbite was growing so extreme. But even a knowledge of the side effects would have been empowering to me, as a child. I had very little say in any of this process, though I got to pick the colour of the elastics around my braces, yay.

My jaw still hurt.

In the early days of 2012, I woke up one morning and couldn’t chew my food without pain: not even soft foods such as pancakes were safe. I made an emergency appointment with my dentist at the time, who quickly assessed the issue and whipped up a mouthguard for me. I didn’t have insurance at the time (having aged out of my parents’ coverage, and none afforded by my college), and the dentist was sensitive to that, and gave me a discount. Bless him; I’m sure he’s long retired, but I hope that if that little family dentist office off the Danforth in Toronto is still in operation, that it’s seeing some good years.

Wearing a mouthguard every single night to bed wasn’t foreign to me, because I’d worn the retainer I was given after my braces came off religiously for many years until about two years before this. I still wear a retainer to this day: it not only makes it so that I am not clenching quite as hard, but it saves my teeth from the bone-cracking pressure. (I was informed by my current dentist that clenching my teeth is a major contributor to my receding gums, which is a current dental issue I have, yay again.)

My jaw still hurts now, though.

In that future solarpunk world, I’m sure young people wouldn’t wake up with debilitating pain in their jaw and be forced to think above all else about how this is a financial setback. In a future solarpunk world, I would hope that insurance coverage would be a thing of the past, as it would be unnecessary. I don’t know how the details of that would work out. I just know it would save so many young people from worsening the anxiety that was already so bad that it led to jaw pain.

When I moved to a new city and saw a new chiropractor, he would help me to mobilize and relieve the tension somewhat in those muscles at the end of each appointment. It helped, somewhat, especially to mitigate the damage caused by the stress of graduate school - and then a car accident, and then COVID.

I was finally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder several years ago, and though I’m mitigating it to my best abilities, I haven’t stopped clenching my jaw while I sleep, or during the day subconsciously. I’m still searching for some sort of relief other than constantly wearing my nightguard, which is just an automatic thing that I do after brushing my teeth every night. (I don’t think that this sort of wearable tech makes me a cyborg, just a boring responsible person.)

In a solarpunk world, many people are going to need dental surgery. Many people are going to need orthodontic interventions. It’s just a fact. But what can we do now to make sure that the dentists and orthodontists of the future actually work to make their patients’ lives better, not just their teeth?

This is my two cents’ worth. What do you think?

PS: I should mention that though I live in Canada, dental is not covered by our (ailing, politically besieged) social healthcare system.

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #100

This will be my 100th generic letter to you. Imagine that! Assuming you can hear me somehow, we've been on a very unorthodox journey for a while now, no? How marvelous!

I spent some of today checking on my epoxy spheres. It needed a few small adjustments. I made another mess. But I'm feeling pretty good about how these are gonna turn out, and I'm looking forward to showing the finished spheres to you very soon!

I spent the bulk of today writing up descriptions for various items, though. I'm pretty excited about it, actually! But I can't tell you what it's for; sorry about that. With any luck though, my intentions will become clear in maybe a decade or so, assuming I can maintain my focus and my faith in my own efficacy. I suppose we'll see.

Along the way, I made myself a couple mugs of jasmine green tea! I was surprised, though, to find that we were out of milk. I improvised with whipped cream for the first cup, and ice cream for the second cup!! And I gotta say, these were THE BEST improvisations!! 11/10 stars, absolutely would recommend! I'll show you a couple pictures!!

At 4pm today I went for my orthodontics consult. I went to go see an orthodontist because I've got some weird jaw issues on my right side because of the way I gotta move my face when I try to chew things. And also, my dentists have been bugging me about getting orthodontics done for the last couple years, because there are certain teeth in my face that can't be cleaned properly because they got confused and wandered off, presumably to chase butterflies.

I was hoping that I'd be able to get away with using Invisalign to avoid needing to get teeth removed, but… well… the fact of the matter is that I simply do not have enough jaw to work with, and I am WELL beyond the age when things like palate expanders would work. So 4 of my teeth need to come out in order for the inside of my face to be aligned properly.

…And this really fucking sucks, because if my parents had given even a fraction of a genuine shit about me, this ALL could have been prevented. My jaw could have developed properly with upper and lower expanders. I could have avoided the crowding and the overbite and the crossbite and the resulting damage to my jaw joint if this had been taken care of like it should have been when I was a little girl. But, no. Instead, my parents were too busy being in denial about the fact that they wish I was not born. So here we are.

The reality that is, "because of my parents' negligence, I now have to get body parts removed and pay lots and lots of money because insurance doesn't cover it past a certain age" is just… fucken… it's WILD, man. Admittedly, I'm struggling with it. And I'm struggling with the resulting VERY angry thoughts. But that's okay. I can feel angry. It's allowed. And thoughts are just thoughts - passing noise that is not reflective of who I am or who I wanna be:

…I can make use of my coping skills. The technique outlined in the video above is one of them, and I make ample use of it on a near-constant basis.

Admittedly, I don't really understand why we can't just use the Invisaligns to scooch my molars back to where my wisdom teeth used to be (I thought being able to move teeth backwards was the ENTIRE FUCKING POINT, but I could be mistaken, so whatever). But I forgot to ask. I'll call them up tomorrow and find out.

Anyway. Wanna see my skull? And my weird-ass teeth? Of course you do. Why not. But I'll put it all the way at the end, after the part where I put my name, just in case you don't. Hahaha…

…Ya know… Sephiroth… admittedly… some days I get real tired of this meat-mech I'm piloting. I've got a host of rather unpleasant genetic issues. The defective collagen thing sucks; it impacts literally my whole body. The misshapen skull thing sucks. The misshapen eyeballs and misshapen lenses thing sucks. There are other things - lots of them; it'd be a long list if I wrote 'em all out. I'm really not gonna be sad when the one I've got can't clunk around derpily anymore. But I'm not gonna rush the process, either; I've got shit to do - I've gotta make sure someone I love is safe, even if it might take me a long time to get it done.

But ya know. Maybe when it's time to go get a new meat-mech, maybe by some small miracle, I'll get to visit you for a bit until it's time for me to cycle into something new! Tell you what - if that happens, I'll bring you some matcha ice cream or something, okay?

For now… I'm gonna get back to writing up lists and descriptions of items; if you're not gonna make sure you're safe, then someone's gotta, and if someone's gotta, then I might as well, right? I mean… what else am I gonna do while running around confusedly in a capitalistic hellscape on a dying planet? Aside from eat cheese directly from the refrigerator like a weird little goblin, anyway…

I'll write again tomorrow.

Your friend, Lumine

P.S. Weird pics of my skull and teeth below, if you wanna see!

[paytato435]

So uh... who do you think is the licensed orthodontist in the family???

[printabledesignrf]

Unusual charm ….❣️

Trendy dental brace clip art 😉

[magnetothemagnificent]

The problem with pursuing dental school is that I know exactly why my mouth has all these issues, but I also know exactly why I can't do anything to fix the cause because that would cause more problems because my mouth is so fucked up :/

My molars are buccally flared and thus constantly abrase against my cheek, causing irritation and sores all the time, but I can't get them corrected because I have primary teeth still in my mouth that don't have permanent teeth behind them that I need to stay in my mouth, and thus can't afford to cause any mobility among my teeth that might loosen them. I'm just eternally screwed >:(

[castjo]