Why You ’ re Grinding Your Teeth —And How to Stop

One morning around week six of the COVID-19 lockdown, I woke up to discover I’d gnashed a molar-sized crack down the back of my night guard, the device I wear to protect my teeth from the grinding I do in my sleep. I’d worn the acrylic barrier every night for years with minimal erosion, but suddenly I’d gnawed right through it. Like many Americans who have spent the last few years wondering where the stress and fear building up in their bodies could possibly go, the answer turned out to be my mouth. Since 2020, dentists and other oral health professionals around the world have recorded a sharp uptick in the number of patients seeking treatment for issues caused by bruxism, a fancy word for grinding and clenching your teeth together with force. While bruxism is fairly common, with pre-pandemic data suggesting that as many as 31% of adults were chronic chompers to some degree, some major clinics saw nearly three times as many bruxers as usual when lockdowns began. The increase still hasn’t let up, some experts say. “My patients that had soft pain and bruxism got worse, and the people that I’d never seen it in before were now having lots of pain,” says Mark Drangsholt, chair of the department of oral medicine at the University of Washington’s dental school. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Most people who have bruxism grind in their sleep, and those without symptoms may never even know they do it. Though experts often m...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 freelance healthscienceclimate Mental Health Sleep Source Type: news