What Your Dentist Didn’t Learn in School Can Hurt You
Over one million people in the USA alone wake up each morning in pain from nighttime teeth grinding and clenching (bruxism). You might think that these people remaining in pain means they don’t have dentists. Actually most of them have dentists. Unfortunately, while the typical dentist is an expert at preventing tooth damage and repairing damaged teeth, the typical dentist is taught little or nothing in dental school about the psychology of habits, and long-term teeth grinding and clenching is a habit most people would very much like to kick.
So what does it take to kick the nighttime teeth grinding and clenching habit? As you might suspect from thinking about habits such as smoking, drinking, over-eating, or nail biting, the answer is different for different people. The “solution” most often recommended by dentists these days 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.
Lots of people follow their dentist’s recommendation and spend between $500 and $800 for a custom-made mouth guard. Once you have spent your money, you get to find out if you are someone whose nighttime clenching gets worse or better when you wear your new mouth guard.
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.
Most mouth guards go between your upper and lower molars, preventing upper tooth enamel from touching lower tooth enamel, and spreading the load if you clench your teeth. The load-spreading idea is that if you keep clenching, the mouth guard will help you do less damage. Sometimes this may work. Unfortunately in some cases the damage done can be significantly worse with a mouth guard.
Some brands of mouth guards (for instance the “NTI”) are made to snap on to your front teeth and keep your molars from touching when you bite. The theory here is that such a front-teeth mouth guard will feel so different when you bite on it that your mind will know (even subconsciously) that something is not right when you bite, so you will not bite down hard. There are cases where that seems to work. Unfortunately, for the cases where it does not work, biting down on a front-tooth-only guard such as the NTI can cause serious damage.
Fortunately, there are a lot more possible ways to interrupt a habit than just sticking a mouth guard in your mouth. Some of them are free to try, some are moderately expensive to try, and some are very expensive to try. Some have money-back guarantees, and some do not. Various methods that people have successfully used to kick the teeth grinding and clenching habit include: biofeedback, hypnosis, changing sleep surface, changing pillow, soothing sound machines, chiropractic work, massage, diet changes, meditation, and other positive psychology practices.
Interestingly, the mouth guards sold by dentists are not only among the most expensive possible solutions you can try for teeth grinding and clenching, they are also among the options with no free trial, and no guarantee whatsoever. This is a great deal for your dentist, but not a great deal for you. Trying an over-the-counter mouth guard from a pharmacy that you can mold yourself may be a better first step.
