Headache? Pay Attention to Your Teeth

More than the 30% of the Spanish population suffer from headache, considered chronic when it happens more than twice a week and during a long period of time, more than two months. This issue that affects more people than we can imagine, can be caused by different factors, like oral health.

Stress, tension, the abuse of painkillers, physic effort and tiredness, same as some food and drinks like coffee, can cause this headache that normally we silence, not paying attention to it, with a painkiller. However, we have to know that this pain can come from some kind of affection in our teeth and it may need a specific treatment.

The most important thing when suffering this discomfort is trying to discover what is causing it and visit the appropriate specialist. A lot of people suffer from this headache due to dental problems but they aren’t conscious about it just because they do not have tooth pain. So, what is the relationship between our oral health and headaches?

The malformation of our mouth, for example, disturbs our nervous system same as a jaw dysfunction (temporomandibular disorders) that can also affect us so much. However, the most common affection is bruxism, that affects 8 out of 10 people, and most of them don’t even know it. This problem, consist in the unconscious habit of grinding your teeth, especially when sleeping, which can affect negatively our joints provoking headaches other big problems.

At Smylife, one of the most used treatments against bruxism are custom made bite pads (also called “mouth guards”) that make us stop grinding and the contact between upper and lower teeth during the sleeping time. Bite pads have a thickness between 2 and 3 mm and normally they are transparent but at Smylife you can choose the colour you want.

These ones permit the relaxation of the muscles and the allocation of the jaw joint in its place, as we place the plate just in one dental arcade, normally the upper one. The use of this kind of pads will avoid the patient to experiment headache, jaw or even neck pain. From Smylife we highly recommend the pads to get a revision to adjust and fix them if necessary. Whether you believe you suffer from bruxism or not, the ideal is to visit your dentist at least one a year trying to keep a correct oral health and avoid any future issue.