Speech Impediments Caused By Lingual Braces

Wearing orthodontic appliances has many side effects that can be considered negative. One of them is the aesthetic issue, that a mouth full of metal is not very attractive, to which lingual braces offer a ready solution, by placing the metal on the other side of the teeth. This way, the usual pain and discomfort of getting your cheeks and your lips caught or cut up on your braces is also nonexistent, and the demineralization is also much rarer with these braces, and remains invisible, so you will not have white spots all over your teeth once your time in braces is over. But there is one thing that simply cannot be overcome with braces, lingual or otherwise: the speech impediments that come with them.

What You Can Expect

When you first learned to talk, your tongue and other apparatus used for speech got used to the inside of your mouth being a certain way. If you get lingual braces, your teeth will become larger, and thus your speech patterns and the way you infect sounds will change, and your tongue, not used to this new setting, will have to relearn how to make the same sounds again. Until then, you may experience lisping, your vowels may be a little bit strange, and in general you may experience that the way you pronounce words may be different. With training this can usually be overcome, but there are some instances when the speech impediment stays with you until you have your braces off at the end of your orthodontic treatment. The other issue you may have is that while the tongue gets used to the new apparatus and the enlarged lower or upper row of teeth, it will run into the metal several times, and can get cut up or damaged. This is quite routine, and your tongue will get used to the new settings, and will probably be able to get around just as well as it did before the braces were put on.

How Long Will It Take?

This is a very difficult question to answer, but usually the speech impediments go away in about 48 hours. The difficulty is that for some people the speech impediments are quite severe, and for some hardly noticeable, and whether or not they stay and for how long they stay has nothing to do with how severe the speech impediments are. Also, every person will develop different speech impediments and in different ways, so it is neigh impossible to guess if you will get a speech impediment, and if you do get one, if it will stick.

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