Bruxism, or chronic teeth grinding, can occur in adulthood and without treatment, cause discomfort and even damage your teeth. For a noninvasive treatment option, we can offer a custom oral appliance. In today’s blog, your Ankeny, IA, dentist talks about how we diagnose and treat concerns like bruxism with comfort and precision!
The Factors Behind Your Teeth Grinding
In childhood, we sometimes grind our teeth for brief periods, the episodes usually ending on their own. But in adulthood, if we have persistent teeth grinding then this can occur nightly and over time, wear down or damage teeth, which alters the appearance of your smile and leaves you vulnerable to issues like tooth decay and infection. The disorder could be due to issues like misalignment, missing teeth, untreated TMD, injury to the face or jaw, wisdom tooth eruption, or issues with the arrival of your teeth or the growth of your jaw. High levels of stress in your daily life could also be responsible. As part of our treatment process, we will examine the smile to understand the cause and severity, so we can choose the right solution.
Assessing Your Symptoms
What symptoms should you be aware of? For some, a significant other could alter them to grinding or clenching episodes in the night. But there are also symptoms that occur during waking hours. For example, you could experience soreness in the jaw or face, headaches or migraines, or tooth sensitivity and toothaches. When you have experienced discomfort in and around your smile, then contact right away for a diagnosis. We will examine your smile with digital x-rays and intraoral cameras to make a diagnosis with precision and accuracy, so we can find out if you have bruxism and choose the right treatment to ease your disorder.
Oral Appliance Therapy and More
In most cases, we will take digital images and impressions of your bite and use them to design and craft an oral appliance, which fits like a mouthguard and is worn while you sleep. The device repositions the jaw to ease underlying tension, and also puts a soft barrier between the upper and lower teeth to prevent damage to your smile during grinding episodes. We could also discuss tooth replacement for missing teeth, or use crowns or bonding to help boost bite balance. Treating misalignment with clear aligners or other orthodontics could also be beneficial.
If you have any questions about how we diagnose and treat bruxism then contact our team today to learn more!
Dental Impressions Provides A Solution for Teeth Grinding
General dental care can help us put a stop to your chronic teeth grinding! To schedule your appointment and learn more about protecting smiles with preventive dentistry, then call Dental Impressions in Ankeny, IA today at (515) 965-0230.
