Stress can lead to teeth clenching.
Teeth clenching leads to broken and worn down teeth.
Broken and worn down teeth lead to expensive dentist visits.
So it doesn’t matter how healthy you think you are.
Stress can get a hold of us when we least expect it. For me – it’s while I sleep!
This is a short post today as I needed to get the message out there about the tricky ways stress can affect us. We know, because we hear it all over the internet, that stress creates things like weightgain, poor sleep, mysterious illness and heart disease. The list is really very long.
But my stress creeps up on me without my really knowing it.
I’m a teeth clencher. There – it’s out there. I admit it!!!! My teeth are the ones who suffer with my stress levels.
Always have been. Are there any teeth clenchers out there?
I tried to find some google images of teeth clenching because that’s not the easiest thing to photograph on yourself – the pics are gruesome.
When I know I’m leading up to a project, or important talk or anything for that matter that would create a normal degree of stress – outwardly I notice I go into a calm, methodical, ‘get the task done’ kind of mode.
But inwardly it’s a whole different story.
I don’t sleep the whole night. But then do many midlife business people sleep? Especially women? I keep waking up regularly and I find as I wake up, my teeth are in a tight clench. I wonder how long they were like that. The mind boggles. So I found that I cracked my 12 month old crown and needed to have it replaced.
Now that crown should normally have lasted years and my dentist was somewhat amazed at the amount of pressure I must have been putting down on it.
Teeth grinding and jaw clenching often happens at night when we sleep, sometimes we do it unknowingly during the day and as far as google is concerned (and discussions with my dentist) it’s pretty typically stress related and can even be caused by an odd bite.
So now I get to wear one of these teeth guards at night. Sexy huh!!!
In my case it appears, in order to breath comfortably, my jaw slips and my front teeth also clamp onto each other. This is NOT good.
I realise now that I do have an emotional attachment to my teeth. I couldn’t think of anything worse than to have my front teeth taken out, or sawn down, or replaced or worse still – have dentures. No offence to the denture wearing community. My thoughts are with you, you brave souls.
So that bill for having a new crown made was over $2,000 and thank heavens for my BUPA cover I only paid a fraction of that. How do people cope who don’t have cover? I know plenty of people who are so healthy and don’t believe they need the medical cover, but when these sneaky little stress attacks happen while you’re sleeping – that kind of bill is not something we expect!!!
Things creep up on us. We don’t know what kind of health bill we’re going to face and I knew I would be in for some pain had I not caught this in time.
So teeth clenchers unite!!
Unless you want a diamond grill like Kanye, keep your medical cover!!!
So how am I dealing with it now that I have a brand new ‘tougher than a diamond’ crown on my back upper molar????
I’m wearing my new glamourous (sans diamonds) tooth guard and increasing my magnesium dose at night so the body relaxes and encourages sleep. I wonder how it’ll cope when my next stress load turns up!!! Oh well, will let you know.
