Grinding Teeth - Treatment and Causes

Why Do People Grind Their Teeth at Night?

Teeth grinding is somewhat of a mystery. Sadly, doctors haven’t concluded the reason why people grind their teeth at night. It can be from stress, misalignment of teeth, aggressive behavior, poor posture, eating disorders and quite a few other possibilities.

More Information About Grinding Teeth:

Stop Grinding Teeth – Mouth Guards for Teeth Grinding – Grinding Teeth in Children – Grinding Teeth and Clenching

What To Do If You Grind Your Teeth In Sleep?

There are a few things you can do to save your teeth from further damage. Each treatment may work better than others, depending on the cause of grinding your teeth in sleep.

• Try relaxation techniques to aid yourself through a stressful day. Yoga, meditation, relaxing baths, listening to your favorite music or exercising are great ways to help you relax. Grinding teeth in sleep is caused by unconscious impulses that want to be freed. Since the body can’t relax when under stress, the body will continue to “work” even when sleeping.
• Massage your facial muscles to help relax your muscles, especially in the jawline to relieve pain.
• Go to the dentist and get fitted for a mouth guard. It is a great way to help protect yourself from grinding your teeth during sleep. Also, the mouth guard can assist with jaw pain to stop you from clenching your teeth.
• If you have misaligned teeth, you should schedule an appointment with an orthodontist to have them fit your mouth with an appliance to fix your bite pattern. This could possibly help resolve your teeth grinding.
• Lack of calcium can lead to muscle involuntary movements. Take some calcium supplements (Amazon – Viactiv calcium supplements) to combat this deficiency.
• A lack of magnesium can also cause muscle spasms. To prevent teeth grinding in this case, it’s necessary to take magnesium tablets (Amazon – Solgar Magnesium supplements) before bedtime. Research has shown that it can help.
• Hypnosis has now become a popular way to break teeth grinding habits when sleeping.
• Counseling is also another way to effectively de-stress.

Signs and Teeth Grinding Symptoms

Teeth grinding can be loud enough to wake up your sleeping partner or you can experience other physical symptoms such as: teeth sensitivity, jaw pain or tightness in your jaw muscles, headache or worn tooth enamel, exposing deeper layers of your teeth.

Causes of Teeth Grinding

Bruxism is not completely understood, but physical or psychological causes may include:

• Anxiety, tension or stress
• Abnormal alignment of upper and lower teeth (malocclusion)
• Response to pain from an earache or teething (in children)
• Complications resulting from a disorder, such as Parkinson’s disease or Huntington’s disease.
• An uncommon side effect of some psychiatric medications, including certain antidepressants.
• Changes that occur during sleep cycles
• Being an aggressive, hyperactive or competitive personality type

Complications from Teeth Grinding

In most cases, Bruxism will not cause serious complications but will lead to damaged teeth (including restorations and crowns) or jaw joint surgery, if you develop TMJ from Bruxism movements. You could also experience, facial pain or tension headaches.

Teeth Grinding Tests and Diagnosis

During a regular dental exam, the dentist will check for unusual wear and tear on your teeth, tooth fractures, tooth sensitivity, continued breakdown of dental restorations, including loss of crowns. If you have any of these signs, your dentist will look for changes in your teeth and mouth over the next several visits to see if the process is progressive and determine if you will need dental treatment. If your dentist suspects that you have teeth grinding issues, he/she will try to determine the cause by asking a few questions, such as your general dental health, your daily medication, whether you drink alcohol or caffeinated beverages and review your sleep habits, especially after someone has heard you grind your teeth.

To evaluate the extensiveness of the damage, your doctor will check for tenderness in your jaw muscles, obvious dental abnormalities, such as broken or missing teeth or poor tooth alignment, damage to your teeth, the underlying bone in your jaw for bone degeneration, and the inside of your cheeks for biting.

Treatment

Treatment can include stress management, dental approaches (i.e. dental guards), splints, correcting misaligned teeth, behavior therapy and/or medications (such as a muscle relaxer or even Botox)

For most teeth grinders, teeth grinding occurs at night when they are left unaware of the noise, which many will agree is more annoying than snoring. Unless someone is sleeping in the same room, the condition goes unnoticed until a painful symptom occurs. Many times sufferers will wake up with a headache, jaw soreness, chipped enamel or will notice that their molars are worn down or appear flat from constant grinding. Dental gum problems will appear too.

Study Findings*

Snoring and obstructive sleep apnea has been found to be significantly more frequent in those who experience teeth grinding. Sufferers also experience more frequent episodes of nocturnal awakenings, thus leading to daytime sleepiness. Teeth grinding is unrelated to gender but appears to decrease significantly with age. The highest prevalence as observed is in the 19 to 44 year old group. Persons with anxiety and sleep-disordered breathing have the highest number of risks factors for teeth grinding.

Flat teeth cannot be restored. The only way to prevent damaged teeth due to grinding, is to prevent it from happening, especially at night.

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