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Teeth grinding is also known as sleep bruxism, which is the grinding and clenching of teeth while asleep. This unconscious habit leads to severe side effects that damage oral health and cause ongoing pain. But when you’re aligned with the right dentist, the discomfort of teeth grinding can be eliminated in just a few steps and dental problems can be avoided.
Problems Caused by Teeth Grinding
If you grind your teeth, it’s very likely you have experienced or will experience a host of side effects including:
- Morning headaches
- Sore teeth
- Aching jaw
- Worn enamel
- Broken or cracked teeth
- Gum recession
- Deteriorating dental work
- Popping jaw joints
- Tenderness while chewing
Teeth grinding not only affects oral health but physical health. Headaches especially are a problem for many bruxism sufferers, waking them up at night or always being there when they wake in the morning. This problem can also extend to the neck, shoulders, and ears, sometimes leading to a misdiagnosis from another doctor when your Healdsburg dentist is the one who could have helped you all along.
What Causes Sleep Bruxism?
There are many possible causes of sleep bruxism. For some, this condition is temporary and for others it is chronic. Determining the cause of the teeth grinding is the first step to getting the right kind of dental treatment.
- Misalignment: A misaligned jaw or crooked teeth means teeth aren’t in proper formation to function correctly, which contributes to problems like sleep bruxism.
- Stress: Bouts of severe stress are typically temporary and the teeth grinding lasts only until a person’s worries are resolved. If the stress is ongoing, the bruxism will be too.
- TMJ problems: When the temporomandibular joint is out of whack it can cause a host of side effects that masquerade as other health problems.
- Missing teeth: Anytime a person has missing teeth, the remaining teeth work diligently to make up for the absence, which means they’re working overtime even in sleep.
Untreated bruxism can lead to quickly deteriorating oral health. If symptoms of this problem begin to appear, the best thing to do is see your dentist right away for diagnosis and treatment. Getting teeth grinding addressed prevents other oral health problems from developing and saves you from uncomfortable and costly dental dilemmas.
Solutions for Teeth Grinding
When you wake up miserable every day with a headache or mouth soreness, you want the problem to go away immediately. Within 10 days of targeted treatment from your Healdsburg dentist, the headache, neck pain, and jaw pain from bruxism can disappear.
Targeted injections to your jaw muscle can be done right away to relax the muscle, stop the involuntary teeth grinding, and reduce the wear and tear on your teeth. It will take a little longer for your customized night guard to be ready, but in the meantime the injections deliver relief.
When your night guard is ready and you wear it to sleep every night, this combination of treatments creates a powerful to solution to what can feel like an impossible problem.
Avoid the Side Effects of Sleep Bruxism
Wearing your night guard regularly is a simple, powerful method of preventive dental care. A customized, full-coverage night guard made of smooth plastic protects both upper and lower teeth. This durable appliance fits snugly and comfortably so it doesn’t interrupt sleep and protects your teeth from themselves. Contact Healdsburg Dental Spa in Healdsburg, CA, to find out if you have sleep bruxism and if a night guard is the right solution for you.
