While at first tooth grinding and clenching (bruxism) might be induced by a peculiar set of circumstances, the real trouble is that tooth grinding and clinching often gets a subconscious habit. When that habit is entrenched, it can induce tremendous harm. Only one moment of hard clenching in your sleep can break up a tooth and cost you 1000s of bucks. Even as with any habit (such as over-eating, smoking, or nail biting), different things help different people to kick the habit, but everything that helps people kick a habit has one crucial thing in common. Every way that helps people kick a habit disturbs the neurological and psychological cycle that cooks up the chronic behavior

Let's take a look at the neurological cycle of tooth grinding. Since habits recur, we're really forever in the midst" of the cycle. In this illustration, we'll start at the point in the cycle when you're clenching your teeth. When you are clenching your teeth, there are nerve cells in your brain discharging, broadcasting signals to your jaw muscles and inducing them to contract. At the same time, the nerves in your teeth are spotting the clenching and charging signals back to your brain. Part of the cause that tooth grinding and clenching can get a habit is that the signs the teeth nerves send back are not translated as pain. As a matter of fact for a lot of people they're reasonably pleasant signals. Maybe this is because they are psychologically linked up with chewing, and chewing is consorted with eating things we like to eat.

There is much more happening in the brain during this clinching than merely the receiving of the signals from the tooth nerves and the sending of the signals to the jaw muscles. There are other tactual and internal receptive signals coming in from all over the body. Besides tactile and internal receptive signals, there are auditive signals getting in (even if the room is completely quiet, you hear your own breathing), there could be a visual sign coming in (if the room isn't totally dark), there are taste signalings coming in (even if they are un-noticed because they're "just however your mouth tastes at the moment".

The mind processes this complex set of external signals, and renders a lot more signals internally (from memories, dreamings, etc.).  the mix of all this stuff adds together up to a pattern which has become affiliated with clenching, your brain continues the cycle by sending some more signals to your jaw muscles to clench.

Now we can ask the significant question: what could change the general pattern of neuronic activity enough to have the brain do something contrary to  send the jaw muscles a signal to clench? As you may guess from how many dissimilar types of neural signals are present in this instance, shifting any of them can have an effect. So what is best to change depends upon how you happen to be processing all these signals, and which ones your brain activity pattern has given more lineal influence over your clenching.

For a few people, putting a mouth guard in their mouth (which changes the neuro-sensory signals that counter from the dentition and mouth) makes them clench to a lesser extent. For others, using that same mouth guard makes them clench more. For some people, altering what mattress they sleep on will modify their tooth grinding and clenching habit. For a few people, getting a massage or a chiropractic treatment can have their body feel different enough to disrupt or alter tooth grinding and clenching.

Some people have found that changing what they eat cuts off of alters the quantity of tooth grinding and clenching they do. Some people speculate that this happens only when the person was allergic to the food that was eliminated, but that has not been proved. Most people have had the experience of finding that eating nutrients they like leaves them in a better cognitive state than eating nutrients they do not like, and state of mind is among the big inputs into the neurologic cycle of any habit, so there may be plenty of diet adjustments that can affect tooth grinding and clenching without involving allergic reactions.

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