TMJ and Teeth Grinding
Science+Nature
06 Jan 2017
During the night, the brain cycles through lighter and deeper stages of sleep.
As the brain approaches deep sleep, all the muscles in the body have to fully let go and relax. This easily causes trouble for the airway — the jaw is heavy and easily blocks the airway and the tongue, when fully relaxed, expands to almost twice its size to block the airway as well.
Researchers studied brain scans of people with partial blockage in their airways while they slept and what they noticed is that it was grinding (also called bruxism) that reopened the airway and got the study participants breathing again.
As soon as they were given something to keep their airway open all night long — like a CPAP machine or a dental appliance that held the jaw in place so the tongue and jaw don’t block the airway — their grinding stopped and so did the “apneic” events, or the loss of breathing during sleep.
