So I've had a big problem with teeth clenching on the left side since I broke my jaw. My husband had mentioned that I would occasionally do this in my sleep prior to the accident, but it wasn't a regular thing and if never caused me problems before. Well, now its a big pain in the arse, because everytime I do it I wake up in agony. Last night I only woke up once and fell promptly fell back to sleep so it was a great night. The night before was terrible, I got around 4 hours of sleep and had one really bad episode where the pain was really terrible. It's hard to go to sleep when you have fear that any second you'll be awoken in pain. It reminds me of a much less extreme example of what the young people in the nightmare on elm street movies go through :) Luckily, my doctor said that I'm probably not causing further damage to my jaw, but that obviously I need to be able to sleep/not be in pain.
So, in addition to what my doctor told me to do (valium and heating pads), I looked into what causes/contributes to bruxism and stress and lack of sleep are some of the big modifiable risk factors. Also mentioned was acid reflux, though I couldn't find a whole lot of scientific evidence for it. Still, I've been having some major acid reflux lately. I normally don't have a big problem with it, but stress and certain foods/alcohol bring it on. I used to take OTC meds for it about 1-2 times/month and had a bad time of it about 6 years ago when I was stressed out at work. So, I contacted a pharmacist friend of mine to find out what would be best to take and he recommend prilosec. So, I'm not sure if that helped with the teeth grinding or if my effort to calm down and relax for a few hours before helped, but either way I'm happy. I don't need to be feeling nauseous in the morning from reflux anyway.
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