jaw clenching and teeth grinding

[Pistol]

Hi - I have hyperadrenergic POTS and at night my adrenaline levels do not drop, therefore I have very restless sleep. As a result of the high adrenaline I clench my jaw very badly at night and am wearing my teeth down. My dentist says that my teeth are really suffering from this so I use a specially made bite guard. That does not really work because it damages my gums because I just clench so hard and I already wore it out. Also my jaw hurts every morning. At times I take muscle relaxer for spasms and that helps but I cannot take it every night. I also have tried Ativan but it does not help for the clenching. Does any one experience this also and what has helped? 

[WinterSown]

When I need to knock out, when I must, I take diazepam (valium 2mg) which is my vertigo medicine; it is a muscle relaxant. I start with half a pill but rarely ever have to take the second half. If you have something similar in your scripts give your dentist a call and ask if a low-dose muscle relaxant would help you. I stopped fighting the high energy at night and now go for long walks with my dogs. I can't sit scrunched up and rocking and I can't lay down to sleep. I blow off the extra energy with exercise; I have to as I can't concentrate on anything.  When we go on vacation I have to get it under control for the sake of Hubs, he has to be able to sleep too. I take a full pill then. I hope your dentist can help you soon, I do think this can be helped. 

[GasconAlex]

No jaw clenching but really impressive muscle tone all over, this is causing contracture in knee, elbow, shoulders, feet and fingers. In the daytime when I can concentrate on keeping from falling into the 'postures' it's not too bad at night when I sleep this goes into overdrive. I take 20mg baclofen bed time, 20mg at about 2 am (I always wake up from the cramps so no need for an alarm) and then 10mg as soon as I wake up (or 4 hours whichever is later) and another 2 x 10mg in the day.  It's not great but drops the muscle tone down into "can move muscle" territory. The doses seem to be climbing to keep the same affect.

Waiting on the 24hour heart and bp results but the tense muscles seem to increase both significantly, once I take the baclofen they subside into more normal levels.

 

 

[Clb75]

I clench my teeth too and bit through the last mouth guard I had! I think yours is more severe though compared to what I experience. I don’t really have much to offer in terms of suggestions, I just kind of put up with it. There are different types of materials the guards can be made out of, the one I really like is a hard acrylic but softened when you run it under warm water. It fits your mouth better then hardens up while sleeping. I did better with this than the regular hard acrylic which gave me headaches. I’ve never tried meds for clenching per se, but I’m on baclofen (due to contractures in my feet from neuropathy). In my case it hasn’t really affected the clenching. 

[Pistol]

Hi all - thanks so much for your responses!!!! I am going to have to look into baclofen - I take Flexeril as needed but am afraid to take it regularly.  Thanks again!!

[GasconAlex]

Just to mention baclofen, there's loads of stuff on how bad it is but I never noticed most of these but you do have to taper on then if you have problems taper off, it causes serious problems if you start / stop abruptly.

I don't know how this works for alcoholism (doses then are way, way high) but the doc's warned me about all that before writing the script.