Malocclusion

Your bite is off. Upper jaw and lower jaw don't meet the way they should — the teeth don't interlock, the mouth finds no resting position in which everything fits. Perhaps you notice it while chewing, while speaking, while unconsciously clenching your teeth at night. Perhaps it shows as jaw pain, as headaches, as the dull feeling that something in your face doesn't fit together.

Dentistry treats malocclusion as a misalignment — braces, splints, sometimes surgical procedures. And that has its legitimacy. But there is a deeper question that is rarely asked: What does it mean when your mouth — the tool with which you express yourself, with which you bite down, with which you take in nourishment and shape words — has structurally gone out of balance?