Bruxism is the term describing nighttime tooth grinding or jaw clenching. It can cause tooth wear, gum recession, and morning headaches or muscle stiffness. Most of the time, we don’t realize we clench or grind at night. Jaw-joint symptoms will worsen if you don’t address clenching.
Often, you may hear about warning signs from your hygienist if they are trained to look for these symptoms.
A night guard is a thin piece of hard plastic molded from an impression of your teeth and placed on the upper teeth while you sleep. The night guard is hard enough to be durable, but softer than teeth, and it protects them from wear. A night guard protects your teeth and jaw from the detrimental effects of nighttime teeth grinding. The pressure created by grinding can eventually wear your teeth down to nothing! Other warning signs that you may be grinding your teeth at night include headaches (sometimes severe) and jaw pain when you wake up in the morning.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved the NTI Tension Suppression System (NTI) as a drug-free alternative to reducing headache pain and migraine-related episodes that affect 28 million Americans. This safe and effective device is simple to use, requires no surgery, and has no side effects.
In a multi-center trial of the NTI device, 82% of sufferers had a 77% reduction within 8 weeks. Just a single visit to our office could make migraine suffering a thing of the past.