Some months ago I had a terrible toothache. The entire left bottom row of my mouth hurt with one or two teeth standing out. When I saw the dentist I was referred to a specialist for a root canal. I immediately thought “oh no” as the time, pain and money flashed before my eyes. Even though I didn’t want to see a specialist I did – tooth pain is unbearable – but I was in for a nice surprise.

My Endodontist – the root canal specialist – took a look at my x-rays and poked around my mouth. He kept testing me to see if I could go through the chair or fly onto the ceiling in pain but couldn’t.

I told him that my mouth was funny. That my pain moved from the front to back and sometimes it went away altogether. I told him I couldn’t figure out if it was one tooth or two teeth.

He looked at me and then dove back into my mouth. He did his dentist thing and then told me that I was grinding.

Grinding? Are you kidding me?

Like a lot of people I have stress in my life – not all the time but enough of the time that I know I have stress. Unbeknownst to me I was grinding my teeth at night while I was sleeping. And boy I must have really been grinding as my mouth was really sore.

My Endodontist told me that I’d need a mouth guard and should consider crowning two of my lower teeth in the back because they had little hair-line fractures due to my grinding.

Well, what I didn’t know about my teeth could fill a short book. I never suspected that I could be grinding my way into a tooth ache and I also didn’t know that you could or even should crown a molar that has hair-line fractures.

Needless to say I headed to the dentist for a mouth guard. I have to say that once I got the device it took a little while to get used to it but it has really saved my mouth. My pain went away and now I can’t sleep without the darn thing in my mouth. Sexy it ain’t but happy teeth are worth it.

If you have good dental hygiene but your teeth are hurting you might need a night mouth guard. Like I said, once I started using my night mouth guard my life changed dramatically.