Healthy Start
At Payson Dental and Orthodontics, we believe in preventing dental problems whenever possible. To this end, we offer the Healthy Start Program to help our patients get started on achieving healthy, beautiful smiles. This treatment focuses on preventing crooked teeth, rather than correcting them. We invite you to contact our office at 801-465-7966 to learn more about Healthy Start in Payson, Utah, and to make your appointment with Dr. Brian Kraft.
The Healthy Start program is a non-invasive departure from traditional orthodontics, which focuses on early, natural straightening of teeth. While traditional braces and other orthodontic treatments have great value, Health Start works just as well or better than most of the available options. The Healthy Start program means that your child can achieve a beautiful smile without the use of braces or surgery, and without experiencing discomfort.
This treatment system can be started as early as age 2, and provides numerous benefits, including the promotion of proper facial development, eliminating poor oral habits and mouth breathing, and correcting bad bites and misaligned teeth. Healthy Start is a fraction of the cost of braces, and can achieve full correction within 2-12 months, without any food restrictions – all while your child is sleeping!
Healthy Start focuses on two specific areas – preventing and treating crooked or crowded teeth, and sleep-disordered breathing. When you visit our practice for your consultation, our dentist will outline how this system works, and how you can expect it to improve your child’s overall quality of life. The best way to determine if your child needs the Healthy Start program is to visit our dentist regularly for checkups. Other signs that indicate your child’s need for early treatment include:
- Crowded teeth
- Snoring
- Chronic allergies
- Swollen tonsils
- ADD/ADHD
- Frequent headaches
- Restless sleep
- Daytime drowsiness
- Irritability
- Arrested growth
- Mouth breathing
When your child begins his or her treatment using Healthy Start, we work to treat the root cause of crooked teeth using soft, comfortable devices to guide incoming teeth to the correct positions, correcting the growth and the alignment of the jaw. Healthy Start treatments can involve up to three different phases of treatment – correcting bad oral habits, guiding incoming teeth into the proper position, and ensuring that adult teeth erupt in the correct position and do not shift. During each of these phases, our dentist will outfit your child with a different oral appliance to wear while they sleep.
The other area that Healthy Start focuses on, sleep-disordered breathing, occurs when your child’s airway is constricted due to an underdeveloped mouth and jaw, or improper positioning of teeth. This causes your child to have difficulty breathing while asleep, and may show as anything from mild snoring to severe obstruction while sleeping. This difficulty in breathing can lead to bed-wetting, hyperactive behavior, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. Fortunately, the Healthy Start system can correct these problems, adjusting the alignment of your child’s teeth and jaw to promote a healthier life and improving the quality of their sleep.
For more information on the Healthy Start Program, and to schedule a consultation with our dentist, please contact our office today. You can also visit http://thehealthystart.com/ for an overview of the Healthy Start system.
