Explains the stress/hormone drivers behind daytime and nighttime teeth clenching (bruxism) and gives practical relaxation techniques, mouth guard tips, and a bedtime breathing routine to reduce clenching.
Have you ever woken up and feeling that your jaw is on fire, or notice during the day that you are clenching your teeth without even realizing it? Or maybe your face starts to look like Ridge Forrester's. Your teeth are chipping and your jaw muscles feel like a concrete. Even the massage therapist cannot get them to relax.
If that sounds familiar, you are not definitely alone. In this video, we'll break down the teeth clenching, or bruxism, really, what happens and why, and how you can finally calm the jaw and your nervous system. But before we start, what is exactly bruxism? I'm Janne Säkkinen, and over 10 years I've been helping people to understand their bodies better and overcome musculoskeletal problems.
On this channel, I share practical ways to get your body working the way it's meant to be, simply and for good. Bruxism, and why isn't just a bad habit? Bruxism means involuntary teeth clenching or grinding. Daytime bruxism happens when you're stressed, focused, or tense.
Nighttime bruxism, on the other hand, happens when your brain is firing even while you are in sleep. It's not about the willpower, it's about what is happening in your nervous system. So what triggers the pain to keep the jaw muscles switched on? Let's talk about two major players: adrenaline and cortisol.
Adrenaline and cortisol, the double-edged sword of stress. When you face the stress or pressure, your body releases adrenaline, the classic fight or flight hormone. Your heart rate rises, senses sharpen, and your muscles are tightened. After that spike, your system crashes and you feel completely drained, heavy, or really relaxed.
If the stress becomes constant, then your body starts pumping cortisol, a slower, more persistent stress hormone, and it effects can be massive. Weight gain, high blood pressure, poor sleep, mood swings, and even weakened immune system. But how do these hormones connect your teeth clenching during the day? Daytime bruxism, when the stress show up in your face.
If you catch yourself clenching your teeth while working, driving, or concentrating, it's your nervous system staying in high alert mode. The peripheral nerve keeps your jaw muscle tight, even if it's not real danger. Sometimes the trigger might be emotional tension, sometimes it might be mental overload, too much focus, too many thoughts, or too lack of recovery. So how can you retrain your body and go to the find relaxation again?
The tongue rest position and the brr trick. Try this simple reset. Place the tip of your tongue right behind your upper front teeth. Let the rest of the tongue rest gently at the roof of your mouth.
Keep your lips together softly, and make sure that there is a few millimeters of space between your upper and lower teeth. Now, test your relaxation. Blow gently through your mouth and make brr sound. Let your jaw shake loosely as you exhale.
It's funny, but incredibly effective, even with kids will going to laugh at you. You don't need to be worrying about that. But if the tension keeps coming back no matter what you do, opposing muscles, the secret to lasting jaw relaxation. Your main clenching muscles are masseter and temporalis.
Just like your biceps, the contract [gunshot] will going to be happening when you close your mouth. But when you activate the opposite muscles, the one what opens your mouth, the jaw automatically relaxes. So try this. Make the fist with this kind of formation, then place this underneath your jaw.
Gently open your mouth against the resistance. This activates your digastric and platysma muscles, which help your clenching muscles to switch off. Do this few times through the day. It's like teaching your jaw how to be relaxed again.
But what is really going behind the scenes in your nervous system? Facial nerves and bruxism, when the brain pulls the strings. Your nervous system runs the whole show. The facial nerve, nervus facialis, controls the facial expressions, while the trigeminal nerve, nervus trigeminus, handles the chewing and jaw movements.
When the brain is in constant ready for action mode, these nerve keep sending tension signals to your face and jaw, even when you are trying to rest. So how does this explain what happens at the night when you are asleep? Nighttime bruxism, when your brain keeps working while you rest. At night, some people just press their teeth together, while others grind them rhythmically back and forth.
This happens because your brain stem and spinal cord keep muscle activity going, while when your conscious mind is out. And since you can't control it while sleep, how can you protect your teeth and muscles from the damage? Mouth guards, protecting what you can't control. The best protection is a custom-made acrylic mouth guard from your dentist.
It's durable, and it's designed to fit your bite perfectly. If the public health care waiting times are too long, you can try this kind of simple heat moldable guards from a pharmacy. They are not perfect, but much safer than grinding your bare teeth. And don't forget to clean them.
I use these kind of Corega tablets. I share it to quarters, and then I just drop one piece to warm water when I let the guard soak. Once in a week, I will going to drop full tablet to the basin bowl, so it will going to get way more thorough full cleaning. If you like to see how the professional guards are actually made and fitted, you can check the link down below....
And if you want to see how you can 3D print these kind of mouth guards, let me know in the comments down below. And after that, I will going to be contacting the places what has that kind of equipment ready already. So I'll make a separate video from that. But what if you want to calm your jaw before your clenching even starts, especially at the nights?
Night routine for the bruxers, calming the nervous system. Here's a bedtime routine I recommend: Set your tongue top of the roof in your mouth, lips together, and teeth slightly apart. Take deep breath through your nose and pause for a second, and then exhale throughly from your mouth while you're humming, "Mmm," sound. Repeat a few times.
Next, we're going to start with the bricks breathing exercises, which will going to allow diaphragm to really relax properly, and this kicks the parasympathetic nervous system crazy hard into calming down. At beginning, when you practice this stuff, it's the best to do it on your lying on your back, knees bent, heels close to the buttocks. Make the backward tilt of the pelvis, meaning that think that you are lifting your belt buckle towards your nose, and then the lower back stays very flat against the surface. Place your hands on the ribcage and think that you really want to spread your hands really wide when you are doing the inhalation, meaning the inhalation must clearly reach down and towards the lower parts of the lungs.
During the inhalation, the sympathetic nervous system lights up, and the heart rate rises briefly, and the blood pressure, too. Because of this, the inhalation should be preferably much shorter in duration than the exhalation. Once you draw the air to the ribcage and towards the abdomen, then you start slowly blowing air out through your mouth. This must be clearly longer compared to the inhalation.
At the end, try to force every oxygen molecule out of the body, making your face look like elephant butt, and the feeling is already a bit uncomfortable. Repeat the same inhalation to the ribcage, exhalation, push it all the way out, and after that, breathe normally. As end result, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the body will be a bit off balance, and you may feel bit oxygen drunk. But this is the part of the process at the beginning, and you will going to get used to once you learn to do this exercise better.
Once you get hang of it, after that, it doesn't matter where and in what position do you make this, as long you will going to remember the backward tilt of the pelvis and the forced exhalation. Careful, you'll be soon like a absolute beast in these kind of breathing exercises. When we do the inhaling through our nose, our parasympathetic nervous system starts to kick in, so that is the place and where we can rest ourselves. When the exhale comes, then the sympathetic nervous system starts to kick in.
If we keep the inwards breathing longer compared to outwards breathing, then we can activate the parasympathetical nerves, and then we can get ourself to relaxed position. This type of breathing activates the parasympathetic system and the rest and digest size of your body, helping your jaw and mind relax before sleep. But what happens when you start combining these strategies together? Once you understand what is driving your bruxism, from hormones, to nerves, to muscle patterns, you can finally take control of it.
Relaxed muscles, calmer nervous system, and protected teeth make huge difference in your daily comfort and your long-term health. If you want dive deeper into this topic, check my upcoming online course through the link down below, or use the code now shown in the screen. And if you want to learn how to treat your jaw muscle manually, click the video in here, and see you in there.
Explains the stress/hormone drivers behind daytime and nighttime teeth clenching (bruxism) and gives practical relaxation techniques, mouth guard tips, and a bedtime breathing routine to reduce clenching.
The video demonstrates specific movement patterns and clinical exercise progressions: ... Have you ever woken up and feeling that your jaw is on fire, or notice during the day that you are clenching your teeth without even realizing it? Or maybe your face starts to look like Ridge Forrester's. Your teeth...
If symptoms relating to "How to Stop Clenching Your Jaw (It's Not Just Stress)" persist for more than 1–2 weeks, interfere with sleep or daily function, an in-person OMT evaluation is recommended to identify the root cause and ensure proper rehabilitation.
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Step-by-step demonstration of applying kinesiology tape over the three trigeminal nerve exit points on the face to help ease irritation and pressure from trigeminal neuralgia.
Get instant access to Janne Sakkinen's official Google Drive folder with exercise guides and rehabilitation protocols.
Get Free PDF Guides (Google Drive)Medical Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is strictly for educational purposes and does not replace a clinical physical therapy evaluation, medical diagnosis, or individualized treatment plan.
