TAKE THAT LOOK OFF YOUR FACE, MAN: SAVING YOUR TEETH FROM DENTAL DISASTER

A clenched jaw may be the look of the movie machos, but many men are inadvertently flexing their way to dental disaster.

If you don’t recognise it in the mirror, the next time you stop at a traffic light in peak hour, look at other male drivers. Look particularly at their jaws and you’ll see that a surprising number are clenching their teeth. Without being aware of it, they are doing the same sort of thing that Tom Cruise and other movie heroes do intentionally when they want to appear macho. They are flexing their jaw muscles to display a clean and threatening jawline.

To prosthodontists this doesn’t look macho at all. Rather it looks like they are trying to break their teeth.

Prosthodontists specialise in complex mouth reconstructions and repeatedly see what severe teeth-clenching can do. There are men who clench their teeth for days on end. They bring tremendous muscle pressure to bear and can loosen or crack teeth. A cracked tooth is painful. Every time the man bites, the two halves move in relation to each other and he experiences a stabbing pain. Chewing becomes an ordeal and the remedy is often root canal therapy followed by a crown.

This is an expensive result of a habit many don’t even know they have. Prolonged teeth-clenching can also cause facial pain. It exhausts the jaw muscles and brings on a headache around the temples. Imagine making a fist and holding it for 8 hours. At the end of this time, your arm muscles would be fatigued; so would your hand. Teeth-clenchers experience this fatigue in their face muscles.

Sometimes clenching affects the jaw joint, which is just in front of the ear. The symptoms are mistaken for ear problems and can lead to unnecessary investigations.

Teeth-clenching is a static form of what is known in dentistry as bruxing. When a clencher grinds his teeth, he is performing active bruxing. Some men grind relatively quietly. Violent grinders can produce an excruciating noise, akin to the sound of fingernails scraping on the blackboard. As loud teeth-grinding is not socially welcomed, during the day men can condition themselves not to do it. Some clench instead. Some wait until dark and then grind away during their sleep. There is nothing like grinding to disturb a peaceful night’s sleep.

All night the facial muscles work at wearing the teeth away. In the morning the man wakes with a sore face or neck, unaware of what he’s been doing – unless his partner complains.

Grinding often begins with a stressful event. A man may begin grinding at 16, during exams. This may stop when the stress is over or continue at a lower level, only to flare up later in times of stress. It can also become an entrenched habit that may never declare itself through pain or symptoms but may silently wear away the teeth, prematurely eroding the back teeth and flattening biting surfaces across the mouth.

Through time the enamel and then the dentine are ground down. Long-term grinding can leave teeth looking like empty containers, with the middle scooped out. Men seem to suffer more adverse consequences of grinding than women do because their stronger facial muscles enable them to grind harder and because they generally leave the problem longer before seeking help. Some men allow their teeth to be worn down to the gum line.

These days such wear is usually a combination of bruxing and too much acid in the mouth. Consuming new acidic foods such as sports drinks and grazing instead of eating three meals a day are leaving the mouth vulnerable to acid. Eating frequently allows the mouth no time to build up enough saliva to provide a buffer against the acids. Keeping a can of soft drink on the desk at work and sipping it all day is one of the greatest disservices that can be done to teeth.

At its worst, bruxing can change the alignment of the jaw and ruin what was previously a good bite. With time, men may notice their teeth no longer meet in the way they used to or that their front teeth no longer bite or tear food efficiently. A grating, popping or clicking sound in the jaw can be another symptom of bruxing, as is difficulty in opening the mouth, eating or yawning.

Treatment often involves reducing stress levels, giving the mouth a rest with a soft diet, applying moist heat to the facial muscles and custom-making an occlusal splint (a horseshoe of plastic) that fits over the teeth and stops night-time grinding. When the bite has been badly affected complex reconstruction and/or orthodontics may be necessary.

If you glance in the mirror and notice your front teeth are looking a bit ragged, discoloured and short, blame bruxing!

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