https://www.righttogrow.org/extractions_the_airway?page=2Two identical twin girls had presented with identical cases of crowded teeth.
One received extraction treatment, while the other had her palate expanded. The resulting differences are nothing short of profound.
For many years, orthodontists have practiced with the belief that we have evolved to have smaller jaws that are unable to accommodate all 32 teeth. Looking at the history of malocclusion, however, it becomes apparent that the rise of crooked teeth is closely paralleled with the rapid rise of civilization – something that has only taken off in the last four hundred years; a relative blink of an eye with the process of evolution taking millions of years. This amount of time is simply too short for our genes to have changed significantly. As such, it seems that crooked teeth are not a result of genetically smaller jaws but rather a developmental effect of our modern lifestyles.
Once we accept that narrow jaws and malocclusion are environmental rather than genetic, the focus of orthodontic treatment necessarily changes from the easy route of extracting teeth to the optimal solution of expanding the jaw to accommodate the teeth.
