Hi Everyone! My name is Priya Mistry, the TMJ doc. Today's video is about why do we clench
or brux our teeth? So many of you guys have reached out to me and asked me to make this video,
with one of you being my own sister - so I'm doing this for all of you guys as a way to explain why
so many of us clench and grind our teeth! I've done a lot of research and I've learned a lot
from my mentor, Dr. Arthur Parker, as well as some other mentors - so i'm just going to put all the
reasons out there and we'll just sort of go from there. If you don't already, please make sure
you follow me on Instagram on this handle here. There's lots of tips and information about TMJ
Disorders on there. I try to post multiple times a week! So let's get right into it! There are
four main reasons that we clench or brux our teeth - the first being sleep disordered breathing,
second being stress, third being a side effect of SSRI medications, and fourth being stability. I'll
go back through all of those and explain each one in detail. First was sleep disordered breathing.
Sleep disordered breathing is when our bodies know that we're not getting enough oxygen at night, so
essentially sleep apnea or any variation thereof. One way that we can increase our oxygen intake is
actually by increasing the size of our airway, and one way that we can do that is actually by
bruxing or grinding our teeth forward; so when we move forward like this, it actually makes
our airways bigger. If our airways are bigger, we're getting more oxygen into our systems. Our
bodies intuitively know this and subconsciously when we're sleeping at night, what we'll do is
we'll grind our teeth forward as a way to open up our airways, as a way to get more oxygen into
our oxygen deprived bodies. One sign to look for is a lot of wear particularly on the front teeth
canine to canine. If those are ground down pretty flat, you may want to look into that. Second is
stress. As humans we're just sort of designed to sink our teeth into whatever is stressing us out
or making us upset. Whenever we feel those human emotions - anger, anxiety, sadness,
frustration -we're just sort of designed to sink our teeth into it. I've definitely seen a huge
uptick this year in patients who are clenching and grinding; they're doing it with more force and
more frequency and for a longer duration of time, and they'll come into my office saying, "I am so
stressed out. I'm clenching a lot more than ever before!" and I'm kind of attributing a lot of that
to Covid - fun times! Stress will definitely cause us to clench or grind or brux our teeth more.
Another is a side effect of SSRI medications. These medications are medications - like Lexapro,
that's one example - and these medications are supposed to help us decrease our stress levels.
Anxiety - bring that down, depression - bring that down. And it does do that for many people,
but paradoxically what's kind of interesting is that a side effect, a common side effect of
these medications is that they actually increase clenching activity. And so we see that in a lot of
our patients as well. I have actually taken Lexapro in the past and I did notice that I
clenched more. but my anxiety level felt like it was lower.. so I can't fully explain it,
but I see it all the time, I've experienced it myself. And lastly, a reason that we clench or
grind is stability, and I found this one to be so interesting! I actually learned this from another
mentor, Dr. Prabhu Rahman. I heard him speak about this and if you think about it, if you go to throw
a punch what do you do? You tense your body and you clench your jaw, because we know intuitively
that if our opponent throws a punch back our jaw is going to swing all over the place unless it's
clenched together. So it's [clenching is] a way to kind of bring stability to our systems. Similarly,
there's a lot of postural dynamics that play into TMJ Disorders. The postural chain is the jaw, the
shoulders, the hips, and the feet and if there's imbalance or instability in that postural chain,
a way that we can sort of counteract that without even realizing it is we can clench our jaw.
We can bring stability to this system or we feel like we can by clenching our jaw
and hoping that that kind of feeds down the rest of the postural chain. So those, my friends,
are the main reasons behind clenching and bruxing activity. It's really hard to get yourself to stop
doing this, particularly at night, but during the day what I do is I ask my patients to try to train
themselves to stop clenching or grinding. And they do so by placing a timer on their phone that goes
off every 10 to 15 minutes as a reminder of "hey, check where your teeth are!". That's probably
mildly annoying throughout the day, but it's a good way to train yourself. Your lips should be
together when you're at rest, but your [upper and lower] teeth should be three to four millimeters
apart. That's a way to kind of train yourself to stop doing it during the day. I wanted to let you
all know that i'll be hosting a giveaway soon! I'll be giving away some great products that you
can use at home to help bring relief to your TMJ symptoms, so keep an eye out for that video! I'm
super excited about this and lastly, if you like what you heard in this video if you learned
something, click "Like" below, SUBSCRIBE to my channel. Please feel free to ask any questions
or make comments in the comment box below and remember - you can never have TMI about TMJ!