Question:
Is there any way to know for sure if I do or not?
I resisted the suggestion to wear a night guard because I once had a
thing made for my mouth, to wear at night, for whitening my teeth, and
I found it very hard to sleep with it, even after trying it for a
couple weeks. In the end, I decided to discontinue it anyway due to
the fact that as I increased the % of active ingredient in the gel per
instructions, it hurt my teeth like hell! My teeth ended up hurting
like hell for several days after I wore the gel one night with the
increased solution, so at that point I just stopped using it.
Anyway, as far as grinding goes, my main question is, how do I know if
Im grinding or not?
And is there any way to deal with it other than to wear something in
my mouth at night?
Answer:
Unless you're under 30, it should be pretty obvious to the dentist
examining you if you have been grinding for a significant period of time.
When you eat, your teeth barely touch each other. Normal
mastication has the teeth cutting/mashing through the food
and the split second that teeth touch, the jaw opens and
the process starts anew.
You don't cut/mash though the food and then continue grinding
the teeth against each other. Slow down and pay attention
sometime while your eating (though thinking about it while
you are chewing may alter your habits slightly).
Another thing to consider is that our modern diet is not
very abrasive to our teeth. Food is cleaner and more refined
than in ancient times. We cook almost everything.
So.....if chewing is not creating a lot of tooth wear, yet
you still have flat spots on your teeth and sharp jagged
edges where they fit together, I wonder how that happened.
The teeth didn't get that way by themselves.
That's it! The teeth are coming in contact with one another
without food in your mouth!
Farmers, truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, construction
workers, and assembly line workers quite often have lots of tooth
wear. The physical demands of their jobs in addition to noise
and vibrations lead to having the jaw 'set' and the teeth wearing
on each other.
Driving in city traffic, mowing the yard, vacuuming, washing the
car, moving furniture, even watching an exciting game on television
can also lead to a little clenching.
Now take the stresses of everyday life and at different stages of
sleep imagine clenching with 10 or more times the force than you
would ever do while awake, and it's easy to see where teeth can
be damaged.
I do not know the actual percentage of the population who do significant
damage to their teeth with nocturnal clenching/grinding, but it is
extremely common by what I see in my practice.
You already know what my preferred method of treatment is.
Your wife can tell you if you grind your teeth at night. My wife told me.
I grind my teeth, and have a nightguard, and only had problems with it for
the first couple of weeks. Since then I feel funny if I sleep without it.
Grind? Probably. Clench? No.
Not everyone makes noise and not everyone wakes up because of it.
I see lots of patients who are destroying their teeth and have
no idea that they are doing it to themselves while they sleep.
