Bob Collins
A few years ago, I asked a young man why he had his tongue pierced and a ring put in. “Ith a thatement of who I am,” he said.
He is — or was — a candidate for braces, according to research from the University of Buffalo.
“It is a basic tenet of orthodontics that force, over time, moves teeth,” said Swansan Tabbaa, an assistant professor of orthodontics at the university’s School of Dental Medicine and lead researcher on the case study, told LiveScience.com.
The problem, the university says, is that people with pierced tongues “play” with their new friend. Its study, though, seems to involve one woman:
The tongue was pierced seven years earlier and every day for seven years she had pushed the stud between her upper front teeth, creating the space between them and, subsequently, habitually placing it in the space. The patient did not have a space between her upper front teeth prior to the tongue piercing.
