aAbout the morning in the sixth week of the COVID-19 lockdown, I woke up to discover I had a molar-sized trauma to the back of my night guard, the device I wear to protect my teeth from the grinding I do in my sleep. I’ve been wearing acrylic fender every night for years with minimal wear, but suddenly I was nibbling through it. Like many Americans who have spent the past few years wondering where the tension and fear built up in their bodies might go, the answer turns out to be my mouth.
Since 2020, dentists and other oral health professionals around the world have recorded a sharp rise in the number of patients seeking treatment for problems caused by bruxism, which is a great word for grinding your teeth hard. While bruxism is fairly common, pre-pandemic data suggests that Up to 31% of adults Some of the major clinics were fairly chronic, and saw nearly three times as many bruxers as usual when the closures began. Some experts say the increase is still continuing. “My patients who had mild pain and bruxism got worse, and people I hadn’t seen before are now in a lot of pain,” says Mark Drangshult, MD, chair of the department of oral medicine at the University of Washington School of Dentistry. .
Most people Those who suffer from bruxism develop in their sleep, and those without symptoms may never know they are doing so. Although experts often distinguish between this nocturnal combination, known as sleep bruxism, and daytime gritting (awake bruxism), in many individual cases the line between the two is blurred due to a mixture of patterns and behaviors.
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Bruxism does not always cause pain, but when it does, it can be bad. Certain styles (especially continuous creaking), can lead to chronic pain in the temporomandibular joints — TMJ for short — located on each side of your face near the ear. These joints, often compared to hinges, allow the jaw to move away from the rest of the skull and are directly stressed by gnashing of teeth. People who grind their teeth frequently can have problems with the TMJ which include clicking sounds or pain while eating, general tenderness and even locking of the jaw.
Then there is a risk to your teeth themselves. Aside from the little time we spend eating, “your teeth don’t collect much during the day,” says Drangsholt. Even the hour you spend working is a massive amount of extra wear, which can put you at risk for cracked or worn teeth.
Bruxism becomes more dangerous once you jump into bed. Have you seen these videos of hippos eating a whole watermelon as if it were a berry? This is basically an unconscious superpower of humans. Drangsholt says: When we are deep in REM sleepAnd the We are able to exert up to three times the amount of force with our bite than we ever consciously ever before.
Bruxism has long been closely associated with anxiety in the dental world, and recent studies are beginning to confirm the stories clinics tell about the epidemic. small one paper Published in 2021 that looked at Turkish healthcare workers and found that nearly a third of those without a history of bruxism started experiencing symptoms in the early months of the pandemic. else study Looking at Google search trends around the world, I found a significant increase between May 2020 and October 2020 in searches for bruxism, bruxism, and bruxism when compared to similar periods from 2016 to 2019.
Some psychoactive medications may also affect bruxism. Antidepressants such as SSRIs and SNRIs can start start of teeth grinding within a month of use, and it’s one of the first things Drangsholt says he asks new patients about when evaluating their symptoms. He says that most people who take antidepressants do not develop bruxism, but “there seems to be an association for some people.” “This is something that we look at very carefully, because if you can change or change the doses, that could be helpful.” Despite new antidepressant prescription rates in the US Projection In the early months of the pandemic, the total numbers over the past few years indicate a continuous increase in new prescriptions.
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Michelle Schultz-Robbins, secretary of the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Pain and professor at Rutgers College of Dentistry, says other lifestyle factors may have had an impact on the increasing numbers of bruxism she’s seen. “Covid – it was crazy,” she says. For years, adults and children have been more confined to their homes during the day: staring at small screens, working from sofas and in bed, and changing their posture habits during the day in ways that can lead to further shrinkage. “You hold your face differently,” she says. “Now you’re constantly bending and your jaw isn’t aligned properly, and you might start to squeak. You’re more nervous about it, and when you tighten your temporomandibular muscles and your masticatory muscle, you’ll get a headache.”
She adds that the effects of stress can be enormous. “I ended up at a 17-year-old who could only open his mouth with one finger because he was so nervous,” says Schultz-Robbins. “During COVID, he was the only person supporting his family; his parents were laid off.” Schultz-Robbins says she has seen children as young as 6 suffer from pain from excessive grinding.
This severe psychological association can sometimes lead to temporomandibular joint disorders (TMD). hard to treat. Something as simple as adjusting medication doses to improve symptoms requires communication and coordination between psychiatrists and orofacial pain specialists, two specialties that don’t often work together. Drangsholt says that treating TMJ disorders and bruxism varies from case to case, and combinations of approaches can be very helpful in relieving symptoms.
On the psychological side, techniques like Full focus of the mindAnd the Cognitive behavioral therapyAnd other anxiety-relieving practices proven to have an impact on teeth grinding behaviors and TMJ pain are more accessible than ever thanks to online treatment options. However, treatment should always begin with an expert in oral and facial pain, says Schultz-Robbins. A specialist can offer more physical therapy options, such as oral exercises, nighttime guards that keep your upper and lower teeth from touching, and even regular injectable numbing treatments for severe pain.
“The treatment with the real big leap recently has been neurotoxin, or Botox,” says Drangsholt. Although it’s a more expensive treatment meant for severe cases, regular Botox injections every three or four months can make a big difference for some treadmills. “They don’t break hardware, and they don’t have any dental fractures,” Drangsholt says.. “We are able to reduce their muscle size in a reversible way.”
As Schultz-Robbins said, “Does your jaw feel like you’ve had a party in your mouth all night? Do you get a headache when you wake up?” These are signs that visiting a professional—any one of Guide Available on the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Pain website – might be a good idea.
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