Teeth
grinding is an oral habit that involves clenching and
grinding of teeth during sleep times at night or carried
out diurnally as a compulsive habit. While day time
teeth grinding is easy to identify as a problem and
fairly straightforward to undertake corrective measures,
prevention of night time teeth grinding on the other
hand is that simple.
The
ambiguity of identifying teeth grinding at
night
Teeth
grinding at night is far more difficult to identify than
day time teeth grinding because it is often hard to
identify something that an individual indulges in during
sleep – unless there is someone else to point out the
problem (similar to snoring).
In several
instances it has been observed that a teeth grinder will
grind teeth to the stumps by the time the root cause of
the problem is understood. Even cases of damage to teeth
enamel and cracks or fractures on teeth often get
treated as something else while the root problem of
teeth grinding is overlooked.
Typical
symptoms of teeth grinding at
night
There are
a few common signs that can indicate the presence of
teeth grinding at night. For example, waking up from
sleep with a headache or migraine can be one. Night time
teeth grinding also causes severe (in some cases) facial
pain – which can be muscular, jaw joint pain or even a
nerve problem, induced by the night time teeth grinding.
The above
symptoms are of course in no way indicative of only
teeth grinding. These symptoms can be indicative of
other health issues as well. Teeth loss or erosion while
has several other causal factors, it is usually a common
sign indicating teeth grinding during the sleep times –
medically categorized as Bruxism.
In recent
times there has been sufficient progress in medical
sciences to provide for more accurate ways of
identifying teeth grinding at night through devices that
monitor sleep patterns and associated activity during
sleep times. Such techniques can be used to identify the
existence of teeth grinding if identifying it is a
problem.
Options to
deal with teeth grinding at
night
When
damage to teeth is severe as a result of teeth grinding
at night, a specialist will normally prescribe some form
of coping device to initiate damage control. However,
such measures are only ways to manage the teeth grinding
problem and not solutions to the problem itself.
Holistic measures are called for to effectively treat
this
condition.
