Hi everyone. Grant and Jasmine here from Method Dental. You might wonder why we're
at the Kedron Brook today. Well we're having a talk about "Bruxism," which is
clenching and grinding your teeth sometimes during the day, sometimes during the night.
But today is more of a personal story isn't it?
It's about Jasmine and her personal story with Bruxism.
You'll find out why exactly we're at the brook later on but for now it's back to the surgery.
So, what do you think? Start from the start?
Yeah. So basically I started experiencing
symptoms two years ago. I'd wake up with really sore jaw muscles.
I'd get headaches in my temple area. I couldn't eat breakfast in the morning.
I couldn't open my mouth. So that was really uncomfortable.
What did we do initially?
Well initially, Grant taught me to massage the area,
the jaw area, use a heat pack and also take some
non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, like Nurofen.
Some light exercises can be useful too.
Like stretching exercises for your jaws. How did that go with the pain?
It helped at that stage but I think I was going through a really stressful and anxious
time and so my clenching actually got worse and so the pain escalated and it
just got out of hand.
Yeah. What was the final result? What happened to your
teeth because of this clenching?
Well it resulted in a cracked tooth and that was
really shocking to me because I didn't think something so, you know, benign could
cause something so drastic.
Yeah and in Jasmine's particular case this
cracked tooth it was really difficult to diagnose. Cracked teeth often can be one
of the hardest for dentists to diagnose.
In her case it was a really fine crack, basically not visible to the naked eye. We had to get a
special light to diagnose it. We tried to treat it with a filling.
The filling didn't work.
And that that's often the case with cracked teeth.
So we upgraded her to a crown.
That was about, over a year ago? How did the crown go?
Yeah, the crown worked perfectly. It stopped the pain in my tooth so I could actually chew again but
that didn't obviously solve the problem of the clenching.
So we decided that we, well, I had to wear splint when I go to sleep.
So a splint is like a mouth guard, not like a sporting one, it's thicker and
harder and people wear it to sleep at night if they're clenching or grinding
their teeth together. So how did that go?
Yeah it worked really well.
I no longer get, the pain anymore. I don't wake up with like-
The pain in your muscles?
So I don't get jaw pain anymore, I don't get headaches in my temples.
It's worked really well.
So with the splints we know that it can work quite well for the
muscular type pain and the headaches. Success rate around 90% or above but it's not a
guarantee because we don't understand all the mechanisms with clenching and
grinding and the pain. But that's really good to hear that it worked well.
And the splint I guess, was more so, as well, to stop me
getting another cracked tooth because we didn't want that to happen again.
Because it acts like a helmet for your teeth, so it helps to protect against more cracks.
How is the splint? Is it comfortable?
Not at the start. So it took a while to get used to. You can't speak very well,
you'll drool a lot at the start but, you know, like anything you adapt and you
know best thing ever!
Yeah that's what we tell all of our patients. The splint, while, it might not be
the most flattering thing, or the most comfortable at the start,
you persevere for maybe a few weeks, sometimes a couple of months, and then it
really does what we say it does in terms of protecting the teeth
and in most cases helps with those pains as well.
Alright, so with the symptoms that you experienced Jasmine:
the pain in your jaws and your temples,
those aren't the only things that you should be looking out for.
So you can get pain actually in your jaw joints and sometimes it can feel like earache but it's not.
You can get cracked teeth like you did, but also broken teeth and broken fillings.
You can even wear down your enamel over time and those are all
things that your dentist can help you diagnose.
So treatment options. We touched on the initial therapy for the milder cases,
you know massage, exercises,
stretching, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories if they're safe for
you to take and heat packs.
If the pain persists, you'll definitely need to have it
assessed by your dentist. In some cases we'll refer you onwards to a
physiotherapist for physical therapy. A splint may be necessary in some cases
like Jasmine's where we don't want to get any more cracked teeth.
It was also very effective for the pain. And in some rare cases where all of
those things haven't worked we may need to refer you onwards to a maxillofacial
surgeon or a dentist that's more specialized in these kinds of pains.
Sometimes even chronic pain management specialist as well.
So now that we know more about bruxism, let's go back to the start.
Why are we at the brook?
Well it's because we mentioned it's stress and anxiety as a risk factor
for bruxism earlier. So what we can recommend to some of our patients is to
try and reduce that stress. What better way to do that than with a walk at the brook?
100%. There's the water, you can bring your dogs.
We're just really lucky that we're really
close to the brook so we get to come me all the time.
So go for a walk, reduce your stress and anxiety levels
and we'll see you next time on the next video!
Bye!