The Daily Grind

I am a night grinder. To put it mildly. I am slowly destroying all the teeth I have in my head. I have lost 2 teeth on my right side due to this horrible habit that I can't seem to control. I am about to lose a third tooth, only now it's on my left side.

I have a night guard, in fact, I have had many night guards, the one before last I dropped in the toilet bowl. I could not bring myself to put that back in my mouth, no matter how many times I cleaned it. I just got a new one, apparently this one is the heavy duty model. They don't make them out of stainless steel yet, I think I need something stronger than a piece of plastic.

This disturbs me. It bothers me that my mind is so troubled, that it's not even enough that I worry and stress during my waking hours. No, I must continue the self torture while sleeping. It's like my mouth says to my brain as it lulls me off to sleep 'don't worry guys, I got this'.

In my  many googles, I came across this sentence, "nighttime bruxing can occur as often as 40 minutes for every hour of sleep, producing up to 250 pounds of force per square inch. That is enough pressure to crack a walnut"


Maybe instead of the night guard, I should just shove a walnut in my mouth.


It sucks. It really does. I would like to be a Buddhist but I think my wiring is not conducive to that. I think my brain needs a kill switch. I have read all kinds of things, like you are supposed to consciously open your jaw, and not have your teeth touch while you have your mouth closed. The problem is, I don't do it during the day. I am not much of a sleeper to begin with. Between the hot flashes, and the subsequent chills and the thoughts of my mortality and the bill I forgot to pay last month, it's really not that great.

In an effort to save my remaining teeth, I downloaded a hypnosis recording for my iPad. I listened to it last night. It has this emotionless British woman telling me to relax and pretend my hands feel like lead. In addition to this it supposedly emits frequencies that send my brain into a relaxed state and then I guess it tells me to stop grinding my teeth. Honestly, I fell asleep halfway into it, although I would kind of wake up intermittently and hear all these weird and crazy sounds. It was a little disconcerting to be honest.

I am not sure if it helped with my grinding, but it certainly did help to lull me off to sleep. I will give it some time. If it does not work, I will go buy a bag of walnuts.