Grinding: The sleep disorder you don’t know about

There is a lot of buzz about sleep disorders and in particular, sleep apnea. But there’s another culprit that might be causing you to wake up with sore neck, headache or feeling tired. Teeth grinding, clenching, or bruxism is classified as a habitual sleep disorder. And while you might think you don’t grind because you KNOW you snore your mouth open, you may in fact do both.

If you are a visual persona let’s get right too it. You can check out this infographic found on Luma Sleep’s website.

When you fall asleep, your higher brain shuts down, the autonomic nervous system takes over and muscle activity is out of your control. You might think you’re not grinding because you KNOW that you snore, but in fact, every time you swallow, your jaw muscles contract and your teeth clench anywhere from a second to a couple of minutes before relaxing. During these moments, breathing stops similar to sleep apnea! Usually a snorer cycles between snoring, swallowing, clenching, stopping breathing, opening mouth, gasping and starting snoring again.

People do this because they cannot breathe through their nose adequately so that enough oxygen gets in the blood and into the brain. The brain then switches to mouth breathing. Mouth breathing arouses the autonomic nervous system out of autopilot into primed mode.

Grinding can produce jaw-joint issues, wear teeth away, produce headaches, migraines, sinus pain, chronic tooth sensitivity, jaw ache, stiff neck, auditory symptoms, vertigo and even back ache. And over course, over time you could even break a tooth.