Stress-breaker mouth guards

What are stress-breaker mouth guards?

A stress-breaker mouth guard or night-time protector is a dental apparatus made of acrylic or plastic which is normally placed on upper teeth. These mouth guards help to reduce the force produced on grinding or clenching teeth and, consequently, protect them.

The habit of grinding teeth involuntarily, unconsciously and excessively is known as bruxism. It is a chronic compulsive disorder, which occurs especially when sleeping, causing a real problem in the lives of millions of people.

Excessively grinding or clenching your teeth can cause real damage to dental enamel, and may cause a tooth to crack, splinter or become loose. Aside from broken teeth, another large variety of problems may occur, such as headaches, jaw pain and muscular tension.

During bruxism, there is significant contact between the surface areas of the bite of maxillary and mandibular teeth. There are numerous potentially effective approaches to treat bruxism and, definitively, an offensive of multiple fronts must be used to combat this disorder.

One of the most common elements of a treatment plan to combat teeth grinding is to use a mouth protector or stress-breaker dental guard to sleep, since most teeth grinding usually occurs at night.

The most usual different treatments that exist for bruxism are occlusal splints or stress-breaker mouth guards.

There are a series of general considerations with respect to stress-breaker mouth guards:

• Firstly, a mouth protector is normally used only for the higher or lower maxillary teeth.
• Secondly, the ideal thing is that the dental stress-breaker mouth guard is adapted to the measurement of the mouth in particular. A single size does not serve all in this case. Stress-breaker mouth guards are adjusted with much more precision than sports mouth protectors and the odontologist can achieve a perfect adjustment that will provide comfort and durability.
• Thirdly, if you grind your teeth day and night, it is possible that you may have to wear two mouth protectors. Otherwise, protection may drop too quickly or be lost during the day and you will not have anything to put on at night.

Types of stress-breaker mouth guards

There are various types of dental stress-breaker mouth guards:

• Made-to-measure stress-breaker mouth guards: made at the clinic by taking the patient’s measurements.
• FéruBoil-and-bite splint: often available at sports shops and pharmacies. The protector is softened in boiling water, then bitten and the material is moulded to the form of the mouth.
• Premanufactured mouthguards: which are ready to use but which are very likely not to fit very well.

Within the group of made-to-measure dental stress-breaker mouth guards, there are various options depending on the type of material with which they are made:

• Soft, manufactured in soft plastic for light grinders.
• Hard for severe grinders.
• Hybrid, whose objective is to protect against severe grinding, the same as hard stress-breaker mouth guards, but which contribute the comfort of soft mouth guards in the internal part of the stress breaker.

Made-to-measure stress-breaker dental mouth guards are designed in such a way as to cover all maxillary or mandibular teeth and are mainly used in the top maxillary teeth. They are made in hard acrylic resin, since they are more effective to reduce bruxism than soft mouth guards. Furthermore, some professionals consider that soft mouth guards increase grinding in some patients.

Benefits of stress-breaker mouth guards

Generally, stress-breaker mouth guards are used to prevent the wear and tear of teeth, injuries and to reduce night-time grinding. Furthermore, their use produces a certain reduction of muscular tone, diminishing jaw pain, headaches, cervical pain and earaches, a stiff neck and other symptoms associated with temporomandibular joints. All of this because the stress-breaker mouth guard avoids the adoption of bad postures during mandibular rest. And it also contributes to avoid the appearance of mobility problems in teeth on reducing unconscious mandibular pressure.

One of the consequences of sleeping with a stress-breaker mouth guard that is not normally mentioned is that it avoids the appearance of dental hypersensitivity and the related discomfort. Another beneficial effect associated with its use it that it considerably reduces the level of stress and anxiety of those that use it. That is because people that use mouth guards increase the quality of their rest, which has an effect on their mood and health in general. It is therefore of great help, not only at dental level but also to improve physical and mental well-being.