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General Dentistry

Tooth Grinding

Treatment At a Glance

Treatment

Occlusal Splints

Price

B splint £399
Michigan splint £995

Time

2 appointments

Why choose this treatment at The Courtyard Clinic?

Custom, hard wearing appliances
Top quality tooth protection
Protection of the jaw joint
Relieves facial pains

Here at The Courtyard Clinic we understand how much grinding your teeth can have an impact on your life. Some people suffer from mild pain, whilst others get effects that are very debilitating.

People who suffer badly with the effects of tooth grinding are called “bruxists”. Bruxists can have one or more of the following symptoms:

  • Headaches
  • Facial pain (aka myofascial pain)
  • Tooth wear (shortened teeth) / Chipping of teeth
  • Earache
  • Temporal Mandibular Joint Dysfunction (aka TMD)
  • Stiff jaw/Clicking Jaw/Lock jaw
  • Sore soft tissues in the mouth
  • Pains in the mouth
  • Indents in the tongue (scalloped tongue)
  • Bite lines on the inside of your cheeks
  • Stress/Anxiety
  • Poor Sleep patterns

What Causes Tooth Grinding?

Medicines

Teeth grinding can sometimes be a side effect of medications.

Common causative medicines are antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) e.g., Paroxetine, fluoxetine, and sertraline.

Sleep Disorders

If you snore or have a sleep disorder, such as obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), you're more likely to grind your teeth while you sleep. OSA interrupts your breathing while you sleep. At the Courtyard Clinic we offer anti-snoring devices which may help with OSA. We would advise you speak with your GP too.

Lifestyle

Other factors that can make teeth grinding more likely:

  • Alcohol
  • Smoking
  • Recreational drugs
  • Caffeine drinks

What can we do to help?

  1. We can advise exercises to help your jaw pain
  2. Make customised bite guards to protect your teeth and alleviate the jaw pain
  3. We can place toxin injections into the jaw muscles to weaken them to bring relief for around 3-6 months
  4. In severe cases requiring possible surgical intervention we will analyse if a hospital referral is deemed necessary

B Splints

This splint design keeps your teeth apart at the back. You can not physically contact your teeth so they can no longer traumatically clash. It relaxes your muscles so you can no longer clench or grind to reduce the damaging effects of tooth grinding.

Michigan Splints

The splint is also a full coverage splint worn either in the upper or lower arch. While doing this, its design ensures that there is an even contact when the teeth come together. On sideward movements of the jaw, the back teeth are slightly apart while contact remains at the front in the canine region and thereby excessive lateral pressure on the back teeth is avoided. This is what is called a “canine-protected occlusion”.

All this stops pressure build-up and can help stop jaw pain, headaches and other symptoms associated with Temporomandibular Disorders (TMD). Muscle activity in the jaw can also be reduced when wearing the device.

Hypertrophic Masseters due to tooth grinding:

Some people clench or grind their teeth so much that it causes their masseter muscles to enlarge, giving the face a wider silhouette. To help slim the face and take away some of the discomfort toxin injections into the masseter muscles can help disengage this muscle partly to help weaken its over activity.

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