Teeth grinding or clenching, medically known as bruxism, its a habit that many people suffer from and that can cause important damages to teeth as well as other oral and overall health complications if it happens on regular basis.
Teeth Grinding Causes
Some of the most frequent reasons why people tend to clench or grind their teeth are:
- Anxiety.
- Stress.
- Sleep disorders like apnea.
- In most of the cases, people clench their teeth while sleeping and this can be a product of missing teeth, crooked teeth or an abnormal bite.
11 Consequences of Grinding Your Teeth
Many people clench their teeth while sleeping, so they don’t really know that they do it. Read the following consequences of grinding your teeth and also identify the signs that could indicate that you may be clenching your teeth at nights.
- Teeth fractures: clench your teeth can cause fractures in your teeth which can be noticed as a light brown stain. The fractures in your teeth caused by bruxism can lead to the loss of parts of the teeth and an extensive restoration can be required to fix the fractured teeth.
- Micro-cracks and broken fillings that cause nerve damage.
- Jaw tenderness: your jaw can turn tender due to the force used when grinding your teeth.
- Loss of teeth.
- Excessive wear down of the teeth. The wear out of the teeth makes them to become fshorter which causes the upper and lower jaw to come together with more impact while chewing. Also, the worn down of the front teeth makes flat and even in length.
- Experimenting a dull headache, earache or sore jaw after waking up.
- Due to bruxism many damages to your jaws can be caused like temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD), limited mobility of the jaw or even changes to the appearance of your face can be produced. The jaw misalignment is another common issue caused by bruxism and in some cases it can require from surgery to be corrected.
- Sensivity to heat and cold. The excessive worn down of the teeth and the lack of tooth enamel to protect the teeth exposes the dentin and leads to sensitivity.
- The pressure of grinding your teeth also affects the gum line and causes gum recession.
- Frequent headaches and migraines due to the excess of pressure.
- Your mouth can be damaged as well by teeth grinding, causing sores while you clench your teeth and bite down on the inside of your cheek or tongue.
If you suffer from any of this issues but you dont know yet if bruxism is the problem, you can ask someone to watch you while you sleep to see if you are clenching your teeth unconsciously at nights.
Once you determine that you are grinding or clenching your teeth and that this habit is causing damages to your oral and overall health, you must visit your dentist and ask him to give you some advices and treatments on how to stop grinding your teeth and avoid future oral health issues related to bruxism.