Macomb County Dentist Explains Teeth Grinding and Headaches
Hi. My name is Dr. Robert Antolak. I’m the owner of The Gentle Dentist in Macomb County, Michigan. 586-247-3500 is our phone number.
One thing that we constantly are encountering when I see a new patient for their initial examination here in our Shelby Township, Michigan office is headaches. They deal with headaches all the time. There may be tension in the muscles here or tension in the face here.
There may be sensitive teeth and even broken teeth. There are many negative consequences that can take place from grinding your teeth at night time.
I want to show you the different types of trays that are used in bite splints. So this is a traditional bite splint that is used. I’m sure you can recognize it if you wear one. What happens is the teeth fit in here. It fits on the top teeth and allows all the teeth to contact. That’s fine in certain situations if there’s an issue with the jaw joint itself and we want to do some things to support all the teeth including the back teeth. But probably about 90 -95% of headaches are due to muscle tension.
So you can do a little experiment yourself here. Go ahead and take your hands and place them right above here, in your temple area, and bite down on your back teeth. Go ahead and do it. Bite on your back teeth and squeeze. You’ll feel the muscles pulsating.
So we’ve been designed by God that when our back teeth are biting, that’s how we crush our food is by the back teeth touching.
But now, I’m going to put a pencil in between my front teeth and clench. But when you go ahead and do that same thing, you’ll notice there is a significant reduction in the amount of pressure that can be generated because when we bite on our front teeth, it automatically and instantaneously turns off the muscles that normally are used to clench with. These biting muscles, the chewing muscles are reduced.
Typically most headaches come from tension, even migraine headaches will develop from this muscle activity during the night.
The muscles don’t get a chance to relax. They get a build up of lactic acid and that starts forming these tension headaches. Then it will even continue to get worse, to a situation where it can become a migraine headache.
Here is what we use very frequently in our practice. It is something called an NTI. An NTI is a very small device. You can see it is very small and it fits only on the front teeth. We have a special material that we use that we heat up, and we place in here, that goes right on the teeth. Then, you wear the NTI at nighttime.
There is much less material on your back teeth so it actually is much more comfortable for our patients. Because what can happen is, if someone is a gagger, or something like that, they don’t have to worry about wearing this entire device. They just put this NTI in their mouth, snap it in and wear it, and it actually helps significantly. We have testimonial after testimonial of people who have been positively headache free after using this NTI device.
So, if you have a full coverage occlusal guard, one that even your dentist had made, you may find you are still getting headaches because you can you can still clench your teeth and this muscle activity is continuing. If you have a problem with using this type of device then you can give us a call. Our phone number is 586-247-3500 and our dental office is located in Macomb County, Michigan.
Macomb County Dentist Explains Teeth Grinding and Headaches
In one visit we can make this for you. Hopefully the next night that you go home and wear the NTI you’re going to start feeling the difference in your headaches because there’s a significant decrease in muscle tension. So if this type of thing is of interest to you and if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired then give us a call at 586 247 3500.