Is Bruxism Causing Your Headaches? We Can Help

Bruxism is the correct term for clenching and grinding your teeth, a nocturnal habit that can be very destructive, causing damage to your teeth and gums while placing your jaw joints and muscles under a great deal of stress. What you may not realise is that this condition can cause headaches. If you find you frequently wake up with headaches that are hard to get rid of, then contact us to find out if bruxism could be to blame.

We Can Soon Diagnose Bruxism

Our gentle dentists can soon tell if you have bruxism as this can cause teeth to become chipped and worn or increasingly sensitive. We will also carefully feel your jaw joints and may take diagnostic images to assess any damage.

Treating Bruxism

There are a couple of ways we can treat bruxism and one method that is particularly effective is to use facial injectables. We can use a series of muscle relaxing injections into the muscles causing the tension headaches and bruxism. By relaxing these muscles we can help relieve muscle spasms and the discomfort and pain caused by chronic headaches. Our facial injectables are of the highest quality and we use minimal amounts to get the desired results; it only takes around 10-15 minutes for this non-surgical procedure.

We can also treat bruxism with custom-made night guards. These are plastic mouthguards that will fit comfortably over your upper teeth so they cannot contact your lower teeth, preventing bruxism. This treatment can be effective but it may take a while to get used to wearing a night guard.

What Happens if Bruxism Isn’t The Only Thing Causing Your Headaches?

Sometimes chronic headaches can be caused by the spine in your neck being out of alignment and this is why we have teamed up with a Chiropractor from Chiropractic Central. Dr Sarah McNeil can carefully assess the alignment of the spine in your neck to see if this may be causing your tension headaches.

How Your Neck Could Be Causing Your Headaches

When viewed face on, your neck should be straight, but when viewed from the side your neck should have a nice C-shaped curve. Sometimes it is possible to see if a person’s neck is out of alignment simply by viewing them side on, as their ear should be in line with their shoulder. If the neck is out of alignment and is pushed forwards then this can place pressure on the nerves exiting into your shoulders, neck and head area and even down into your arms and hands. This can cause pain, numbness and pins and needles in your arms and hands and in your shoulders and neck, and can lead to tension headaches and migraines. A lack of curve in your neck can also affect your jaw joints or temporomandibular joints, leading to dysfunction.

Following a proper evaluation, Dr Sarah McNeil will be able to determine if your neck requires realigning. The great thing about treatment is that it’s very non-invasive and can naturally help correct the shape of your spine.