Carla Haitsma (54) wakes up in the morning with pain in her jaw. “Then it really seems as if I have bitten on something very hard and I have a very heavy feeling in my jaw and pain in my teeth”, she tells EditieNL. Due to the corona crisis, she experiences a lot of stress and this manifests itself at night because she starts grinding her teeth. “I am a jobseeker and that is very difficult at this time. Previously I also did a lot of voluntary work at a theater and I really enjoyed doing that.”
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Now that that has fallen away, she misses the distraction and the people around her. “I’ve been at home for months without doing anything. I don’t have a partner and I’m quite lonely because I don’t get around people at all anymore. Besides, I’m stressed because no money comes in.” This stress also causes her physical pain due to her teeth grinding. “I have a lot of neck pain and headaches, I’m completely stuck.”
Choose vertically in half
According to dentist Marcel Spek, she is not alone. “I recently had a man who had bitten his tooth completely vertically,” he told EditieNL. “The most common cause of teeth grinding and clenching is stress.”
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In his practice, Bacon has recently seen more and more young people grinding and clenching their teeth. “Knowing that many people and especially young people have come under high pressure due to the corona crisis. The tension in the body can cause clenching or grinding.” And that can cause permanent damage.
Neck complaints
“When grinding, your jaws move past each other, which mainly leads to wear of the tooth enamel. Even in a few weeks you can really see a lot of wear and tear. And everything that you lose of wear does not come back. When you clamp, you press yourself. choose very hard on each other. This mainly leads to joint complaints to the temporomandibular joint, neck complaints and even headaches. “
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Teeth grinding or clenching can in many cases be solved with an adapted mouthguard or with jaw physiotherapy. “A mouthguard protects your teeth and gives your jaws some rest. In addition, in certain clinics you can also have Botox injected into your jaw. But this is all symptom relief. The best thing is of course to tackle the cause and reduce stress.”
That’s something Carla tries too. “I would like to tackle the cause of the grinding, but that is difficult because the situation we are in does not change quickly.”
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