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If you wake up every morning with a sore jaw and a dull, pulsating headache, you might be suffering from bruxism. Also known as teeth grinding, this ailment often goes undiagnosed, as people aren’t aware of the cause of their headache. Even when properly diagnosed, people are often dumbfounded as to how they can solve this issue. It has a multitude of potential causes, which is why it’s so hard to treat. Before turning to prescription medications, you might want to try out some of these common solutions for teeth grinding at night and drop by this Dentist in West Hollywood or one near you for a thorough checkup.
1. Relieving muscle tension
Grinding your teeth while you sleep is a sure sign of tension in your jaw muscles. They are probably under a lot of pressure and that pushes the muscles to contract, causing your teeth to grind. Unfortunately, the more they stay clenched and tense, the more they will grind. This grinding will only further cause them to tense up, creating a vicious cycle of teeth grinding and muscle tension.
To get to the heart of the issue and relieve yourself of sleep disorders, you will have to reduce the tension in your jaw muscles. This is most easily achieved by relaxing them directly via massage. A firm rub with the tips of your fingers will help break some of the tension in the muscles. To further relax it, you could place a warm washcloth over both sides of your jaw and use it as a compress.
2. Reducing stress
Stress is one of the lead causes of bruxism, and it’s very likely that this is one of the factors causing your unnecessary jaw clenching. Being stressed out for days on end can manifest itself physically in the form of muscle tension. By getting rid of the stress, you might be able to curb the muscle tension and prevent your teeth from grinding.
However, this is easier said than done. Constant stress is a problem that can be caused by a variety of factors. Dealing with the underlying cause of the stress is pretty complicated and it might take you a very long time. However, there’s nothing stopping you from making sure that the stress doesn’t easily get to you. Work on dealing with stress with the use of relaxation techniques. This can be anything from exercise to listening to relaxing music. As long as you give yourself some way to relax and relieve tension, you’ll find that the stress will have less impact on you.
3. Protective solutions
Sometimes, the underlying cause of the jaw tension isn’t going to be easy to solve. This means you’ll have to deal with the teeth grinding until you manage to find a solution. During this time, you can’t just let your teeth keep grinding, it’s going to cause them further unnecessary damage. Luckily, you don’t have to. There are ways of protecting your teeth even while your jaw muscles stay clenched.
A split or mouthguard is one of the most effective teeth grinding solutions that you can use during the night. They will cover your teeth and prevent the grinding from damaging your teeth or gums. It’s a great temporary solution that can help you in a jiffy. You can fit a mouthguard over your upper or lower teeth to keep them separate from the opposite set. It’s possible that this protective solution could also lower jaw clenching slightly. You’re not dealing damage to your teeth, so your mouth is unlikely to reactively clench harder.
4. Other effective solutions
While mouthguards and preventative measures are great at preventing teeth grinding damage, they aren’t the only solutions out there. There are some unconventional ways to prevent your jaws from clenching.
In many cases, this clenching is caused by a reaction to misaligned or misshape teeth. Bad angles stimulate muscles and cause them to reactively contract and cause teeth to grind. This doesn’t happen while you’re awake because you have control over your jaw muscles. While you aren’t conscious, they instinctively contract. Reshaping your teeth is a costly, but effective solution to this problem.
Hypnotherapy has been suggested as a way to stop grinding teeth at night. As bruxism could be caused by both physical and stress-related issues, working on both with hypnotherapy could be a very effective solution. Electrolyte disbalances could also be one cause of uncontrollable jaw clenching. Magnesium has been shown to relax jaw muscles and help them stay loose during the night. Any of these solutions could end up being effective, but it mostly depends on the cause of your bruxism.
Conclusion
Bruxism isn’t an easy problem to solve. The multi-faceted nature of the ailment can leave both doctors and patients without a clue on how to treat it. However, you can always try to solve the underlying cause of the problem while treating the current symptoms. Consider the aforementioned solutions and you’ll find that treating bruxism might end up being easier than you first thought.
