How to prevent teeth-grinding at night & TMJ (Jaw) pain? Mouth-guard causes dry-mouth & restless sleep. Alternative treatments?
I've always been an insomniac. However, I haven't always been a teeth-grinder. This is a recent development in the last 5 or years of so. It's so bad that someone sleeping across the room can hear me grinding down my own teeth! Ah!
Of course, I've seen a few dentists about this and have tried a number of different mouth-guards. Unfortunately, for me, mouth-guards cause excessive dry-mouth which also lead to restless sleeping because I'm constantly waking up to get water.... or I subconsciously in my sleep throw the mouth-guard out of my mouth.
So here I am still a major teeth-grinder and I now suffer from TMJ -- Temporomandibular joint syndrome.
Are there ways to treat:
1) Teeth-grinding (w/o mouth guards) to prevent further damage to teeth and TMJ?
2) If I can't treat teeth-grinding w/o the mouth-guards, is there a way to treat the dry-mouth to make the mouth-guard more bearable?
3). Is there a subconscious stress I'm unaware of that needs to be addressed in order to stop the teeth-grinding all together? Or do people teeth-grind even when they are not stressed?
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What type of splints have you tried? A NTI (or similar) anterior splint only covers your front teeth so there would be less of problem with dry mouth. If it is a mouth guard, it will be too thick and uncomfortable to wear to sleep. Using dry mouth solutions/gels may help with your dry mouth.
You could also look at the causes of your grinding. If it only occurred in the last few years, the likely cause is stress related. You could also look at orthodontic correction of your occlusion (how your teeth come together). This can help but there is no guarantee with the result, so you could spend lots of money and get no improvement. I could go on and on about this topic.
If you can not tolerate any splint (guard) at all, you can build up your canine teeth if possible to "protect" other teeth from wear to some extent. Beyond that it is very difficult to solve this problem and will result in long term wear and damage to your teeth.
Hope this helps.
(Disclaimer: This was written by a dentist who I contacted)
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