Bruxism and Sleep Apnea... My Thoughts + Poll

These are just my thoughts, but I'm almost sure what happens now. I have T since 17 years and the last two years it's very loud (ranging from 8 to 9/10 but in some rare days it goes down to 3/10) with some new tones, and it's becoming very hard to handle. I am naturally stressed and anxious especially since I had a burnout two years ago and I never stopped working for financial reasons. Since then we found a lot of other underlying issues like sleep apnea, bruxism and some food intolerance, allergies, chronic sinus infections & leaky gut since I was very young, which make things even worse.

Now to the topic, for those who have bruxism or sleep apnea, here is actually what happens. I went to several doctors and even had a camera placed in throat earlier this month during sleep to see what's really happening, they detected that I have a form of moderate obstructive sleep apnea, which is right, but I'm 100% sure things aren't always what they think is happening when you sleep, and it is bruxism which is really making things complicated for people with T (or the cause ?)

1. if you have a lot of stress at work and at home, hard to cope with it, difficult period of your life, which is my case, it can give you bruxism at night
2. when you clench your teeth at night, what happens (at least for me) is that you close your throat at the same time and you can't breath anymore, not even by nose, so you have a form of apnea happening. Just try it for yourself, clench your teeth very hard and try to breath at the same time, for me it's impossible
3. buxism causes pain in neck, teeth, shoulders, head, but on top of it, when you have an apnea happening you don't have enough oxygen which is bad for your brain, organs and ears too as the cochlea is a very sensitive organ
4. result, you wake up with much louder T and feel just horrible
5. I have managed in some cases to avoid bruxism and even sleep apnea at night, usually when all is calm and less tress is happening at home + taking high doses of magnesium, working with orthophonist on techniques to place tongue and strengthen throat when you are stressed, but this takes a lot of time
6. the best thing would be to get rid of the initial stress, but this is hard, one has to work and in my case T is driving me crazy so it's a vicious circle

I'll probably get a few surgeries for my sleep apnea early next year, but I realize that if I don't address the bruxism, I'll always have the problem, as even someone without sleep apnea actually is generating some kind of apnea each time you have bruxism at night.

Maybe the T doesn't come from bruxism in the 1st place, but it definitely makes it louder for sure!

If someone here has good other solutions for buxism, please share your thoughts, I'd really be interested.

Peace and happy holidays

 

It's been suggested to me that having a breathing problem can cause bruxism: when the jaw is clenched shut, the body tries to just it forward to open the airway up.

It's an interesting idea; there are a lot of theories and less hard data about this stuff. Let us know how you make out...

 

Thanks, yes, I'm sure that lack of oxygen is not good for he organs in the body, last night I tried to sleep with this mouthguard https://www.shockdoctor.com/double-braces-mouthguard , this seems to have helped this night on my bruxism and one can breath a little better even with jaws closed as there is an opening in the front of the mouthguard, as a result my high hissing T was lower in volume this morning, felt much better overall, still have a nasty other T in right ear but at least it's a progress. From comparison I did around me with other friends, I seem really to have a big issue with breathing, even standing up when I close mouth, I can't breath at all, not by nose, nothing, so surgery (upper and lower jaw or throat) will be the only solution, wish I had discovered this all earlier, then my ears probably wouldn't have been damaged this way as each time you have a sleep apnea, it has for me a big impact on ears (spikes, new tones) really terrible condition to live with, it actually devasted my life last two years.

 

Yes: less hard data. And this poll was unfortunately not set up in a way that could really contribute to the development of that data, because without also asking how many people don't suffer bruxism/apnea, the results are only anecdotal, and we can't figure out if there's actually a relationship or not.