Bruxism
I grind my teeth during sleep. Why do I do this? How can I prevent it? By Cibele Dal Fabbro, DDS, PhD and Gilles Lavigne, DMD, PhD, FRDC, hc
W
hat is Sleep Bruxism?
Many people grind their teeth during sleep—another term for which is sleep bruxism. For most people, it is not considered a disorder but, rather, a habit that results from having teeth that fit tightly together. It is simply an oral behavior that comes and goes throughout life. Sleep bruxism is more common in children, which is often reported by parents who hear the unpleasant noise while their children sleep. The frequency of sleep bruxism drops with increasing age, with about 12% of adults knowing that they have sleep bruxism. Most times, people become aware of this problem because their sleep partner tells them that they make a grinding noise, like rubbing rocks, during their sleep or because the person with bruxism is concerned about tooth wear or damage to dental restoration or has tired or sore jaw muscle in the morning. Risk factors for sleep bruxism include life pressure, which may be felt as stress or anxiety. However, this is not always the case because individuals vary in the how they manifest stress. In the past, very small (micro) abnormal tooth contacts were described as the cause of bruxism; however, nowadays, scientific evidence does not support this finding.
8 | Winter 2022 | Restless Legs Syndrome
In otherwise healthy people, sleep bruxism is associated with brief and temporary vigorous reactivity of the heart and muscles during sleep. Indeed, during sleep, our nervous system revisits our external environment every 20-40 seconds. This process is natural and is named cyclic alternating pattern. Its role is to protect us from any event that can be a threat to our integrity and survival. You can think of this reactivity in terms of a cuckoo clock. At repeated regular intervals (in the case of the cuckoo clock, every 15 minutes), the bird pops out of the clock and scans its environment. If all is fine, the bird goes back in the clock. Something similar happens within your body—every 20-40 seconds, your “bird” (that is your nervous
system) checks in with the rest of your body. If everything is OK, your nervous system shuts back down; however, if your sleeping brain perceives a threat, it will prepare your heart and muscles to react. This is a natural protective mechanism. Most sleep bruxism events occur in sync with such periodic arousals from sleep. IS SLEEP BRUXISM ASSOCIATED WITH OTHER CONDITIONS? In some individuals, sleep bruxism can be associated with other conditions, what is termed comorbidities. The comorbidities include jaw pain and headache, difficulty with falling asleep or staying asleep (insomnia), snoring, or irregular breathing pauses
