110 – What Causes Short Teeth

What Causes Short Teeth?
Having short teeth is very common; there are many people who work with their dentist to correct them for aesthetic purposes. In addition to aesthetics, short teeth can cause difficulties in chewing, which would signal a physical need for professional intervention. Short teeth can be a big nuisance and luckily, there are several solutions your dentist has for this condition.

What are the causes of short teeth?

Short teeth manifests as either the appearance or occurrence of disproportion between the size of the teeth and gums. There are a few different causes of this condition: overgrowth of bone or gums, small lips, or lack of crown development. These causes can be of genetic origin, through tooth wear over the course of their lifetime, or through an accident or trauma. A person can have one or all these causes.
As we said above, it is very common to find people with short teeth, and there can be several causes for this. It can be from the disproportion in the space between the teeth and the gum to even excessive bone or gingival growth. Genetic factors can also be the cause for short teeth. Below we will explain each one of them better.
Overgrowth of gums
Overgrowth of the gums is also known as a high or gummy smile. We can define this smile when a good part of the gum is exposed when we smile. Causes of this can vary. Sometimes the patient has a larger and more open mouth; a naturally wider smile exposing more gums. Still other times, small teeth are an illusion caused by longer and extended gum tissue covering an otherwise average or typical size tooth. Gingival aesthetics is a procedure that favors the reduction of the gums, thus increasing the height of the tooth.
Genetics
The genetic code influences many aspects of our body, and genetics can also influence the formation of short teeth. There are certain genetic processes that due to certain influences can cause the teeth to be malformed or small. The problem to be addressed here is the size of the teeth in relation to the structure of the mouth. In this case, the problem is not just aesthetic, usually people with small teeth have difficulty chewing correctly, as the fit of the teeth can be affected by this differentiation. The treatment for small teeth related to genetics is different than from treatment related to other physical causes of short teeth.
Strictly speaking, the formation of teeth takes place even before the baby is born. They are complex processes that suffer genetic, hormonal and environmental influence to the point of defining malformations that will, many times, become evident only when the permanent teeth are born. This is the case, for example, of microdontia (teeth much smaller than normal), macrodontia (teeth much larger than normal) and hypodontia (fewer teeth are born than the standard). Teeth that are much smaller than normal, or even much larger, and even missing, require treatment from childhood.
Tooth injury or wear
In addition to the causes mentioned above, some cases such as accidents and infections in the teeth region can influence tooth wear, causing short teeth. Accidents, trauma, or infections can compromise their size, which makes them uneven. But the treatments to solve this problem can be similar to the treatments used in patients who have naturally small teeth.