Chronic Teeth Grinding Can Damage Your Dentures in Carrollton

Whether you have traditional dentures in Carrollton or an implant-retained denture, it’s incredibly important that you know the right steps to caring for your investment. Daily oral care and visits to the dentist are required, but when you wake up and feel jaw pain, is your first thought to visit the dentist? Chronic teeth grinding, also known as bruxism, is often more difficult to detect in those with dentures because they don’t experience tooth sensitivity, a common side effect resulting from enamel erosion.

However, just cause you don’t have natural teeth doesn’t mean that your bad habit won’t start to negatively affect your mouth!

How Bruxism Damages Your Dentures

Many people don’t realize that bruxism isn’t only referring to a teeth grinding habit. It also involves clenching, sometimes even harder than what you typically do when chewing foods. With this much additional stress on your denture, the rate at which they wear down is going to accelerate. In most cases, people grind or clench their teeth in response to stress.

However, bruxism can still affect people who are missing all of there teeth. While this sounds hard to believe, sleep bruxism, which is the same process of grinding and clenching teeth while sleeping, can still cause damage to your gums and bone. So while your denture is soaking safely, excessive pressure to your jaw can exacerbate bone resorption, which is essentially your jawbone shrinking. Over time, your denture may fail to fit properly due to your jaw muscles becoming imbalanced.

Dentures Can Also Be a Cause

Alternatively, dentures can even be the direct cause of your bruxism. Bruxism is often caused by an uneven bite. Uneven bites put additional stress on specific areas of the mouth, which lead to your jaw muscles forcefully contracting to compensate for your bite’s imbalance. This is why it’s so important to make sure that your denture is even, as an uneven denture causes an uneven bite, which leads to uneven wear on your denture.

The Best Steps to Take

If you currently use removable full or partial dentures, then a dentist may recommend a mouthguard designed to protect your mouth during sleep. If you’re using implant-retained dentures in Carrollton, then you’re more likely to benefit from a nightguard. Both devices are custom-made to fit your mouth exactly, redistribute force to create a more even bite, and protect your existing oral structures from damage caused by bruxism.

Schedule an appointment with a dentist so they can better examine your bite. Tell them your symptoms as bruxism is much more common than you think. They can help you stop pain and get your bite even once again!

About the Author

Dr. Durga Devarakonda earned her Doctor of Dental Medicine from the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. Thanks to her education and time spent practicing at pediatric dental clinics and specializing in geriatric dentistry, she can treat a wide range of unique dental issues all under one roof. To learn more about her expertise or practice, you can contact her through her website.