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Are Crooked Teeth Contributing To Your Tooth Grinding?

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Grinding teeth is a common problem that people face, but sometimes it's not the fault of the person grinding their teeth. If you've tried to stop grinding your teeth and can't seem to succeed, crooked or misaligned teeth could be to blame. Read on to learn more about this problem and what you can do to fix it.

Uncontrollable Trigger

For many people, tooth grinding is simply a habit that happens while sleeping or during periods of high stress. Reducing stress and increasing relaxation can help to stop this kind of tooth grinding. However, if your teeth are misaligned, there might not be anything you can do about grinding your teeth.

When normally aligned, your teeth are designed to equally withstand the pressure of your mouth being closed and at rest. However, if some of your teeth are crooked, they could be taking on more pressure than normal -- in essence, you're grinding those crooked teeth. Since the teeth don't fit properly with the surrounding teeth, they can stick out at angles that make them make contact before any other tooth does when you close your mouth. Instead of equal distribution of pressure, you have one or a few teeth under the pressure that should be shared among all your teeth.

How It Damages Your Smile

When one or a few teeth are exposed to excessive pressure, they become worn down as a result. Over time, the extreme pressure grinds away at those teeth and can make them appear shorter, blunter, or even more crooked than they already are.

To make matters worse, if your tooth grinding left completely uncontrolled, you could end up fracturing a tooth by biting down too strongly on it.

What To Do

There is one advantage to having this form of tooth grinding: it's easy to fix. While other forms of tooth grinding often require changing the state of mind of the patient in order for them to not grind their teeth while stressed, crooked teeth are a physical component that can be fixed by a dentist, like those at Accent On Dentistry - Rowena R Martir DMD.

Dentists and orthodontists are experts at correcting bites and misaligned teeth. Depending on the problems with your bite, you may be able to qualify for invisible braces, or if not, sublingual braces that sit behind your teeth. No matter what your age, you can likely get braces that won't be noticeable to others while preventing your teeth from being damaged from grinding.

Once your teeth are correctly aligned, pressure will be distributed evenly again across them. This will reduce wear and tear over time and keep your smile in tip-top shape for years to come.


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