Does breast- or bottle-feeding affect how teeth are aligned?
It’s still not really clear how thumb-sucking and other sucking affect a child’s teeth, although it seems possible they would affect the way the face develops. Researchers in Italy looked at young children’s teeth to learn more. What the researchers wanted to know: How do the type of feeding as an infant and other sucking affect preschoolers’ teeth? What they did: In 1998, pediatricians, dentists, and nurses in the town of Cava de’ Tirreni in southern Italy examined 1,130 children born between 1993 and 1995. They also asked parents whether children were breast-fed or bottle-fed and whether they sucked on a thumb or pacifier. What they found: Children who’d sucked on a thumb or pacifier for more than a year were twice as likely to have misaligned teeth. They were four times as likely to have an open bite, in which the front teeth don’t meet right. Children who were bottle-fed were more likely to have a posterior cross-bite, in which molars don’t line up, but otherwise bottle-feeding or
