Common bite misconception

[Peco]

It seems to be that most people get the idea that their teeth should be slightly in contact or even fully in contact at rest. That is absolutely not the case, your teeth should only touch when swallowing or chewing.

I attribute this misconception mostly to mewing but I frankly don't understand where Dr Mew got this idea that teeth should be slightly in contact. I tried looking for some studies about it but couldn't find any (feel free to link them in the replies if you do have some). There aren't any studies saying that the best position is with teeth being slightly apart either, but there are some showing that in patients with TMD, tooth contact was a lot higher compared to healthy people. I will link 2 of those

• Study 1 : https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4263305/
• Study 2 : https://www.jofph.com/articles/10.11607/jofph.21.3.03
  

It's pretty hard to study something like this because you have to rely on feedback from the participants of your study, since currently there is no real way of monitoring how much and for how long someone keeps their teeth in contact. The two studies above use things like emails or a wrist vibrator to signal to the person, that then has to report whether or not his teeth were in contact at that moment. Neverthenless the study does show that the patient suffering from tmj issues keep their teeth in contact a lot more compared to people with no issues.

Since there are no studies that I know of showing any advantage in keeping teeth in contact and a few studies showing how that could be linked with tmj issues I think it's safe to say that the best option is to keep them apart. If you notice your teeth touching during the day bring them slightly apart.

 

[Peco]

Does anybody know where Dr Mew got the idea that teeth should be slightly in contact ? Does he give any justification for why he thinks that's the optimal position ?

 

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