Nine out of ten people grind or clench their teeth while they are sleeping.

 

Common causes in adults:

 

• Stress
• Over stimulating the brain
• Malocclusion (skew teeth)

 

 

Common causes in children:

 

• Stress.
• Worms picked up from dogs and cats

 

 

Do you suffer from any of the following:

 

• Tiredness in the morning
• Tired jaw muscles in the morning
• Neck pain
• Headaches
• Clicking jaw joint with or without pain.

 

 

Or does your teeth feel:

 

• Sensitive with hot and cold things, that comes and goes
• Pain when chewing

 

How does it work?

 

The following pictures show the major chewing muscles in the head and neck area.

 

While a person is sleeping these muscles tens up and pulls on the skull. This will cause headaches. The body will want to create an equilibrium between the muscle tension in front of the spine and the back of the spine, so in turn the muscles in the back of the neck will tens up as a result of the tension of the chewing muscles. This will cause neck pain.

During sleeping your brainwaves ‘float’ between light sleep and deep sleep (called REM). It is only in deep sleep that you ‘recharge’ your batteries, so to speak. Grinding or clenching during sleeping will hinder the brain from going into a deep sleep. This causes tiredness.

 

All the forces placed on your teeth are then being transferred to the joint of the lower jaw. This will stretch ligaments inside the joint whose sole purpose are to keep all the smaller parts in place. This causes the clicking sound you hear every time you eat.

 

Grinding also causes the loss of tooth structure, more specifically the loss in height of the teeth. Enamel gets grinded away until dentine is exposed. This will cause hot and cold sensitivity. The periodontal ligaments (see Tooth anatomy page) take a lot of strain during grinding and stretches out. This will cause discomfort/pain when chewing and hot/cold sensitivity.

 

• With children: Deworming on a regular basis if you have pets and no watching TV just before bedtime
• Headaches
• Go and see your dentist for the possibility of having a bite plate made. Theoretically a bite plate will help to teach your body to stop grinding. In reality it will protect your teeth and ligaments by cushioning the bite