Your dentist may recommend wearing a mouth guard to cover your worn-over teeth or protect your teeth, tongue, cheeks, and gums against potential injury from sports. You or your kids may get a mouthguard for covering teeth while playing contact sports such as football, basketball, hockey, or soccer. You may also require a mouthguard when participating in noncontact activities or sports like cycling and gymnastics, which increases the risk of injuring your face. Still, your dentist may also advise you to wear mouth guards Brooklyn to prevent teeth grinding. The National Sleep Foundation estimates that grinding of the teeth, or bruxism, affects about 10% of American adults.
If you are not sleeping with another person next to you, it is difficult to know if you grind, gnash or clench your teeth. Consequently, below are the signs and symptoms that may show you grind your teeth at night and thus require a dental guard.
1. Wake up with migraines and headaches
If you have sleep-related teeth grinding, you are highly likely to experience mild or severe headaches immediately after waking up or in the morning.
Grinding your teeth as you sleep stresses and strains the muscles of your jaws, leading to their exhaustion. Thus, your jaws swell, causing your jaws to have sores and pain. The pressure exerted on your jaws is the cause of your headaches.
Headache originating from your mouth may also cause the aching of your teeth or ear.
2. Jaw clicks or pops
Overworking your jaw during the night as you grind your teeth may also make it sounds resembling a snap, click, or pop. Your jaw may make those sounds when opening your mouth to enable talking, chewing, or biting.
You may also experience discomfort or inability of the jaw to move freely.
3. Sensitive teeth
Frequent grinding of the teeth can lead to the gradual destruction of the enamel, a glossy substance covering the crown of your tooth. The enamel gives the tooth its shape and durability and safeguards the sensitive nerves against damage.
Weakened enamel leaves the nerves of the teeth exposed, making them more sensitive to sweet, cold, hot, and acidic diets.
Wearing dental night guards will protect the enamel from further destruction and reduce the sensitivity of your teeth.
4. Chipped or crooked teeth
Grinding your teeth leads to them becoming eroded and chipped. The chipping of your tooth may make it more sensitive.
Using a mouth guard as you sleep at night can help stop teeth erosion; thus, you may not have flat top molars, shorter front teeth, or dents in your teeth.
5. Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) syndrome
The temporomandibular joint is a sliding hinge connecting the jawbone to the skull. You have a joint in both your jaws.
Sometimes the temporomandibular joint may be dysfunctional, leading to pain or discomfort in the joints and muscle controlling jaw movement. Other symptoms of the TMJ syndrome include jaw tenderness, arching ear pain, and difficulty chewing.
The TMJ syndrome may come from excessive teeth grinding.
Contact Brooklyn City Dental today to book an appointment and get your customized dental night guard to stop teeth grinding as you sleep.
