Hi, So, I grind my teeth really bad, especially at night. I’ve come to realize this is probably a stim that occurs as I’m falling asleep. I HATE my Nightguard and have never been able to find a comfy one. Do you/anyone else have suggestions because I’m tired of royally messing up my jaw but I HATE the plastic Nightguards.
Oh gosh, I feel you so hard on this one. I am also a grinder. A really, really, really bad grinder. To the point that dentists started trying to get me to wear nightguards even in childhood, because I was already ruining my teeth at that young age.
And I hated them. And I could never wear them. I thought “If I just force myself to wear it enough times, I will get tired enough to sleep with it, and then I’ll get used to it, and eventually I won’t be able to sleep without it.”
I still think this is sound logic, but I was never able to do it. I’d go maybe three weeks, and then one night I’d forget to put it in- and proceed to have the best night’s sleep I’d had in three weeks. And not go back.
I currently have three different night guards, all given to me by my dentist. I can’t even tell you how many I’ve tried. I had ones that were soft and squishy. I chewed holes through them in days. I had once that were hard, but thin. I cracked them in a week.
So my dentist gave me one that was really tough. It was hard, completely inflexible, and really thick. I tried it for awhile, until I’d chewed it to hell and bits of plastic started coming off it, which I was choking on and sent me into coughing fits.
So when my dentist gave me this 15 billionth nightguard to try, I can tell you I was very skeptical. But I tried it, because my teeth are shot to hell. I’m only 38 and I have...8? root canals? and 6 crowns, and two teeth that are just gone. One I’ve replaced with an implant and the other one is just a gap (cause it’s a molar and no one sees it).
But I tried it and...I can do it. It’s not as bad as the others. Is it because I’ve had so many worse ones, and I know this one is the least awful? Have I finally become used to them after all these years? Have my teeth ground themselves down into enough pain to make me want to wear it? I couldn’t tell you. The one that works for me is a squishy one- the kind I used to chew through, but I’m not with this one, for some reason. Maybe I’ve finally trained my subconscious. I don’t know.
So my advice is to just. Keep trying. Do it on and off. Don’t wear one for awhile so you get a break and get some good sleep, then try another kind. Try the fancy expensive ones from the dentist that are fitted to your teeth, try the cheap ones from the drugstore that aren’t, hell try sports mouth guards that are huge, try them all.
And in the end, if you can’t, you can’t. I have resigned myself to the fact that my teeth are just going to suck. I’m a chewer, I stim by chewing, and I’m a grinder, and that’s just a fact of my autistic life. I’m constantly having to balance one bodily system for another- for example, how many samefoods can I eat before I get really bad IBS? Once I get the IBS, then I force myself to eat vegetables and fiber and things I hate until it goes away, but then my mental health suffers terribly and so I go back to my samefoods. Life is a balance, and you have to balance your mental health, and your ability to get good sleep, with the health of your teeth.
I wish I had a better answer for you. If you ever find one, please tell me, because I sure could use it myself!
Just please do NOT try anything that ISN’T an approved mouth guard, for fear of choking on it in your sleep.
