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I cracked a piece of tooth with my night guard on!

  • 27-05-2023 7:07pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 111 ✭✭


    I cracked a little bit off this tooth back in February and decided I'd better get a new night guard. My previous night guard was from 2013, which doesn't fit too well at this stage after I'd stopped wearing it for a number of years. Anyway my dentist did the filling before taking an impression of my bottom teeth for a new night guard (€220) which I've now been wearing since March. When wearing this for all of about a 10 days I had a suspicion that the same could happen again when one night I seemed to bang my jaws together a bit too hard when sleeping and I felt the force right up the root of that tooth.

    In the photo below, it might look like I'm not wearing the guard right, but that's actually as far as my bottom teeth go up into it. It is secure and comfortable in spite of how it might look. But as you can see the new night guard sticks up a lot higher than it needs to. Is that normal? My dentist insisted all is good with this guard, but I'm wondering did something go wrong either during the impressions by the dentist, or by the mould lab company. My upper incisor on the left side of the photo is the issue as it is naturally a bit longer than the other. That's the one I cracked a bit off. I heard a loud nose and it was quite a frightening experience. After getting up to look at what happened it the mirror and putting the guard back in, it now felt like the other incisor was now actually the one that would bear the brunt of the force, as the bulge is higher on that side. The thought of breaking that one - which I never had work done on - scares me. In order to feel secure enough to be able to fall back to sleep, I knew I had to to put in the old guard again.

    Here's the problem. With the old guard if I'm grinding from side to side during the night, my upper incisors won't be cracked at the tips because they sit into place in front of the bottom incisors. However, because this bulge on the new night guards protrudes a certain distance forward (as well as backwards and upwards), it means my upper teeth don't really have anywhere to rest. If I bang my teeth together the upper inside is subjected to a an upward - but yet forward - force. I'm wondering could it be something to do with the fact that my brain thinks the teeth are farther from contact than what they actually are due to this guard taking up so much space.

    This is now my third time breaking a small piece off the inside of that incisor, and the first time doing so while wearing a guard. I think the only way to solve the problem once and for all is get a guard for the upper teeth instead. I'm obviously susceptible to grinding all of my teeth but the only teeth that I'm likely to actually break are those two upper incisors, and that couldn't possibly happen if the guard if over them inside. When my dentist took impression for doing the night guard he actually planned to do a guard for my upper teeth, and it was me who commented on it and then he changed his mind and decided to go with a guard for the bottom teeth, like my old guard. I doubt he still has the mould impression of that two months later, but if he does, I would hope it might bring the cost down. I also hope my dentist doesn't disagree with me. He's the expert but then again I know more than him in other ways as it's my mouth.

    Thank you



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