How Can Stress Affect Your Teeth Health

How stress can affect your teeth. We all have stress now and then and deal with it in a variety of ways such as buckling under the pressure, rising above it, slowly becoming desensitized to it. It is just another thing that we deal with everyday, but for some it can have a significant effect on their teeth as well. Some people when stressed clench their jaws and grind their teeth.

How stress can affect your teeth

This medical condition known as bruxism. The pressure at times can be somewhere around 250 pounds of pressure leading to a slow but eventual wearing away of the teeth, sometimes even causing muscle and joint problems as well. This problem can happen during the day at work when stress is at an all time high or at night while you sleep away completely oblivious to the slow affect of your teeth.

Understanding Bruxism

Stress can do a great deal of damage to your body in a variety of ways from elevating your blood pressure to inducing eating and the like. Bruxism is your body’s response to that stress by clenching the jaw or grinding the teeth and oftentimes you aren’t even aware that stress can affect your teeth.

Those who clench or grind their teeth often end up with very strong jaw muscles which can help to wear down your teeth over time, exerting more pounds of pressure with each clenching or grinding of teeth. When you grind your teeth or clench your jaw because of stress there are a number of symptoms that come along with the activity that affect your mouth such as:

• Headaches
• Tooth aches
• Neck aches
• Jaw pain
• A “fullness” feeling in the ears (can stress affect your teeth)
• Ear pain
• Teeth sensitivity when eating or drinking

Getting Treatment for Stress and Bruxism

When stress starts to affect your teeth through bruxism it is smart to seek ways to not only dealing with your current stress outlets, but seek a qualified dentist to help you to rectify the problems with your teeth.

Dentists can help you by providing safety mouth guards for during the night to protect your teeth and a qualified professional can help you find healthier outlets for your stress.

Finding ways to help you deal with stress that doesn’t end up ruing your teeth is important and with the help of someone who is trained in helping people manage their stress you will be able to avoid slowly wearing your teeth away over time.