Simple, bruxism. We’ll say bruxism, most patients nowadays are either, they’re not sure whether they’re grinding their teeth or they’re clenching their teeth. Either bruxism or clenching.
We have a lot of patients that don’t realize they have neck pain, joint pain, sensitive teeth, sensitive gums. And they had this problem, started small. But over the years it has gotten slowly worse, worse, worse.
To the point some patients don’t realize they don’t know, they think it’s just normal. It’s like, a lot of your patients when they come in they say, I’m just getting older and therefore I’m having all these problems. Body’s falling apart.
So they just think it’s a natural part of phenomenon, is that the joints hurting is just part of life. And that is true to some degree. But in the mouth, our joints are different in the mouth compared to our knees and our arthritis problems in our hands or whether it’s knees or other back problems.
Mouth problems can be, a lot of times it’s not knowing. Bruxism, clenching, it’s a lot of people do under stress. They don’t know.
If we can guide them hopefully on figuring out whether it’s a proper solution for stress, exercise, better healthy diet, right? Reducing caffeine intake. But then not just that, but sometimes the damage is a little bit more moderate for some patients where they need orthotic device, they need occlusional guards, night guards. Some people say, bite guards, right? It helps a lot to protect their joints, not just joints, the nerves, the facial nerve.
We have other nerves in the mouth that become very sensitive that when somebody is grinding their teeth, they don’t realize the damage they’re doing today will have a massive impact 10 years, 15 years down the road. Mouth guards, night guards, occlusional guards, or we call orthotic device can significantly save those from getting much worse in the future. And they don’t have to bear the pain of eating soft foods for the rest of their life.
But if we don’t do those procedures to help them figure out a healthy balance, too often they break their fillings as they get older. If they had a cavity done before, they may have other dental work done, which would fail under the stress of bruxism and clenching.
