Bruxism Mouth Guard

The medical turm for grinding your teeth is "bruxism". The interesting thing about it is that many people don't even know they have it. This is because they grind their teeth while they sleep and are never aware that anything out of the ordinary is happening.

If you do teeth grind at night, you may find out about it in three ways. The first is if you suspect something might be up because you awaken every morning with a sore jaw or a headache. These are two things that are common with people who have night time bruxism.

The second way you may become alerted to it is if your spouse sleeping next to you is bothered by the grinding noise and starts asking questions. Your teeth grinding might be just loud enough for him or her to hear it and they might tell you that you are making noise.

The most common way to find out that you are grinding your teeth at night is to hear if from your dentist. If you do teeth grind, there will be signs of it along the tops of your teeth. You are, after all, actually grinding your teeth down and so they will show signs of wear that any dentist should recognize and be able to identify.

After your dentist tells you that you have bruxism, he will discuss with the importance that you stop grinding teeth or find a way to protect them. Some people have very mild cases of teeth grinding and others grind away at an alarming rate. Obviously, grinding your teeth every night does damage to them and wears down the enamel. While nothing seems to be wrong now, many years later after a lifetime of grinding you may run into some serious problems.

You dentist will most likely recommend that you get a bruxism mouthguard. He will be able to take impressions of your teeth and have the custom mouthguard made for you. Unfortunately, since it is custom made, the price for a teeth grinding guard is often between $500 and $1000 which is quite expensive.

If you choose to get a bruxism mouthguard, it will protect your teeth from the grinding motion you do at night, provided you do wear it. That is the big problem with a night time mouth guard: you have to wear it and wear it forever unless you can find a cure for the problem.

When you buy your bruxism mouthguard, you will most likely wear it religiously for a period of time. You will be especially motivated to wear it if you got a custom one that cost over $500. But how long can you really keep it up, wearing it night after night? Most people find that after a period of time, they start to not wear it as much as no mouthguard is especially comfortable.

Over the years, it is highly unlikely that you will still be wearing your mouthguard and then you will be back to doing damage to your teeth at night. Additionally, if you are able to wear it every night, your grinding will wear down the mouthguard instead of your teeth. After a period of time, dependant on how severe your grinding is, you will have to replace your mouthguard with another expensive one.  

Getting a bruxism mouth guard to protect your teeth will work but it is not the solution to the problem, just a band aid. The better approach would be to figure out if you can solve you teeth grinding habit by finding the cause of it.

Most people grind their teeth at night because of some stress in their life. Stress is thought to be the most likely reason for bruxism and identifying your stress might work. Unfortunately, every person is different and your teeth grinding may involve stress or something totally different. If you take 10 people with bruxism, you might find 10 totally different reasons why they are doing it.

Many people opt for the bruxism mouthguard and that is all they ever do to deal with the problem. If you can identify it though, you will be one step ahead and be able to learn how to stop ginding teeth and no longer damage them without having to ever buy one of those expensive mouth guards!