Bruxism can mean you grind your teeth on a nightly basis, which can damage your smile and cause major complications with time. But our team can offer solutions to help protect your smile and stop your teeth grinding episodes. In today’s blog, your Ankeny, IA, dentist talks about our approach to chronic teeth grinding.
The Causes of Bruxism
What causes a person to grind their teeth on a regular basis? This could be due to issues that upset bite balance and strain the jaw joints, such as untreated TMJ disorder, missing teeth, misalignment, injury to the face or jaw, or even issues with the growth of the jaw and the eruption of the teeth. A high level of stress in your daily life could be a factor too. As part of your treatment, our team will examine your smile to assess the cause and extent of your teeth grinding.
Warning Signs of Trouble
How do you know if you need treatment for bruxism? You could have a significant other let you know about your nighttime grinding episodes. But there are also symptoms that arise during waking hours. For example, headaches and migraines, jaw and facial pain, and toothaches and tooth sensitivity. As the pressure damages teeth, this could wear them down so they appear shorter than usual. The damage could also include chipped teeth and barely visible fractures. Without treatment, this could also lead to TMJ disorder and even increase the risk of sleep apnea. But we can help with an oral appliance.
Oral Appliance Therapy
Our team will begin by gathering detailed images of your smile from multiple angles. We then combined them to create a detailed impression of your bite, which we use to design and craft an oral appliance. The device will look and fit like a mouthguard, but once in place it will help shift the jaw to ease strain on the joints. The appliance also puts a barrier between the upper and lower sets of teeth to prevent further damage. The appliance will be easy to use and clean, and can travel with you too. If you have any damage to your teeth, we could offer lifelike repair with dental bonding or even the placement of custom-made dental crowns.
If you have any questions about how our team will diagnose and treat teeth grinding, or if you would like to schedule a visit soon, then contact our team today to learn more.
Find a Bruxism Solution With Dental Impressions
Our team wants to offer a solution to bruxism and protect your smile from injury with an oral appliance. To find out more about how we treat teeth grinding and repair damaged teeth, call Dental Impressions in Ankeny, IA today at (515) 965-0230.
