Teeth Grinding Due to COVID-19
Recent articles have reported that dentist are seeing an increased amount of bruxism cases since the COVID-19 pandemic. Teeth grinding and bruxism can be causes by various factors. Prior to treating your grinding teeth, let’s take a look at what’s causing it and the symptoms.
What is Bruxism and What Causes Teeth Grinding?
Bruxism is a dental term for teeth grinding. This is a common side effect of stress and often occurs during night. Teeth grinding can cause a serious effect to the alignment of your teeth and can wear down the protective enamel on the surfaces of teeth.
Teeth grinding can also be a side effect of teeth that are misaligned. When you close your mouth and the teeth are not properly aligned, it can be very common to want to move them frequently and grind to try to reposition them.
As time goes on, bruxism and teeth grinding can lead to chipped or cracked teeth, as well as tooth decay. It can also cause other issues such as headaches, TMJ disorder, and lockjaw.
Bruxism and Teeth Grinding from COVID-19 Stress
2020 has brought an incredible amount of stress for many individuals. Financial struggles along with health concerns has taken a toll on many of us both physically and emotionally.
Stress is considered one of the main causes of bruxism. Covid-19 caused a lot of stress for many individuals, which makes it understandable that the cases have been on the rise. Increased stress has caused more patient to visit our clinic with cracked or chipped teeth due to teeth grinding and clenching. Dr. Donald Gundlach talks more about this on his blog post.
How to Treat Bruxism
If you believe you are teeth grinding, it is vital to see your dental right away so they can evaluate your special situation. Grinding your teeth may be due to COVID-induced stress, or just in general, but it is important to have it diagnosed promptly. A full exam needs to be conducted to determine the cause and develop a treatment plan to address the concerns. If the only issue is teeth grinding at night, then a night guard can help manage the situation while you are sleeping. However, if your situation is a little more complex, a custom treatment plan will be developed for your specific diagnosis.
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