Night Guard

RogerSC wrote:

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.

The clenching during apnea is auto-pilot, you won't be able to prevent it, if you are doing it, by sheer will power. It's caused by the muscles not having enough oxygen and your trying to get oxygen. The orthodontist I saw said that they are the first muscles that 'wake up' - so they are the first to react to your inability to breathe. The best you can do is get your apnea as low as possible and guard your jaw. My mouth guard is somewhat thicker over my molars to keep my jaws from engaging fully.

quietmorning wrote: The clenching during apnea is auto-pilot, you won't be able to prevent it, if you are doing it, by sheer will power. It's caused by the muscles not having enough oxygen and your trying to get oxygen. The orthodontist I saw said that they are the first muscles that 'wake up' - so they are the first to react to your inability to breathe. The best you can do is get your apnea as low as possible and guard your jaw. My mouth guard is somewhat thicker over my molars to keep my jaws from engaging fully.

This is interesting, but I'm not sure about it yet. I'm pretty sure that I didn't start clenching my teeth until after I started using cpap. I don't believe that I did this from the onset of apnea, since I've just developed a sensitive tooth or two recently, and I've been using cpap for over a year now. So, somewhere along the way I started to do this, I don't know how deeply entrenched this is at night...I'll see if I can do anything with it. If I can't, then I'll try the night guard that I mentioned above, and if that doesn't work or seems to be causing other problems, then I'll see my dentist to get a custom night guard made.

Anyways, that's an interesting point, the oxygen deprivation thing, thanks for mentioning it. I'll keep it in mind.