Banishing Bruxism
You wake up from a sound sleep with a sore jaw. Your teeth feel like they are sensitized well beyond ever before. It is clear that you may have a case of bruxism.
Bruxism is condition where the person grinds their teeth. It can take place during the day or night. The condition can add up to 200 pounds of force to your teeth. The bite strength of grinding can be up to six times greater than normal. It is no surprise it can wear down or even break teeth.
Stress can be a significant factor, either in moments of acute tension or during sleep, when elevated levels of stress hormones may still circulate after a difficult day. Alcohol and tobacco use hike the likelihood of bruxism as well. Certain medicines, like antidepressants and antipsychotics, can also increase the risk.
Conditions that affect the nervous system, like dementia, Parkinson’s disease or stroke, can cause or exacerbate bruxism. And it often goes hand in hand with temporomandibular joint disorders, which cause pain around the jaw. There is also obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), where the upper airway becomes repeatedly blocked during sleep, leading to numerous breathing pauses at night. This can cause people with OSA to unconsciously overcompensate and grind their teeth as they thrust their jaw forward to open the airway.
A cracked tooth, crown or filling may be a clear sign that something is amiss, but there are less dramatic signs to look for. People with sleep bruxism, for instance, may wake up with a sore jaw or neck, a headache, a stiff jaw, ringing in the ears, or marks around the edge of the tongue where it pressed against clenched teeth.
Other factors that increase bruxism are poor sleep hygiene and bad posture. If you are a light or poor sleeper, you spend more time in non-REM sleep, which is when people naturally brux. This might be caused by stress, but consuming caffeine and sleeping with your phone.
To diagnose bruxism, your doctor may suggest taking part in a sleep study or undergoing electromyography.
While there is no cure, mouth guards are the best solution for grinding your teeth. Relaxation techniques like meditation may be ideal in reducing stress.
One important note to be aware of is that night guards don’t prevent you from grinding but they do act as a buffer for your teeth.
Clenching and grinding stimulates salivary glands to lubricate dry mouth and neutralize gastric acid. As a result, experts say it is dangerous to wear a night guard or splint if you have sleep apnea or severe gastrointestinal reflux disorder or GERD.
Part of the problem could be our modern diet. A growing body of evidence supports the once-fringe notion that, following the agricultural and industrial revolutions, humans eating foods that are more processed and easier to chew, we came to have smaller jaws than our ancestors and underdeveloped orofacial muscles. A result, researchers say, is that we tend to breathe through our mouths, with our tongues resting on the bottom of our mouths.
The tongue should always be on top of the mouth pushing up and out which strengthens face and neck muscles, widens the jaw and opens the airway.
At night, our modern penchant for soft pillows and mattresses, rather than lying on the ground as our ancestors did, makes our mouths more likely to fall open and for us to drool, leading to a drier, more acidic microbiome, not to mention sagging neck muscles, which further obstruct the airway.
A firm pillow or folded blanket under the head can help as can committing to an orofacial, neck and airway stretching and strengthening routine. You can do daily repetitions of pulling your head back into your neck as if you were trying to retreat from someone leaning in for a kiss and also nodding your head down until your chin touches the base of your throat.
Other good exercises are squeezing your shoulder blades together and holding, as well as putting up your arms like a goal post and leaning into a doorway to stretch out your chest.
Research also indicates that diaphragmatic breathing and singing can strengthen and expand your airway muscles to reduce snoring and bruxism.
Bruxism often comes down to a breathing or airway issue. If you want to stop grinding you have to get to the root cause of the issue.
