When teeth don’t fit together evenly it leads to clenching , grinding pain & damage.
When teeth don’t fit evenly together, it’s sort of like having one shoe on and one shoe off. Just like you would have to walk off balance, your jaw wobbles back and forth.
Unconsciously, this constant jaw shifting annoys most people enough that they start to clench or grind their teeth to try to make them fit. The result of clenching and grinding is that the teeth will start to wear down, break, get loose, feel sore or even start to move and become crooked.
Over 90% of teeth clenching and grinding is due to an
uneven bite.
Test it for yourself! Just close your own teeth very, very slowly. See which side touches first, the left or right. Now without opening again, close the rest of the way to get both sides to touch. Notice if your teeth slide a little from the first spot that touches until the rest touch. This hit and slide, or wobble, means that every time you bite down to swallow or chew all the way through food your jaw has to shift to make the teeth hit all the way.
Teeth clenching is triggered by an uneven bite and NOT by stress. Stress will make you more easily bothered by an uneven bite, but it is not the trigger.
In this example you can see the wear and breakage that has occurred from severe grinding.
Grinding the teeth against each other causes the worn teeth to fit perfectly together.
The notches in the teeth at the gum line are caused by the teeth as they bend under the extreme forces of teeth clenching. If you have something similar you might have been told that these abrasions are from brushing too hard, but do you really believe that even a hard brush could brush away the hardest part of the body in such a straight line? No way! As the gum recedes and the enamel cracks off it is no wonder that teeth can become sensitive, especially to cold or sweets.
Teeth that were straight after braces are now crooked. Sometimes orthodontists even glue on retainers to attempt to resist the forces of teeth clenching and grinding. While it is convenient to blame wisdom teeth or not wearing your retainer after braces to account for the relapse and crowding of teeth, the real issue is usually that the bite was off, even after braces and the teeth clenching and grinding ended up causing the tooth movement.
I’ve been a patient of Dental Care of Stamford for 8 years, not only myself, but my wife as well and our four children. All I can say is that we are very big fans of Dr. Simon and Dr. Eva and the whole team here. I just completed a program of TMJ treatment. I must say that Dr. Simon’s excellent treatment and the professional care was tremendous and I’m very happy with my new bite. I’m very happy to recommend to anybody who is looking for a good dentist for adults or for children in the area and especially for help with their bite. Dr. Simon and his team are extraordinary.
I had Invisalign for about a year which straightened out my teeth but I was still having issues with jaw pain and I was getting a lot of headaches and migraines. So Dr.Simon and I talked about reshaping my bite. My mouth was crooked inside, you couldn’t see it, but I was only biting down on the right side. Dr. Simon and I went over the whole plan. We went forward and immediately my mouth started to feel better. I was clenching my teeth less. I don’t seem to be grinding my teeth now. My teeth meet on both sides at the same time and really my headaches seem to have gone away.
(203) 324-6171