A man where I worked had this done, MOST PAINFUL surgery. Not my choice.....

You can't be as bad off as many who have no teeth.

MH

A woman with whom I used to work had that surgery.

She said that if she could go back, she would not have done it. It was very painful. I think she has some permanent titanium in her jaw as well

I have the same problem, my bottom jaw is too short. In addition, my jaw is misaligned and I and if I yawn too wide or sneeze too hard, my jaw will come out of the socket and then when I close it and shake a little, it will go back in.

I won't get the surgery. Maybe someday, that Canadian technology that they are using to regrow teeth will be more advanced and be able to grow/lengthen the bottom jaw - that's what I read it could be used for in the possible near future, so I will wait it out.

Tina.

I've read that people who are born with bone issues like that - underdeveloped jaw, etc., has to do with nutritional deficiency in the mother, or even throughout several generations before her. Check out Weston Price foundation for his studies about that. Whether you really do have an underdeveloped mandible or it's possibly more of an alignment issue, I would look into upper cervical chiropractic (not widely practiced, sometimes called "Straight Chiropractic", where only the upper cervical bones, mainly the atlas, are adjusted with a toggle technique) and craniosacral therapy. Both are very gentle and honoring to the body, to relieve pressure on the brainstem and allowing the head, spine and surrounding tissues to balance - you would be surprised how much that can help. When I was a teenager, I had braces to close gaps in my upper teeth, which brought everything "in" and forced my lower jaw back. Needless to say, that caused a lot of problems for later, so after I had my atlas adjusted and went through a lot of changes with that (the chiropractic follow up is minimal compared to full spine chiropractic) and bodywork/craniosacral therapy, I had a second set of orthodontic braces to open up the teeth and upper palette again, and my face really changed. Actually, it changed after the initial atlas adjustment and early cranial work, but more after the orthodontics which allowed my jaw to drop more down and forward, once it wasn't being jammed backward trying to fit underneath too small an upper palette. It took a lot of tweaking to get the bite right, but I knew my head was on straight since it had been a good 10 years since my initial atlas adjustment, and it seems to have all settled in. I have to wear a plastic retainer at night to keep everything from shifting, since I'm missing some teeth congenitally, but so far so good. It does inhibit the natural cranial rhythms, but a necessary tool unless I figure out a better way. If you have surgery, aside from all the other risks, if your head isn't on straight, you could sort of lock yourself into your present kink. It's like the more you do things to compensate around that spinal "kink" most of us have from birth or early childhood (i.e. surgeries, ortotics, orthodontics, etc.), the more difficult it is to remove, and the more things fuse in that arrangement as you get older. My BF is a bodyworker for 25 years now and has worked with this chiropractor for about 15 years, and I hear many, many testimonials and stories from both of them, not to mention my own personal experience. Good luck!!!