Night Guard

I'm using a night guard from Walmart that only fits on the lower jaw instead of the dentist-made oral appliance. If I don't use the night guard, my jaw drops open and it was awful for a few days. The night guard does not crowd my tongue at all and my leak line is perfect and I'm not nearly so cranky and horrible. Also, I took a box cutter and shaved off some of the plastic from the night guard to make it less bulky. Misery is the mother of invention.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/DenTek-Comfor ... d/10312788

I used this before I had a night guard made. I liked it, it is very comfortable, though the directions say not to use for longer than six months without seeing an orthodontist. The night guard I had made was about $450 - it serves double duty in guarding my jaw from further clenching trauma - and keeps my upper teeth from moving around.

This night guard does the same thing for the clenching - and I found it VERY comfortable.

My dentist wants to make me one of those expensive night guards, but I seem to be getting along fine with my 3.00 one. Were you glad you got the expensive one, is it any better?

Where do the 3 dollar ones come from? All I've seen is the ones that are around 30 as was posted in this thread.

Nooblakahn wrote:Where do the 3 dollar ones come from? All I've seen is the ones that are around 30 as was posted in this thread.

The athletic section of Walmart. They are the boil and pop in your mouth - mouth guards that people use when playing sports.

They are somewhat uncomfortable to sleep with, and always made my AHI go up - they do nothing to protect the alignment of teeth, and really don't separate the jaw enough to keep the clenching from damaging the jaw. These ended up in the garbage.

herefishy wrote:My dentist wants to make me one of those expensive night guards, but I seem to be getting along fine with my 3.00 one. Were you glad you got the expensive one, is it any better?

I've tried both. I'd say the expensive one is MUCH better than the 3.00 one - but I'm sure every one is different, and it would depend largely on what your needs are. If you do not use a nasal pillow, then keeping your teeth from moving is not an issue. If you don't have TMJ then protecting your jaw isn't an issue. If all you want to do is protect your teeth - then these are great - as they do just that.

Mine are "plackers" from e-bay. I just wear them to protect my teeth from clenching, and they seem to do that fine. When I wore the boil'nbite ones for a while, I got so my jaw wouldn't go back to its normal position - that's not comfortable at all.

Loreena wrote:I'm using a night guard from Walmart that only fits on the lower jaw instead of the dentist-made oral appliance. If I don't use the night guard, my jaw drops forward and it was awful for a few days. The night guard does not crowd my tongue at all and my leak line is perfect and I'm not nearly so cranky and horrible. Also, I took a box cutter and shaved off some of the plastic from the night guard to make it less bulky. Misery is the mother of invention.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/DenTek-Comfor ... d/10312788

Your jaw dropped forward or open? I am not sure how a bottom teeth only nightguard would keep one's mouth shut... Wish I could find something that would.

SleepingUgly wrote:

Loreena wrote:I'm using a night guard from Walmart that only fits on the lower jaw instead of the dentist-made oral appliance. If I don't use the night guard, my jaw drops forward and it was awful for a few days. The night guard does not crowd my tongue at all and my leak line is perfect and I'm not nearly so cranky and horrible. Also, I took a box cutter and shaved off some of the plastic from the night guard to make it less bulky. Misery is the mother of invention.

Your jaw dropped forward or open? I am not sure how a bottom teeth only nightguard would keep one's mouth shut... Wish I could find something that would.

sleepingugly cute name wish i thought of that

My brain must be wired to have something in my mouth from using the oral appliance so long--that's my thinking. While trying to go without anything in the mouth, the mouth would come open even with a chinstrap, and the next day was trashed. So I picked up the DenTek night guard, filed it down some, and for some reason, my mouth will stay closed.

The DenTek is nothing but a couple of plastic tabs you can rest your teeth on basically, and I kind of try to adjust my lower jaw slightly forward, mimicking the intended use of an oral appliance. Then I strap on the cervical collar, and it seems I'm good to go till morning. In fact, I've never had such a great AHI consistently. I think it's due to my tongue having room to stretch out, and I try to keep it behind my front teeth. A couple times I'll wake up and move the tabs around in my mouth to adjust the placement and it's not perfectly comfortable, but it's good enough to get me good sleep. One downside is the other night I kept dreaming that I had a brick-hard piece of bacon in mouth all night long--weird. That only happened one night, though. I don't need to use poligrip on the lips anymore, either. So I'm not sure why the mouth stays closed other than I just need the feel of something in my mouth to keep it closed. I wouldn't trust it to stay closed without the collar, though. And I must keep the chin pointed down somewhat to keep from getting aerophagia. Once I get everything lined up, though, amazingly--it seems to work--so far.

Another thing I do now is I use a pulse oximeter when I go to bed and it's set to alarm me when the pulse goes over 75. This is a fantastic backup measure, I'm finding. Only one time has it gone off and I heard it. The pulse ox gives me peace of mind in case anything haywire happens with my mouth or leaks or equipment. I wish I would have thought of this a year ago.

SleepingUgly wrote:

Loreena wrote:I'm using a night guard from Walmart that only fits on the lower jaw instead of the dentist-made oral appliance. If I don't use the night guard, my jaw drops forward and it was awful for a few days. The night guard does not crowd my tongue at all and my leak line is perfect and I'm not nearly so cranky and horrible. Also, I took a box cutter and shaved off some of the plastic from the night guard to make it less bulky. Misery is the mother of invention.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/DenTek-Comfor ... d/10312788

Your jaw dropped forward or open? I am not sure how a bottom teeth only nightguard would keep one's mouth shut... Wish I could find something that would.

What about this night guard:

http://smartguardnightguard.com/compone ... uard-elite

I've been looking around for a night guard to help prevent teeth clenching, and this one looked interesting to me. Anyone use it or know anything about it?

Thanks.

RogerSC wrote:What about this night guard:

http://smartguardnightguard.com/compone ... uard-elite

I've been looking around for a night guard to help prevent teeth clenching, and this one looked interesting to me. Anyone use it or know anything about it?

Thanks.

This is the first I've seen of it. Where did you hear about it?

quietmorning wrote:

RogerSC wrote:What about this night guard:

http://smartguardnightguard.com/compone ... uard-elite

I've been looking around for a night guard to help prevent teeth clenching, and this one looked interesting to me. Anyone use it or know anything about it?

Thanks.

This is the first I've seen of it. Where did you hear about it?

Internet research, that's why I'm asking about it *smile*...Just wondering.

I've used a dentist made lower teeth night guard ($600) for over eight years and now another dentist claims the guard has changed my bite after four years.The bite seems to have my bottom teeth back, with a bit of an overbite. Could this backward movement of the lower bite be a factor in the OSA development? Of course, you want forward jaw movement. Since I had multiple chipped teeth, now I reluctant to not use the guard, but I will ask, since the bruxism was likely to be OSA-related. My point is that these guards could be counterproductive.

Kitatonic wrote:I've used a dentist made lower teeth night guard ($600) for over eight years and now another dentist claims the guard has changed my bite after four years.The bite seems to have my bottom teeth back, with a bit of an overbite. Could this backward movement of the lower bite be a factor in the OSA development? Of course, you want forward jaw movement. Since I had multiple chipped teeth, now I reluctant to not use the guard, but I will ask, since the bruxism was likely to be OSA-related. My point is that these guards could be counterproductive.

Since I've only had the clenching problem for a few months, I'm hoping that this would be temporary use, just to re-train my jaw muscles. I haven't decided yet if I need to do this, I might be able to take care of the problem now that I'm pretty sure of the cause. Although controlling things when one is sleeping is pretty iffie at best.