Grinding your teeth in your sleep is irritating to room mates. It can also severely damage your teeth and cause a lot of pain and suffering
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Here's How:
- If you wake up with a headache, earache or pain in your jaws, ask your dentist about bruxism.
- If your teeth seem overly sensitive to heat, cold or touch, see your dentist and ask about bruxism.
- Examine your teeth (or have a dentist do it) to see if they are overly worn down with cracked or broken enamel.
- Excessive stress and tension cause tooth grinding, so try to eliminate these from your life.
- Suppressed anger can lead to nocturnal bruxism, so don't keep your anger bottled up inside. Express your feelings.
- Even if you don't suspect bruxism, have your dentist check for this problem periodically.
- If you have a sleep study done for another reason, have the technician check for bruxism as well.
- Consider wearing a nightguard. This is simply a barrier between top and bottom teeth to prevent grinding.
- Investigate the use of biofeedback to reduce stress, tension, anger and bruxism.
- Consider more drastic methods, if necessary, like surgery to correct malocclusion or poor dental alignment.
- Watch for new methods to control bruxism, like the lip simulator, currently being refined, that electrically stimulates the lip when a person bites down too hard while sleeping.
Tips:
- Always be alert to anything that disturbs your sleep, whether you would consider it a sleep disorder or not. Sleep is important.
- If you wake up headachy or suffering from any discomfort, find out why. You should wake up refreshed and rested.
- Always inform your doctor, dentist or other health professional of any changes in your sleep pattern that might suggest a problem.
