July 2020 – OFSI

What You Need to Know About Nighttime Teeth Grinding

Venture Creative on July 24, 2020

One of the more common oral habits is grinding your teeth, particularly during the night. While in many cases, this is associated with occasional bouts of stress or anxiety and is relatively harmless. When the condition (called bruxism) becomes a regular habit, it can cause damage. When left unchecked, regular teeth grinding can actually damage your teeth to the point of loss or causing TMJ. How do you know that you are grinding your teeth, and how can you address it to make sure it isn’t a long-term issue?

Identifying Teeth Grinding Behavior

For the vast majority of people, teeth grinding isn’t a conscious behavior; it’s not something that we are intentionally doing. Even more so, it’s a behavior that often occurs during sleep, meaning it’s not something we even know we are doing. In fact, normally, we notice the effects of it after the fact. Some of the symptoms of tooth grinding include a nearly constant headache, particularly a dull one, or a jaw that exhibits soreness. If you share a bed with someone, they will occasionally even report hearing the grinding during the night.

However, none of these things can conclusively diagnose bruxism. If you suspect that you might be grinding your teeth, make an appointment with your dentist and then we can examine your teeth and look for the telltale evidence of grinding and lead us to the next steps for treatment.

Immediate Treatment for Bruxism

The good news is that we can treat the behavior of teeth grinding very quickly, providing effective relief in short order. To do that, we can fit you with a mouth guard, specifically for nighttime. This can protect your teeth immediately and relieve the pain and discomfort that comes along with it. While this treatment is effective quickly, it can also be helpful for treating any underlying causes of bruxism.

Get to the Root Cause of Teeth Grinding

For most people, the behavior of teeth grinding is closely tied to stress or anxiety. Treating any stress can help halt the bruxism long term. In our office, we can teach you some basic stress relief techniques that can help alleviate the behavior. However, activities like exercise or seeking stress reduction therapy can also help.

During the treatment process, there are several behavioral adjustments you can make that will make bruxism better. Consumption of caffeine (particularly in the afternoon) or alcohol can both exacerbate teeth grinding and cutting back can alleviate the pain associated with it. In addition, ensuring that you only chew on food can help; any habitual chewing can make the problem worse. Lastly, relaxing your jaw before sleep can also be a big help. To do this, we recommend using a warm washcloth on your face to jumpstart the relaxation.

If you feel you might be suffering the ill effects of nighttime teeth grinding, we’d be happy to help you identify any issues and get you on the road to recovery. Contact us today!

What You Need to Know About Our Sedation Options

Venture Creative on July 17, 2020

Oral surgery can make potential patients anxious, and that means that there are a couple of questions that we get frequently. One is how much pain or discomfort that you can expect during a procedure, and the other we get a lot is about if you will be awake or under anesthesia for the duration. Both of these questions can be addressed by considering our various sedation options for our procedures. Based on customer comfort and the level of complexity to the procedure, there is a wide range of options, all of which we are proficient with at the Oral and Facial Surgery Institute.

Minor Procedures

Some of the simplest surgical treatments we perform include basic gum treatments and easy, simple tooth extractions. For these procedures, we generally use only a local anesthetic, which is lidocaine. Lidocaine is actually used in almost all of our sedation options as our local anesthetic, but it will be used on its own for these minor procedures.

Kicking Up a Notch with Laughing Gas

As the procedures get more complex, we add some more sedation options. For common procedures like wisdom teeth extraction or implant placements, we will add the use of nitrous oxide (known to most as laughing gas) to the lidocaine used as a local. This sedative is given to patients through a small mask that fits comfortably over your nose, quickly calming any anxiety and reducing pain sensations immensely. These effects wear off almost immediately after returning to the use of regular oxygen over the nitrous oxide.

IV Sedation or General Anesthesia in Office

As a complete surgery center, we are licensed and proficient in the use of IV sedation or general anesthesia in our own office. While we generally will only recommend the use of this sedative for complex procedures like a full-mouth reconstruction, the use of general anesthetic is safe enough to use at your choice for simple procedures like wisdom teeth removal if anxiety might be a problem.

When you undergo IV sedation in our office, a patient generally will go in and out of consciousness during the procedure. However, most patients don’t remember their procedure at all and aren’t responsive to the procedure. Even if you are technically awake, you are still basically under anesthesia and shouldn’t experience any anxiety from the procedure. One important thing to note is that the effects of anesthesia are long-lasting enough that you will need someone to drive you home after the procedure.

For Certain Instances, Sedation Can Occur in the Hospital

For some instances, including reconstructive or TMJ surgery or patients with underlying conditions, we may recommend doing the procedure in a hospital setting under the care of an anesthesiologist. However, these instances are exceptionally rare.

When you are considering oral surgery, you will have a wide range of sedation options available to you when you select the Oral and Facial Surgery Institute. Contact us today to learn more!

Top 3 Reasons for a Bone Graft

Venture Creative on July 9, 2020

Bone grafts are one of the more common procedures that oral surgeons do because it is a relatively minor procedure that can carry with it a lot of potential benefits. Despite our image of bone as a solid and immovable material, your bones and body are constantly changing throughout our lives, often responding to changes in our bodies. One of the most frequently adjusting bones is the jawbone, and bone grafts can help improve several conditions. The technique involves a minor gum incision to access the bone and then to insert graft material, normally consisting of your own bone. The healing will encourage growth and enable your body to fill in for lost bone and soft tissue material. The question is, what are some of the main reasons this procedure is performed and how does a bone graft address those issues.

A Bone Graft Can Save Your Teeth

One of the major effects of periodontal disease, like gingivitis, is that in severe cases, it can cause bone loss. This bone loss can actually cause your teeth to become loose and to put you in danger of actually losing those teeth. However, a bone graft can actually help stop the loss of bone and actually regenerate the supply of material supporting the jaw. This will actually provide a boost to bone support, and it can be a big help in allowing you to retain your teeth.

Providing Options After Tooth Extraction

Bone grafts can also be a common part of another regular oral surgery, tooth extraction. The removal of a tooth obviously changes the landscape of the jaw and can cause other teeth to shift or become loose. Now, during tooth extraction, it’s quite normal to actually put bone graft material in the tooth socket to stabilize the jawline. This also can allow you to choose a dental implant down the road if you choose.

Ridge Augmentation – Restoring Your Natural Contour

One major concern that a lot of patients have after suffering any jaw altering side effect is how their smile looks. The feeling that your smile looks different can make many self-conscious. Thankfully, one of the major benefits of bone graft procedures is that it can be used to perform ridge augmentation. This fills in the areas around any indents and provides patients with a healthy and natural-looking smile that they can be proud of.

Bone grafts are a safe and common procedure that can help bolster teeth and return you to a natural-looking smile and can aid several periodontal ailments. Contact us today, and learn more now!