Bite splints or “occlusal guards” are very common. Ask around and you’ll soon realize that many of your friends and family wear one at night. Typically these types of guards are worn by people the consistently clench and/or grind their teeth at night. Clenching and grinding can increase the incidince of tooth fracture by up to 7x the normal rate! Meaning that if you have large fillings or weaker teeth - you are at risk to break those teeth. I’ve even seen patient with NO fillings crack thier molars due to the extreme forces created during night time clenching and grinding. Not only can teeth break, but clenching can create a “charlie horse” effect in the jaw muscles/temples causing pain, soreness and headaches. Here is our protocol for treating TMJ issues at Ivory.
Step 1 - Dental Exam
During your exam we’ll ask questions about your clenching and grinding history. Many times people don’t actually know they are grinding unless a spouse tells them that they could hear the horrible grinding sound at night. And, cleanching patients are sometimes not aware of their clenching untill we narrow down symptoms they have been recently having. Symptoms like:
muscle soreness on the side of their face
popping or clicing in their TMJ
problems biting down or opening their jaw wide
headaches or muscles aches in the temple area
When these signs and symptoms are identified we’ll often move on to step 2.
Step 2 - TMJ Massage - Stretch and Exercises
If your TMJ symtoms are mild and inconsistent. Often we’ll try TMJ stretch and exercise before moving on to the dental splint. If you clench often and ESPECIALLY if you grind…we will also reccomend a splint asap. The muscles that often trigger myofacial pain “face muscle pain” are the masseter and temporalis. The anatomy picture at the top of the page will show you where these muscles are located. When you clench and grind all night long you are basically overloading and stressing these muscles. Because of this, they often spasm and cramp during the daytime…causing you pain or discomfort. Stretching and massage can often help aleviate mild TMJ issues. We usually reccomened avoiding hard and chewy foods, making sure to keep teeth apart “tongue up and teeth apart” during the day; and a regimen of stretch and massage to help sooth muscle fatigue. Check out the videos below to learn these techniques!
Step 3 - Bite Guard
As mentioned earlier, if you clench regularily or grind your teeth, massage and stech alone will not be enough to protect your teeth. We will likely still reccomend you go through the PT (stretch and massage) protocal, but we will also make clear the importance of wearing your bite guard EVERY night in order to help take stress off your jaw joint and protect your teeth. Teeth under the stress of night time clenching or “bruxism” are many times more likely to fracture than normal. The bite guards we fabricate are top of the line , made of hard acrylic with soft internal liner (see image on right). We custom scan your teeth with our state of the art ITERO ELEMENT 3d scanner. No goopy molds or putty for your imressions…This scnaner allows us to digitally send a model of your teeth to our partner lab. We then fabricate your guards and try it in before sending it home with you. I have 3 guards, and I can tell when I’ve “cheated” and gone a couple night without wearing it…My teeth get sensitive, my jaw clicks and pops, my temporalis muscles ache…not fun. So, If this sounds familiar, give me a call and I’ll show you what works for us at Ivory!