What Your Dentist Doesn’t Know Can Hurt You
Over a million US citizens wake up each morning in significant pain from nighttime teeth grinding and clenching (bruxism). Does the fact that these people remain in pain every day mean they don’t have health insurance? No, actually most of these people have health insurance, and they have dentists. Unfortunately, while many dentists are expert at preventing tooth damage and repairing cavities and chipped or worn teeth, most dental schools don’t teach anything about the psychology of habits, and long-term tooth grinding and clenching is a habit most people would like to be rid of.
So what does to for a person to rid himself or herself of the habit of nighttime teeth grinding and clenching? As you might suspect from thinking about like smoking, drinking, over-eating, or nail biting, different things work for different people. The “solution” most often recommended by dentists is a custom-made mouth guard.
There are many variations of the custom mouth guards that dentists recommend, most costing between $500 and $800. Different dentists disagree strongly on which is the “best” type of mouth guard to use. Some are thin plastic, made by vacuum-molding a hot thin sheet of plastic over a plaster replica of your upper teeth. Some are hard plastic cast in a mold made from an impression of both your upper and lower teeth.
It’s not unusual for people to follow their dentist’s advice and plunk down between $500 and $800 for a custom-made mouth guard. Once you put out the big bucks, you get to find out if you are someone whose nighttime clenching gets worse or better when you wear your custom mouth guard.
“Wait a minute” you might say, “did you say my clenching could get worse?” It certainly could. You see, the problem is that while mouth guards obviously protect your teeth, they don’t necessarily make you bite less. The nature of the tooth grinding and clenching habit for some people is that a mouth guard is more of an annoyance to be chewed through than a signal to relax.
Many mouth guards fit between your upper and lower molars, and spread the load if you clench your teeth. The load spreading is supposed to help you do less damage if you clench. Sometimes this works OK. Other times the damage done is much worse with a mouth guard.
Some mouth guards (such as the “NTI”) are made to attach to your front teeth and prevent your molars from touching, even if you try to clench. The theory is that biting on a front-teeth-only guard will feel so different than a normal bite that you will know (even subconsciously) that something is wrong, so you won’t bite down. For some people this works out OK. Unfortunately, for the people who bite down anyway, the results unusual forces generated can misalign the jaw and cause serious damage.
Fortunately, there are many other ways to interrupt a habit besides using a mouth guard. Some methods are free to try, some are moderately expensive, and some can be quite expensive to try. Some offer money-back guarantees, and some don’t. The methods that people have successfully used to rid themselves of the teeth grinding and clenching habit include: hypnosis, biofeedback, using a comfort-improving mattress pad, soothing sound machines, changing to a new pillow, chiropractic work, diet changes, massage, meditation, and other positive psychology practices.
A custom-made mouth guard from a dentist is one of the most expensive possible solutions you can try for teeth grinding and clenching. Not only that, but custom mouth guards come with no money-back guarantee. This may be a good deal for your dentist, but it’s probably not a great deal for you. If you want to try a mouth guard, you might first want to try an over-the-counter inexpensive one from a pharmacy.