Night grinding: what bruxism quietly costs your teeth
A night guard costs a fraction of a single crown, yet grinding remains the most common reason a mouth full of new ceramic fails within about five years.
How you know you grind
The signs are on the teeth before they are in your awareness: flattened canine tips, a white ridge along the inside of the cheeks, scalloped edges on the tongue, and jaw muscles that ache on waking rather than at bedtime. Morning headaches at the temples belong to the same pattern. Sleep grinding is driven centrally during brief arousals, and alcohol, nicotine and some antidepressants all increase it.
Why it destroys restorations rather than teeth
Enamel and its shock-absorbing ligament tolerate decades of grinding by wearing down slowly. Ceramic does not wear, it fatigues and then chips, usually at a biting edge. Implants make this worse because they have no ligament: no cushioning, and no early warning pain, so the first sign of overload is a loosened screw or a fractured bridge rather than an ache you could have acted on.
What a guard does and does not do
A hard acrylic full-coverage splint spreads the load across every tooth and sacrifices itself instead of your ceramics; it is replaced every one to three years, which is exactly the point. What it does not do is stop your brain from clenching, so it protects rather than cures. Soft rubber guards are comfortable and can make some people chew harder against them, which is worse than nothing.
Before we rebuild a worn mouth
Twenty zirconium crowns are a significant investment in ceramic, and unmanaged bruxism can wreck that in a couple of years. So a guard is planned into the treatment from the start, the bite is recorded and checked before the final crowns are cemented, and if a patient tells us plainly they will never wear a splint, we would rather not begin the smile makeover.
The Ones People Actually Ask.
Does botulinum in the jaw muscles cure grinding?
It reduces the force the masseter can generate for three to four months, which helps muscle pain and protects ceramics, but it does not stop the central drive to grind. We use it as an adjunct alongside a splint, never as a replacement for one.
Can I bring a guard made at home?
Yes, and please do, but bring it to the first appointment. If your bite changes during treatment the old splint will no longer fit, and a splint that fits badly loads a few teeth instead of all of them.
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What Stands Behind The Plan.
