Can a Night Guard Change Your Bite?
Teeth grinding and clenching, also called bruxism, is a common problem affecting many Americans. Bruxism is challenging to control because the problem occurs at night when you are in bed. Over time if left untreated, bruxism can damage your teeth by wearing them down.
Dentists routinely check their patient’s teeth during six monthly checkups to identify signs of bruxism. If your dentist notices you are grinding and clenching your teeth, they recommend night guards near you as a suitable remedy to deal with this problem that leaves you with significant damages to your teeth needing treatment from dentists. Everyone expects the treatment dentists provide with night guards might help alleviate their problem to invest hundreds of dollars in a custom-created night guard explicitly for their mouths. However, in rare cases, night guards might, in reality, create more damages than correcting bruxism.
Would you like to understand why nightguards may create problems? If so, please continue reading this article providing your information on what night guards are on the benefits of wearing them.
What Are Night Guards, and who can wear them?
Nightguards are plastic dental appliances created by dentists to fit over-the-top teeth. The night guard absorbs much of the forces when grinding or clenching instead of your teeth. When used regularly, deep grooves tend to form in the night guard from grinding pressures. The night guard prevents the forces from causing damage to your teeth.
If you have bruxism and leave the condition untreated without using a nightguard, your tooth enamel can wear down excessively, resulting in tooth sensitivity. You also have chipped or cracked teeth to require extensive restorative dentistry procedures from cosmetic dentists to repair the damages. If you want to prevent significant expenditure on expensive dental work, doesn’t it make sense for you to invest in a nightguard to prevent your teeth from grinding against each other? We are confident you think similarly and believe the night guard is your savior against dental damages.
Benefits of wearing night guards
When you begin wearing night guards created by the dentist in North branch, you have a device in possession that addresses the problem of bruxism, causing you to grind and clench your teeth and create significant damages. In addition, the night guard prevents your teeth from contacting each other when you sleep to avoid unnecessary injuries to your teeth. However, if you want to derive maximum benefits from night guards, you must have the appliance custom created by a dentist without opting for over-the-counter night guards for best results.
Will Your Bite Change Wearing Night Guards?
Nightguards are proven dental appliances for the treatment of bruxism. Unfortunately, the night guard merely addresses the symptoms of bruxism by considering damages to your teeth caused by the grinding and clenching. As a result, the root causes of the issue are left untreated because you don’t achieve freedom from bruxism altogether.
Bruxism has various causes include stress and anxiety, and the medical fraternity hasn’t discovered a single reason why you grind and clench your teeth. Sometimes teeth grinding results from a life-threatening condition, sleep apnea. Prescribing a night guard for teeth grinding when you are affected by sleep apnea will address the damage caused to your teeth by bruxism without treating the life-threatening sleep apnea.
In addition, it has been noted that in rare cases, a night guard can leave you with an open bite to need orthodontic treatments. However, these isolated cases haven’t received proper attention, although dentists continue to monitor the situation. Nightguards can alter your bite because they put pressure on the teeth and gradually move them in people, especially those affected by gum disease who may have weakened tooth structure.
As mentioned earlier, you may fall prey to the problem of bite changes when using nightguards if you try to cut down on costs and purchase one of the many over-the-counter devices marketed as appliances for treating bruxism. Although approved by the FDA, the instruments are not scrutinized for authenticity and may not fit well in your mouth.
In addition, if you also have sleep apnea with bruxism, you may need treatment for both conditions from your dentist, who may work with sleep medicine specialists to evaluate your situation before suggesting an appropriate dental appliance to deal with both conditions. Dental appliances also help treat sleep apnea while simultaneously treating bruxism to give you a remedy and freedom from unnecessary dental and health complications.
If you are affected by bruxism and think you might benefit from night guards, we suggest you schedu le an appointment with Thumbs up Dental to have yourself evaluated for the best appliance suitable for your unique condition.