On the Bruxist's Hour

The grinding happens in the hour we own least — deep in the night, before waking, when the day’s unfinished business is filed by force. Patients are often embarrassed by it, as if they had been caught doing something. They haven’t. Sleep bruxism is not a habit in any sense a person could quit; it is the nervous system working a night shift.¹

What we can do is protect the teeth from the work when protection is needed, reduce the contributors we can identify, and—when the history points that way—screen for sleep-disordered breathing, which can coexist with sleep bruxism.² What we cannot do is scold the night into behaving.

The bruxist’s hour belongs to the body. Our job is to make sure it costs as little as possible.