June 30, 2020 • 48 mins
Researchers have noticed that as incidence of anger increases so too has teeth grinding, known clinically as bruxism. That’s a problem because when people grind their teeth, especially when they’re sleeping, they can wear them down to nubs.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's
coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff you Should
Know book, Chuck. That's right. What's the cool, super cool
title we came up with. It's Stuff you Should Know colon,
an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and
(00:20):
it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys.
The illustrations are amazing, and there's the look of the book.
It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be.
And we cannot wait for you to get your hands
on it. Yes, we can't. Um, and you don't have
to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but
you don't have to wait to order. You can go
pre order the book right now everywhere you get books,
(00:42):
and you will eventually get a special gift for pre ordering,
which we're working on right now. That's right, So check
it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Y, Hey,
(01:02):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant speaking to me today through clenched teeth.
Jerry is off um doing who knows what, but she's here,
so this is stuff you should know. That's probably right.
She's ministering to the um those in need. Yeah, we
(01:25):
might as well call this episode, uh, the peek into
Chuck's private life. You're gonna have a lot of personal
stories about this. Yeah, okay, Okay, well, good while I'm
looking forward to that. Yes cha, I was just about
to say, Chuck your Brooks or b r u x
e er, which is a great word, um imprint at
(01:48):
least and Brooks are it's all right out loud too,
I guess. But um, I really don't think we can
start this episode any other way aside from how this
how stuff works article kicked it off. Okay, okay, go ahead,
So Chuck, when we're trying to figure out what bruck
(02:09):
is um is. No, it's not a strange new religion
or the latest exercise crazy to come out of l A.
It's the complicated medical term for the simple act of
grinding your teeth in l All those wacky exercise trends,
I know, strange new religions with X is in the
middle of them that make you give them all your money. Yeah,
(02:32):
bruck is um uh, teeth grinding. I'm a tooth grinder,
so you've had like serious dental work from that, right?
And uh, did you grind? Because we should probably tell
everybody there's really two big categories of grinding teeth. One
is daytime grinding and the other is nighttime grinding. And
nighttime grinding is way more intense. So were you a
(02:54):
nighttime grinder and currently both? Oh you still are? Oh yeah, okay?
And then, um, do you when you're a nighttime grinder
doing your grinding thing? Do you wake Emily up? Uh? No,
she sleeps pretty soundly, okay, because from what I understand,
it's it's not hard to actually wake the person sleeping
(03:18):
in bed with you up from grinding your teeth that loudly,
Like that's how that's how loud it gets from how
much pressure you're exerting on your poor teeth, That's what
I've heard. I've never recorded myself. I've thought about doing that. Yeah,
you know they have those apps I think that are
will trigger by sound or whatever to record. Sure, busy,
(03:39):
I've got I need to get brouxy going, right. But
I am one of possibly of Americans that are bruxers,
they say, there's a lot of people. It was a
surprising amount to me. I did not think it was
going to be that high. Yeah, and I don't really
(03:59):
know if it's I only know my experience. And you know,
when I was reading through this, it was just triggering
me all over the place because from grinding to nashing
to clinching to t m J and TMP like I've
got it all. Do you really have TMD? Because that
sounds really bad. Yeah, it's just I'm a mess. Yeah.
(04:20):
Have you ever heard of getting botox for TMD? Now,
it's so, you know botox. It's from batulin and it
it um paralyzes the nerves temporarily, but for a really
long time, like months. Um. You get it in your jaw,
uh and it relaxes the jaw muscles. Actually interesting. I
(04:42):
wonder while they're in there, I can get this cocoon
under my eyeball taken away. You you have a cocoon
under there? Yeah, it looks like a butterfly is about
to sprout from this sleeping badge under my eye. I
think it's as a lot of character. I don't think
you should change do anything like that. No, No, no,
I'm not worried about any cosmetic things. Good good, you're
(05:04):
looking good man, Thank you. I can't even see you,
and I know you're looking good. Yeah, and well, you know,
we'll I'll chat about my experience throughout this. But I
do have I had been fitted for a a mouth guard,
which I do not wear and I should. Yeah. Yeah, no,
I mean that's there's a it's supposed to be kind
of helpful, but I also saw that it can actually
(05:25):
make you brocks. I guess that'd be the verb, right,
it makes you brucks more sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I
think the deal with the mouth guard is is it
just provides a barrier between your teeth, so it doesn't
stop you from grinding um or clinching or anything like that.
But it's no there's no tooth on tooth the sexiest contact, right.
(05:50):
It's almost like um giving condoms to teenagers. It's been demonstrably,
irrefutably proven that it makes them have sex when they
otherwise wouldn't the same thing with a mouth guard. You
probably wouldn't even grind your teeth, but you put a
mouth guard on and you're gonna grind, you know. We
get an alarming amount of emails from people who don't
understand your I don't even know what you call it.
(06:12):
It's not sarcasm humor. Sure, we can just throw it
under the well. No, I mean when you say something
and you're totally kidding, but you're just being deadpanned about it.
People by by that, Yeah, they catch on eventually, I think,
or they don't and they think you're a monster. So
let's let's get into this, okay. Because I didn't know
(06:35):
much about teeth grinding. I do grind teeth, but not
to a clinical degree. UM, So I didn't know quite
a lot of this. But I I came across this
article that was written by an n y U dental
student named Jordan's Mashkevich. No, yeah, Mashkevich, I think I
nailed it out of the park. Sounds like a dental
(06:55):
student from n y U if I've ever done. I
just came across this paper. I don't, I don't. I
don't remember what how I searched it, but um, anyway,
it had some really interesting stuff in there. And the
way that um possibly by now Dr Mashkevich put it
um that as we understand brucks is um it occurs.
(07:18):
It's cyclical, so it starts out and it follows a
distinct pattern, and then it kind of crests intensifies, and
then it wanes, it goes away, and then the cycle
eventually starts up again. And so that these these cycles
can happen in clusters. So your actual like attack of
brucks is um might only last somewhere in the neighborhood
(07:40):
of like four to fifteen seconds. I think that's on
the low end. But when you have a bunch of them,
these different attacks, these cyclical attacks, and a cluster, it
can add up to quite a bit over the course
of your your sleepy time. Yeah. I mean, if you're
grinding for fifteen seconds and then taking off six or
eight seconds and then grinding again, I don't I don't
(08:01):
know what the distinction is. You just take a little
little break, a little break. Yeah, your brain is like
this is too much even for me, because to me,
that's constantly grinding, right, So no, apparently that it doesn't.
It's like there's an increase in it and then it's
like gets really really bad and then it stops and
then it starts to slowly to to build again. I
(08:22):
think what makes it cyclical and building is that it's
also associated with an increase in heart rate and brain waves. Um,
and you're so you're grinding your teeth, your heart is
going faster, and your your brain is working over time,
and then I guess it all just kind of crests
and goes away for a little while. Yeah, and I
don't think we said the I mean, we'll talk about
(08:42):
all the reasons this can be pretty bad. But you're
exerting a lot of force, up to two d pounds
of pressure per square inch, and that is not like
even when you're chewing something super tough, for like saltwater
taffy or something, it's like ten times the force that
you use to chew food. Dude, saltwater taffy is so great.
(09:03):
You're a big fan. I really am a big fan.
And it's one of those things where as I've gotten older,
I've realized that some of this, like old time candy,
like Nugat just plain old Nugat great, like it was perfected,
Like we've perfected candy in a lot of ways a
long time ago, and you overlook it now just because
it's been around for so long in favor of like
you know, a watching McCall it or some kind of
(09:25):
go go candy bar today. But there and there's nothing
wrong with watching McCall it's probably my favorite modern candy bar.
But saltwater, taffy, nugat, stuff like that. It's it's it really.
It's been around for this long for a reason, I guess. Yeah,
you love the candies that you can get for a
nickel by reaching your hand into it. Well you can't
do that kind of thing anymore, but by reaching your
(09:46):
hand into a big germ bucket right full of discarded
candies from children. Sure, but but they're individually wrapped, so
I'm safe. You know, when a Little Bit Sweets used
to love us, They used to send us that Newgat.
As a matter of fact, now that I think about it,
they're the people who introduced me to Newgat. Straight. Yeah,
it was one of those care packages of theirs. They
(10:09):
they introduced us to Newgat and Honeycomb candy. Yeah, why
don't they like us anymore? I don't know. I have
to get in touch with the Liz and be like,
what's up. Yeah, hint hint, Yeah, well we just did.
So you were saying two hundred pounds of pressure. I saw,
and that's per square inch. Um. I saw up to
(10:30):
two fifty pounds of pressure per square inch. That's about
ten to forty times what you would exert normally when
you're chewing. And as you can imagine, like your poor
teeth can only take so much. And it's not just
the pressure, it's the pressure combined with the grinding motion,
right that can really wear down the old enamel. I
(10:52):
saw something like ten times faster than somebody who doesn't
grind their teeth while they sleep. Yeah, So I mean
that introduces yet another problem. So not only will it
make your teeth, you know, wigglier and uh and just
they can crack, they can fracture, you can wear them
down to stumps. You get rid of that enamel, like
(11:13):
you said, and then you're you know, just ready to
get a cavity. Plus your nerves can be exposed. Oh god,
have you ever got a root canal? Uh? Shockingly no,
I have three fake teeth, but I've never had a
root canal. They are not fun. Yeah, and I still
don't even quite know what it is, to be honest,
(11:34):
I got So they go in and they actually remove
the nerve at the at the base of the tooth like.
It's just they can take the nerve out so you
don't have any sensation right there anymore, which is good
because by the time you need a root canal, you
don't want to ever feel anything ever of any kind.
And I got one once by this guy over in Brookhaven,
(11:55):
and he apparently is a master at root canals, because
every den I've been to since then, this is years ago,
has commented on like, what an amazing canal that guy did. Yeah,
you can tell years later, I guess so, yeah, because
I still get comments on it. Whenever I go to
a new dentist and they take X rays, they're like, Wow,
that's a really great root canal. It's not like the
(12:16):
guy in the grocery store parking lot that fixes your
dent when you shop. Not really, he doesn't do that
good of a job. I think the words root canal,
just the combination of those two words is probably a
top tenor for just most loathed combinations of words. That moist,
well that's just one word. Oh combination of words um,
(12:38):
moist anything, yeah, moist, underline, moist size, how about that?
That's pretty bag Uh. They did a little survey with
the Chicago Dental Society, which is a real swinging club,
and they found six of those dentists said that they
(12:59):
are hearing about all clenching being sort of an increasing thing.
I don't know when this was written, but um, apparently
it's bruxism is on the rise, as is stress. Right,
that's what they're saying. That they correlate it to stress
and adults, and they think that it's basically as simple
as that. There's a lot of other things that can
cause bruxism, as we'll see, but stress seems to be
(13:20):
the number one driver of teeth grinding in grown ups.
And as stress increases in our modern watchuma call it
type world. Um, bruxism is increasing as well, which is sad.
But at the same time, it's also like, okay, well
then there's real hope for this. It's not like you
have some biological short circuit in your brain that you'd
(13:41):
have to go get like mot of surgery to cure,
to correct or cure. You're just riddled with anxiety, right exactly. Uh,
And I don't think we've officially pointed out or maybe
you did, that grinding is that back and forth motion
and clinching is just sort of just locking your teeth
together and you know, as if you're biting on ah
(14:01):
irresistible saltwater taffy, so with clinching too. That seems to
be more associated with daytime bruxism than nighttime bruxism. And
the other thing about daytime bruxism, so bruxism is considered
a para functional habit is what it's called, like um,
chewing on pen caps or biting your fingernails or something
like that. It's like it doesn't serve a good purpose
(14:23):
for like you're you're not breathing or eating or drinking,
so you're doing other stuff with your mouth. That makes
it a para functional habit. But the thing about it
is during the daytime, it's unconscious whether you're you're doing
nighttime bruxism or daytime bruxism. But in the day you
can stop and be like, oh, I'm clenching my teeth
and stop yourself from doing it, so it's involuntary, but
(14:45):
it's also unconscious. When you're asleep, you're probably not going
to wake yourself up, so you're going full bore. Yeah,
And you know, I try and catch myself during the
day when I clinch, and I find it happens a lot.
What I've started doing. I don't know if it was
a conscious effort or not, but I've started widening my
(15:05):
tongue between my teeth. Kind of not at all times,
but a lot of the time if my mouth is shut,
I have my my tongue in between my teeth. I
got to prevent that, like in the front or on
the side, kind of all over. Man, So you're just
kind of constantly moving it. No, I just you know,
(15:26):
you fatten that tongue out and it are you doing it?
That's quite a talent. No, I can't do it. I'm
impressed really with your tongue. Look, oh yeah, I guess
I can't. I can, And I should point out to that.
You know, the history of my fake teeth are well
chronicled on the show, and I've talked about why. But
it's not just from grinding like I've always been in
(15:47):
my fingernails and that pressure forward you know, on the
front of your teeth is no good. And I've got
shallow roots and sort of a host of things that
kind of led to those those teeth not working out
for me. Let me let me ask you this Um,
where either of your parents bruxers? I don't know, and
and I just I don't know. I don't I don't
(16:08):
care to ask at this point. I couldn't want to
bring it up. I mean, maybe I could, but it's
not like that would satisfy me in any way. Well,
the thing is they think that it's an inherited trait
because apparently your chances of broux ing are way higher
if your parents are bruxers. But like, do I need
one more thing to blame on my parents? Right? Exactly? Old,
that's right, So just just chalk it up to the
(16:30):
fact that you're a young woman who smokes. That's where
you got it from. Because women are three times more
likely to Brooks, and smokers are five times more likely
to Brooks. Right, Smokers people who drink heavily UM, and
a lot of that they attribute to dehydration. And here's
(16:51):
the thing. This one is what reveals the weirdness of
all this to me. So your body becomes dehydrated um
for whatever reason, and when you're dehydrated, a whole cascade
of stressors just kind of take place in your body. Right. Um.
It can trigger allergies and can trigger inflammation. It's just
not a good jam for your body to be dehydrated.
(17:13):
The thing is is what your body does in response
is make you grind your teeth, like they've shown, like
you grind your teeth more when you're dehydrated. But like
I was saying, that raises the big basic question that
I've never seen anybody answer. Um, like why why? Why
would you grind your teeth? What kind of a weird
(17:34):
physiological response is that two things like stress, whether emotional
stress or physical stress. It's a very bizarre thing for
your body to be like, oh, que the cue the
teeth grinding, let's get rid of some of the stress. Well,
I don't know. I mean, I think you could file
all of the things I'm about to say under that
same weird category of why. But the same reason you
(17:55):
might tap your foot when you're nervous, or the same
reason you might clench your fist if you have anxiety. Um,
I think they're just your body's responses to anxiety. They
come out in these little weird physical ticks. Yeah, I mean,
and then that makes sense. But to me, they're still
like you can still keep walking back to you know,
why teeth grinding? Why why clenched fits? Like, what do
(18:18):
we get from it? The closest I've seen to an
explanation is it's a stress reliever. And I get that.
But again, like, maybe my question is where along the
way in our evolutionary history did teeth grinding become the
response rather than like, you know, blinking um in an
alternating sequence really fast? You know, like why teeth grinding?
(18:40):
Because ultimately grinding your teeth produces more tension and more
stress concentrated in your jaw. It doesn't get rid of it,
It just basically concentrates it into one painful area. Yeah,
I mean, one might say that one reason is because
it's a silent form of releasing that anxiety. It's something
you can do in a business meeting, something you can
(19:00):
do in church or wherever you might feel really stressed out.
You can't do primal screen therapy in the middle of
a tense meeting. Um. But I know what you mean.
You're a man of science. You want to know the
pathways of satisfaction that are that are happening there. I
think yes, because that is the pathway to my satisfaction understanding.
Should we take a break? Yes? All right? I'm gonna
(19:24):
go grind for thirty seconds and we'll be right back.
Oh how you feeling now? That was great? So it
(19:58):
was a stress reliever for you. I'm not stressed right now.
Well except for everything in my life that's super stressful. Yeah,
we got a lot going on, lot going on. We
have a book that we're working on. Yeah, that's has
at times been stressful. It has, but it also has
been fun. Like I'm really proud of how it's coming together. No,
it's great, it's fun, but it's uh, it's like, hey,
(20:22):
you're all working from home now with a five year old,
so you have half as much time and twice as
much work. Enjoy it. This will be a fun process.
But no, we're coming up on the The finish line
is in sight. Yeah, for sure. And it's been more
fun lately for me, which is good. Good. I'm glad.
And what's that book called? Oh oh are we plugging in? Um?
(20:46):
It's called Stuff you should Know, Cole, And you always
make me say that Part two an incomplete compendium of
mostly interesting things. That's right. And you can pre order
now and you get a little pre order gift and
if you have questions of out whether or not you
get a pre order gift with the audio book, or
whether where you can get as signed edition. We're trying
to get answers to that stuff. We're new at this, Yeah,
(21:08):
we're brand new. Yeah we're green, we're green authors. Yes. Um. Okay,
So we were talking about some of the things that
cause bruck is um that they've definitely shown, and again,
no one has ever explained why bruck is um, just
how bruxism I guess, yeah, Like any kind of sleep
disturbance can do it. I mean there's you know, we
(21:29):
already talked about anxiety and stress, that's sort of that
seems to be the go to for doctors. But any
kind of sleep disturbance, if you are on some weird
bed in a hotel that is uncomfortable to you, that
might cause you to to clench up during your sleep.
Weird things like that. Yeah, if your bite doesn't form
(21:50):
um symmetrically, I guess is the word to you? You actually,
So that's called malclusion. And there's all sorts of stuff.
I didn't really as this, but there's all sorts of
stuff to correct it, including shortening your jaw, which I'm like, Okay,
we don't have hover cars, but we have surgery that
can shorten somebody's jaw. I'm impressed. Right, Um, did you
(22:13):
get that done? No? I considered having surgery at one
point where they break your jaw and realign it and
then wire it shut. Um, but there was never a
great time to do it because I have a job
where I run my mouth for a living, right uh,
And it just I don't know, it got to the
point where I got to a certain age Ross like
(22:33):
you know what, I just don't think I want that surgery.
I'll live with my misaligned jaw and my t MJ
and my TMD. Man. I hope you get the last
part worked out. Thanks, so um, maybe it'll just magically
clear up when we're not podcasting any longer. Well, you
never know, so uh, I remember you talking about getting
(22:55):
a surgery, and that kind of jogged my memory. I
didn't I didn't know you ever got it. But yeah,
you probably couldn't wire your jaws shut, just fling just
then you'd see you go. Should we talk work? Yeah,
it would be kind of weird. Now people don't want
to hear that for like sixty eight weeks or whatever
it is, right, man, the soup though. Yeah, it probably
(23:16):
dropped the good wait, drink it to a straw. Yeah,
but I mean there's there's some good soup out there.
Grinded a cheeseburger, yeah, you could into soup. God. So
I saw another thing, thanks to presumably doctor um Mashkevich's article,
that they have connected teeth grinding to parasitic worm infections.
(23:40):
Oh really yeah, And I was like that, I that
doesn't sound right at all. I went and looked, and yeah,
there's there's a definite like um, like a bunch of
papers dating back to the seventies where they're like, yeah,
it seems like if you have pin worms or hookworms,
they directly cause teeth grinding. Weird. I know that certain
psychiatric meta since can and antidepressants and stuff could cause it.
(24:03):
This is one of the side effects sometimes could be
co morbid with sleep apnea, which I've had people right
in and say, hey, Chuck, check about sleep apnea because
you have dreams about breathing water. That doesn't sound fun.
Uh No, I don't think I have sleep apnea though, um,
and maybe I'll get tested for that one day too. Yeah. Um.
(24:27):
One other thing though about parasitic worms is actually correlates
to something else that's mentioned in this article, which is
allergies can kick it off. And remember they think that
parasitic worms has to do with either an increase in
allergies or decrease in allergies or something. But they think
that it's tied with allergies, So that would explain why
(24:48):
it kicks off. Teeth grinding. Yeah, and I don't think
we said that. You may not even realize that you're
a brucks are I do because of my my history,
But um, I think a lot of people don't even
lies they're gnashing their teeth in their night. You may
wake up with a sword jaw and I wonder what
was going on. Think you might have slept on your
face funny or something. But a dentist can help diagnose
(25:10):
that for sure, if you go in and say, hey, uh,
something's going on here. Yeah, yeahs bitz. Yeah. If you
live alone or you're not grinding your teeth enough to
um wake up your partner, Yeah, there's there's gonna be
like little signs or whatever. But if you don't start
paying attention to it, you might not notice it unless
it's a bad case. If it's a bad case. You're
gonna notice because your teeth are starting to crack and
(25:33):
chip and wear down. And even if you don't notice that,
your dentist is gonna be like I think you grind
your teeth, and that might be the first person to
tip you off. Yeah, swollen gums. That could also be
a little tip um. You know, mine sort of happened
all at once with the job, like I've always had
a bad bite, uh in. Two rounds of braces did
(25:53):
not cure it. Oh man, So I've got sort of
a it's not quite an underbite, but you know, my
my top my bottom teeth of my top teeth are
aligned instead of having an overbyte. Right. And I remember
distinctly when I started having these problems, like ten or
twelve years ago, and I would tell Emily and said,
it feels like my lower jaw is from someone else's
(26:16):
body all of a sudden, huh, Like it just doesn't
fit anymore. And that's the easiest way I could describe it.
And it just kind of happened like suddenly, or you
noticed it like in a short time started noticing it
over a shortish span ten or twelve years ago. I
remember one time I was singing in the band for
(26:37):
band night one time, and I had my mouth open,
singing like, you know, if I might say so pretty powerfully,
and something popped like I felt something almost like come unhinged.
And it got worse after that. So I don't know
what that was all about. Was that during your famous
cover of Maria, Yes it was or oh Holy night?
(27:02):
Uh we didn't change those for our closer so um.
Another sign that you might have bruck is um is
if you wake up and you like the inside of
your cheeks hurt because there have been rubbed draw off
from the getting caught up in the bruck s ng
uh huh. Yeah, that's that's when it will be particularly bad.
(27:22):
You might also wake up with um bite marks from it,
you know, not like you can see it, but you
can definitely feel those. I went through a little period
where I was biting, like where my canines are? You know,
I have like vampire canines, And I don't know. It
was almost like what you were just describing, like all
of a sudden, my my bite or my jaw or
(27:42):
something just changed. And for like a month or two,
I was biting this one part of my lip oor
right corner and um, it was happening a lot and
then finally it went away. No idea what happened, but
I'm just glad it it cleared up. Yeah. I'm a
side sleeper sort of side slash chest sleeper, and I
(28:03):
will tuck a pillow up under my arm and face
as well as the one I'm laying on with my head,
and I think that has contributed to sort of misaligning
my jaw. And I looked online and sure enough, there
are t MJ pillows I think to help thwart that.
Have you seen like some of like the I think
Casper makes one, there's one by Avocado. Um, they're they're
(28:27):
basically like anti snoring pillows. M I don't know. It
lifts your head up so that your head's not going downward,
which helps you, um helps it like keeps your your
airway from being obstructed and hence snoring less. I can.
It actually works really well. I'm a bit of a
snorer and they they've cured it. I know you do.
(28:52):
Were like the three stooges, uh and on. Since we're
on the pillow front to the other thing that I
do is I sleep with my arm kind of under
my head. You know and under my pillow Like I don't.
I never know what to do with my arms as
a side sleeper, and that has you know, sometimes I
wake up in my arm will be numb from just
being in a weird position. But they have these pillows
(29:13):
now that that lift you up a little bit and
have a little a little hatch there where your arm
fits through. What. I haven't gotten one of those yet,
but I'm looking into it. Wow, it's amazing. The sleep
product industry, and I'm not talking about mattresses is just
ridiculously dents, you know, dents like memory phone. Yeah, I
(29:38):
love a good memory phone. So so talking about you're
talking about TMJ and t MD. From what I saw,
TMJ is the name of the joint and TMD is
the name of the disorder of the stuff hanging around
that joint. Is that correct? Well, I've always heard it
called a t MJ disorder. They may have just shortened
that to t MD. Okay, Yeah, I've always heard t
(29:58):
MJ two I've I've I haven't even heard it called
t MJ disorder, just t MJ. But from what I
can tell is everybody's been getting wrong all these years
that t MJ is the joint not the disorder. Yeah,
Like if you say I have t MJ, They're like, yeah,
everyone's got a temporo mandibular joint jerk, right, big whoop.
But yeah, t MJ disorder. I think it's just become
one of those things that's shorthand. But yeah, I think
(30:21):
t m D is inflammation of that joint. Uh. And
you know that that can affect kind of your whole face.
It can spread around to the other muscle and tissue
pain swelling. We talked about swelling a lot, inflammation swelling.
That's sort of the key to good health is keeping
that down. That seems to be like what science is
(30:43):
starting to figure out first all about inflammation, isn't it.
It seems like it seems like, um, there's also clicking
and popping that comes along with it too, which is
not fun either, not necessarily because it hurts. It's just
distressing psychologically, like you get worried, like, oh man, is
this next time you gonna is my jaws is gonna
stay open? Yeah? Because isn't lockjaw like a potential outcome
(31:09):
of TMD? I don't know, I don't know anything about lockjaw.
Is that maybe it's like a fleet circus is just
one of those things that was made up, but everybody
started to think it was I thought lockjaw came around
because uh uh tetanus or whatever. Oh, yeah, you're right,
(31:30):
you're right, you're right. It's like an infection. I forgot
about that. And I think it's just it's not your
jaw locking up. It's just a weird name for it. Oh.
I thought, like your jaw like stayed open. Well, I
think it can, cause it can cause muscle contractions in
your jaw. So maybe that is where the name comes from.
But I think it's from like and I'm speaking out
(31:51):
of my butt right now, but I think it's from
like a bacterial infection and this is why you get
TETNA shots. Yes, but that's weird that it would focus
on your jaw muscles, you know, pretty specific. It is
a mystery. Um, you want to take a second break
and then come back and talk about kids and getting
rid of this stuff too. Okay everyone, we'll be right back.
(32:16):
Wh Okay. So everybody knows adults are super angry. Not
(32:48):
to be looked squarely in the eye easily set off
that kind of stuff, and that that explains teeth grinding
and adults mostly um that a M d M A.
With kids, it's a totally different story depending on the age.
And actually kids tend to grind their teeth um almost
as a matter of course. They found that of babies
(33:12):
grind their teeth, but they do it typically when they're teething,
which makes a lot more sense. Although grinding like your
gums as the teeth are just breaking through is like
it's like nails down a chalkboard to me, like that, yeah, yeah,
like moist. I mean, I gotta say, there is something
(33:33):
very creepy about a baby locking down on your pinkie
before the teeth are in, but those teeth are right behind.
That's that gum skin, right, It's very weird. It's very creepy.
It's nothing cute about it. Uh. If your baby, you
might also grind your teeth because your top and bottoms
aren't aligned as of yet, or like allergies like you
(33:57):
were talking about, if they're congested. Um, the same and
with adults it could be a sign of allergies or something. Yeah. Again,
allergies produce inflammation, which produces teeth grinding, which is the
key to the existence of life in the universe. I
think if you are lot older and you're not like
a toddler, then it may be stress. It maybe um,
(34:20):
just that kid anxiety which is super sad. Yeah, you might.
You might have like a trouble at school or um,
if your family just moved or something like that. It
might produce teeth grinding. It might also make you eat
entire ten packs of twigs in one sitting after school. Um,
one of the two outcomes. Yeah, not speaking from experience
(34:44):
or anything, just speaking in generality. By the time, I
think they say not to worry about it too much.
If your kid is grinding their teeth before they're seven
or eight years old, um, after between seven and eight
and twelve is usually when it'll go away, once they
get those big, weird looking adult teeth that are still
(35:05):
in that kid's head. Yeah, and a big old attitude
to accompany. Yeah, no kidding. But if you're kid is
like over seven or eight years old and they're still
grinding their teeth, you might want to go see a dentist.
And they might say, go see a therapist. Yeah, why not, Frank,
(35:25):
I mean, or whatever their name might be. That's right,
Frank the chair therapist. So, Um, the because it's so
prevalent and because it clears up on its own, you're
not going to treat your kids bruck is um, like
you were saying, if it is pretty bad, though, your
doctor might be like, let's get a mouth guard, and
(35:46):
the mouth guard might help, probably will help. It won't
keep him from doing it. But um, one of the
other things that I saw, like, if your baby does
grind his or her teeth, Um, one of the problems
that can have, which is probably why you would want
to treat it, is that it can keep them awake
at night, which makes them cranky during the day. So
(36:06):
I could see wanting to treat teeth grinding, especially if
it starts to become even remotely an issue. Although you're
not you don't have to. I could see treating it
if it starts affecting my quality of daytime life exactly.
But this article is so adorable. Um. It says, you know,
there's some things you can do if you're your young
(36:26):
your young child is grinding his or her teeth, you
can draw him a warm bath before bed, to read
him a story. That is just like that's the most
heartwarming treatment for any condition. I've ever heard try reading
a story to your kid before bed. That's novel, right,
Don't try to read him a novel though, Uh let
(36:47):
me see. I think they also recommend, um, if you're
an adult, something topical like an analgesic like tiger bomb
below the ears, like sort of right there outside the jaw. UM.
I don't know about that. I could give that a try,
but I don't know if that'll keep me from grinding.
Might just provide some relief. Have you tried warm baths
(37:08):
for yourself before bed? Get those thighs moist? Uh. It
says here to keep your tongue in the roof of
your mouth some that's sort of a version of what
I'm doing. But I don't see how the roof of
your mouth helps so much. I think it cuts down
(37:29):
on um like the chance you might bite your tongue,
but it's also keeping your mind focused on what your
mouth is doing at any given time. That's what I
would guess. UM. And of course, like there's a lot
that you could do as far as like just relaxing
is concerned, Like meditation helps with absolutely everything. Um, not
(37:51):
drinking as much, cutting down on caffeine, not smoking all
those things are linked to it, um not chewing gum.
So basically, you know how I think I've said recently
where if you have like a sleep disorder that you
like your bed, Who's I telling this to do you remember?
M H, I don't remember either, but UM, that your
(38:13):
bed should be just for sleeping, like go to bed
to sleep, like no TV, no reading, no nothing. And
then you know, over the course of time, you'll train
yourself to associate bed with sleep and you'll just be
able to sleep better. Um. The same thing goes with
these other um pair of functional habits like chewing on pencaps,
chewing gum, chewing your fingernails, like you have to make
(38:36):
sure you're not doing those because your mouth is just
for eating and drinking and talking and breathing and that's it,
not for chewing or any grinding your teeth. And you
can kind of train yourself And that really kind of
gets to the heart of this whole thing, that it's
a an unconscious habit that your that your body has
said this is what we're going with for stress relief.
(38:56):
So you're clearly stressed out, but you've developed a habit
and you need to break the habit and there's some
other techniques that seem to work fairly well that are
aimed at breaking this habit of grinding your teeth. Yeah,
I mean I I chewed. I've always been in my nails,
and I used to massacre pens and pencils in school
(39:17):
when I was like elementary school in high school. I
don't do that anymore because I literally stopped myself from
doing it because I know how bad that is for
my teeth. But um, you know, that's when I was
a kid. I didn't have the you know, the smoothest
childhood and home life. So maybe that was that stuff
coming out. I don't know. I wasn't stressed about like
(39:40):
work and adult relationships and stuff. I guess, you know,
maybe I always just had anxiety and never dealt with
in a in a healthy way. I tend to think
puberty is a pretty stressful event too, So going through
that will make you go through a few pain caps.
You know. Yeah, what's happening down there, doc stressing me out?
My thighs are all moist. Oh no, so grind care. Um,
(40:05):
this thing I thought was amazing. I looked it up
and I'm like, here you go, this is what cures
teeth grinding. Yeah. I went to buy one today, but
I don't live in Germany, Denmark or Sweden. That's the
only place you can get them. Still, that's what it
said on the website. Huh. So grind Care is a
it's a headband. They describe as a headband, but really
it's these little modules that you put on either side
(40:25):
of your temple basically, and it's a monitor that censors
whether you are about to clench your jaw or not
grind your teeth, and it shoots out a little pulsive
electricity says no, I don't think so, and it relaxes
your jaw. I mean, as soon as I saw this,
I was like, that's it. That's the answer. Man. Well, hey,
(40:47):
like listeners in Denmark, Germany or where, give me one
of these things? Sweden? Yeah, hook choke up. Yeah, it's
it's amazing that it's not available outside those three countries. Uh,
it really is, because it sounds like it works. They
say that it reduces grinding by in the first three weeks,
(41:08):
between weeks six and eight. Yeah, I mean I was sold.
Maybe I can get my hands on one through the
maybe dark web. We found out, so we had this
this portrait made of Momo, and the artist was featured
in Harper's Bizarre Netherlands, and she had the portrait of
Momo in the magazine. So yeah, but try to get
(41:32):
your hands on a Harper's Bizarre Netherlands edition. You can't
do it. I bet you could get one. You me
was like, you know what, I'll bet the stuff. You
should know, Army could help. So she went onto the
s y s K Facebook Army page, was like, just
asked for help and got a bunch of people who
have offered, which is super nice. I am happy to report.
I believe we're getting a few copies. It's fantastic. Yeah.
(41:54):
It was either that or flying to the Netherlands in
the middle of a pandemic. Well, in any other time
that might be a fun little adventure. It could be.
But it was cool because everybody was just so happy
to help to you know, Yeah, we have the best
listeners on the planet. I drove to Vegas one time
with my friend, you know, Johnny Pindell to get a
(42:16):
T shirt and the drove back. Wow. What was the
T shirt? If I remember correctly, Johnny wanted a heart
New York. No, I think it was a was it
a Crispy Cream Vegas or some sort of larger brand
with the Vegas specific specificity hard rock? I don't think
(42:38):
it was. And this was, you know, prey, like you
could buy anything on the internet at all times. So
he's like, hey, you want to drive to Vegas. I
want to get this shirt, and I was like, sure,
let's do it. How long did it take you? I
mean it's from l A. It's not far. Oh, I
was thinking from Atlanta. Good lord. Now it's like, wow,
must have been one hell of a shirt, even from
l A. That's pretty pretty impressive. Yeah, it's a common
(43:00):
Did you guys engage in a huge drug collections free first? Oh? Sure,
and start seeing bats and then blew it all on
amal nitrate and blackjack. That's right. There was one other
thing we should mention, though. There is a um apparently
something you can put in your mouth. It's got a
nasty tasting liquid. I guess it's like a gel pack
(43:21):
or something that you put between your teeth and when
you bite into it when you're asleep, that thing is
punctured and that you get that nastiness in your mouth.
But I don't know that that would work. On me
because I used to paint my fingernails with deterrent when
it was an elementary school my mom. It was just
super bitter, like the most bitter thing you could ever imagine,
(43:45):
and I just chewed right through it. That's greatly didn't
stop me. This was so from from what I could tell,
it was just a patent somebody has. It looks like
a um a retainer. But then in the back where
the molars are those packets and they suggested seawater or
hot sauce, and I was like, jeezus, seems like it
will wake you up. Apparently that's the point. Like, I
(44:08):
guess you just annoy yourself into not grinding your teeth
any longer because you just want to get some sleep.
So what do you think, Chuck, did this cure you?
What's it gonna take? I don't know. I'm not having
that surgery. And I don't like we're in the mouth
guard I've worn. I wear the mouth guards sometimes when
I know that I'm no for sure I'm going through
(44:29):
a particularly stressful period UM but it's just it's not comfortable.
You know, no one wants to wear those things. Well,
if you are listening to us, in Germany, Denmark or Sweden.
Hit chuck ups so he can get a grind care
from you. That's right. Uh. And in the meantime, if
you want to know more about teeth grinding, go check
(44:51):
out the article written by Jordan's Mashkevich called I can't
remember what it's called, but anyway, just up Jordan Moshkovitch.
I don't think there's more than one of them running around.
Um uh. And there's other stuff all over the internet too.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.
(45:12):
By the way, I bet you there are at least
ten dentists in New York City named Dr Jordan Moskovitch.
Do you think so? Sure? Okay, it just sounds like
a dental name. You know. My first innis name was
Dr Tuggle. Uh. That is a really great name in general. Yeah,
Dr Tuggle. That's a great name for like a cat too, Yeah,
(45:35):
Dr Tuggle, Dr Tuggle. One time I was in the airport.
This is when we had our dog Buckley and we
called him Buckles a lot. And Uh, I was in
the airport and Delta was paging someone at the little
uh where you check in there, and they said paging
Mr Buckles, Mr Buckles, can you come to the amazing
(45:57):
just killed me? I immediately called himly. I was like
paging Mr Buckles, all right, I'm gonna call this something
that we got wrong, sort of you got wrong on
the Heroin podcast, and we heard from enough people about
this that I thought it bore an email or a read. Hey, guys,
As a former opiate addict now almost ten years clean,
(46:20):
with lots of education and experience in this area, I'd
like to gently suggest that a correction be noted. On
your recent very good episode on Heroin and discussing the
withdrawal detox period, Josh stated that an addict order to
get through that miserable week of suffering, than he or
she would be essentially over the addiction. While it's true
the acute phase of heroin withdrawal last about a week,
addiction as a disorder far more complex and insidious and
(46:43):
long term than physical dependency, which is only one aspect
that a week's worth of detox can cure. A secondary
kind of withdrawal can occur, known as post acute withdrawal
syndrome pause, in which the brain has to sort of
recalibrate and heal from protracted dopamine and balances. Pause can
trigger episodes of anxiety and profound depression, which can even
(47:05):
lead a recovering addict right back into active addiction. Moreover,
addiction rarely happens in a vacuum. Most addicts need long
term support, therapy and coaching. You weren't suggesting that's not
the case, by the way, to redevelop or develop coping
skills that will enable him or her to live a
drug free life. But recovery from addiction is absolutely achievable.
It's not short or simple as a few days of nausea, aches,
(47:27):
and diarrhea. Thanks for all you do. That is from
Jason and sant in tone nice Thanks a lot, Jason,
I'm absolutely chuck. Thank you for bailing me out on that.
That's not what I meant. But I definitely should have
been a lot clearer than I was. Well, we should
have talked about pause, because that's a big deal. We
heard from a bunch of people talking about pause, but boy,
we heard from a lot of people that were current
(47:49):
informer addicts. It was more so than our other drug podcast.
It was really pretty enlightening and heartening and disheartening all
at once. Yeah, I mean it really kind of got across,
like just how widespread the opioid crisis is. You know. Well,
thanks to everybody who wrote in uh and hang in there,
to everybody who's still struggling with addiction of any kind. Um,
(48:12):
and thanks a lot Jason from Santa Fe or sant
Intone san Intone. Um. If you want to get in
touch with this, like Jason did, you can send us
an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts, for my
(48:34):
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everybody, it's Josh and Chuck your friends, and we
are here to tell you about our upcoming book that's
coming out this fall, the first ever Stuff you Should
Know book, Chuck. That's right. What's the cool, super cool
title we came up with. It's Stuff you Should Know colon,
an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. That's right, and
(00:20):
it's coming along so great. We're super excited, you guys.
The illustrations are amazing, and there's the look of the book.
It's all just it's exactly what we hoped it would be.
And we cannot wait for you to get your hands
on it. Yes, we can't. Um, and you don't have
to wait. Actually, well you do have to wait, but
you don't have to wait to order. You can go
pre order the book right now everywhere you get books,
(00:42):
and you will eventually get a special gift for pre ordering,
which we're working on right now. That's right, So check
it out soon coming this fall. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Y, Hey,
(01:02):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant speaking to me today through clenched teeth.
Jerry is off um doing who knows what, but she's here,
so this is stuff you should know. That's probably right.
She's ministering to the um those in need. Yeah, we
(01:25):
might as well call this episode, uh, the peek into
Chuck's private life. You're gonna have a lot of personal
stories about this. Yeah, okay, Okay, well, good while I'm
looking forward to that. Yes cha, I was just about
to say, Chuck your Brooks or b r u x
e er, which is a great word, um imprint at
(01:48):
least and Brooks are it's all right out loud too,
I guess. But um, I really don't think we can
start this episode any other way aside from how this
how stuff works article kicked it off. Okay, okay, go ahead,
So Chuck, when we're trying to figure out what bruck
(02:09):
is um is. No, it's not a strange new religion
or the latest exercise crazy to come out of l A.
It's the complicated medical term for the simple act of
grinding your teeth in l All those wacky exercise trends,
I know, strange new religions with X is in the
middle of them that make you give them all your money. Yeah,
(02:32):
bruck is um uh, teeth grinding. I'm a tooth grinder,
so you've had like serious dental work from that, right?
And uh, did you grind? Because we should probably tell
everybody there's really two big categories of grinding teeth. One
is daytime grinding and the other is nighttime grinding. And
nighttime grinding is way more intense. So were you a
(02:54):
nighttime grinder and currently both? Oh you still are? Oh yeah, okay?
And then, um, do you when you're a nighttime grinder
doing your grinding thing? Do you wake Emily up? Uh? No,
she sleeps pretty soundly, okay, because from what I understand,
it's it's not hard to actually wake the person sleeping
(03:18):
in bed with you up from grinding your teeth that loudly,
Like that's how that's how loud it gets from how
much pressure you're exerting on your poor teeth, That's what
I've heard. I've never recorded myself. I've thought about doing that. Yeah,
you know they have those apps I think that are
will trigger by sound or whatever to record. Sure, busy,
(03:39):
I've got I need to get brouxy going, right. But
I am one of possibly of Americans that are bruxers,
they say, there's a lot of people. It was a
surprising amount to me. I did not think it was
going to be that high. Yeah, and I don't really
(03:59):
know if it's I only know my experience. And you know,
when I was reading through this, it was just triggering
me all over the place because from grinding to nashing
to clinching to t m J and TMP like I've
got it all. Do you really have TMD? Because that
sounds really bad. Yeah, it's just I'm a mess. Yeah.
(04:20):
Have you ever heard of getting botox for TMD? Now,
it's so, you know botox. It's from batulin and it
it um paralyzes the nerves temporarily, but for a really
long time, like months. Um. You get it in your jaw,
uh and it relaxes the jaw muscles. Actually interesting. I
(04:42):
wonder while they're in there, I can get this cocoon
under my eyeball taken away. You you have a cocoon
under there? Yeah, it looks like a butterfly is about
to sprout from this sleeping badge under my eye. I
think it's as a lot of character. I don't think
you should change do anything like that. No, No, no,
I'm not worried about any cosmetic things. Good good, you're
(05:04):
looking good man, Thank you. I can't even see you,
and I know you're looking good. Yeah, and well, you know,
we'll I'll chat about my experience throughout this. But I
do have I had been fitted for a a mouth guard,
which I do not wear and I should. Yeah. Yeah, no,
I mean that's there's a it's supposed to be kind
of helpful, but I also saw that it can actually
(05:25):
make you brocks. I guess that'd be the verb, right,
it makes you brucks more sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I
think the deal with the mouth guard is is it
just provides a barrier between your teeth, so it doesn't
stop you from grinding um or clinching or anything like that.
But it's no there's no tooth on tooth the sexiest contact, right.
(05:50):
It's almost like um giving condoms to teenagers. It's been demonstrably,
irrefutably proven that it makes them have sex when they
otherwise wouldn't the same thing with a mouth guard. You
probably wouldn't even grind your teeth, but you put a
mouth guard on and you're gonna grind, you know. We
get an alarming amount of emails from people who don't
understand your I don't even know what you call it.
(06:12):
It's not sarcasm humor. Sure, we can just throw it
under the well. No, I mean when you say something
and you're totally kidding, but you're just being deadpanned about it.
People by by that, Yeah, they catch on eventually, I think,
or they don't and they think you're a monster. So
let's let's get into this, okay. Because I didn't know
(06:35):
much about teeth grinding. I do grind teeth, but not
to a clinical degree. UM, So I didn't know quite
a lot of this. But I I came across this
article that was written by an n y U dental
student named Jordan's Mashkevich. No, yeah, Mashkevich, I think I
nailed it out of the park. Sounds like a dental
(06:55):
student from n y U if I've ever done. I
just came across this paper. I don't, I don't. I
don't remember what how I searched it, but um, anyway,
it had some really interesting stuff in there. And the
way that um possibly by now Dr Mashkevich put it
um that as we understand brucks is um it occurs.
(07:18):
It's cyclical, so it starts out and it follows a
distinct pattern, and then it kind of crests intensifies, and
then it wanes, it goes away, and then the cycle
eventually starts up again. And so that these these cycles
can happen in clusters. So your actual like attack of
brucks is um might only last somewhere in the neighborhood
(07:40):
of like four to fifteen seconds. I think that's on
the low end. But when you have a bunch of them,
these different attacks, these cyclical attacks, and a cluster, it
can add up to quite a bit over the course
of your your sleepy time. Yeah. I mean, if you're
grinding for fifteen seconds and then taking off six or
eight seconds and then grinding again, I don't I don't
(08:01):
know what the distinction is. You just take a little
little break, a little break. Yeah, your brain is like
this is too much even for me, because to me,
that's constantly grinding, right, So no, apparently that it doesn't.
It's like there's an increase in it and then it's
like gets really really bad and then it stops and
then it starts to slowly to to build again. I
(08:22):
think what makes it cyclical and building is that it's
also associated with an increase in heart rate and brain waves. Um,
and you're so you're grinding your teeth, your heart is
going faster, and your your brain is working over time,
and then I guess it all just kind of crests
and goes away for a little while. Yeah, and I
don't think we said the I mean, we'll talk about
(08:42):
all the reasons this can be pretty bad. But you're
exerting a lot of force, up to two d pounds
of pressure per square inch, and that is not like
even when you're chewing something super tough, for like saltwater
taffy or something, it's like ten times the force that
you use to chew food. Dude, saltwater taffy is so great.
(09:03):
You're a big fan. I really am a big fan.
And it's one of those things where as I've gotten older,
I've realized that some of this, like old time candy,
like Nugat just plain old Nugat great, like it was perfected,
Like we've perfected candy in a lot of ways a
long time ago, and you overlook it now just because
it's been around for so long in favor of like
you know, a watching McCall it or some kind of
(09:25):
go go candy bar today. But there and there's nothing
wrong with watching McCall it's probably my favorite modern candy bar.
But saltwater, taffy, nugat, stuff like that. It's it's it really.
It's been around for this long for a reason, I guess. Yeah,
you love the candies that you can get for a
nickel by reaching your hand into it. Well you can't
do that kind of thing anymore, but by reaching your
(09:46):
hand into a big germ bucket right full of discarded
candies from children. Sure, but but they're individually wrapped, so
I'm safe. You know, when a Little Bit Sweets used
to love us, They used to send us that Newgat.
As a matter of fact, now that I think about it,
they're the people who introduced me to Newgat. Straight. Yeah,
it was one of those care packages of theirs. They
(10:09):
they introduced us to Newgat and Honeycomb candy. Yeah, why
don't they like us anymore? I don't know. I have
to get in touch with the Liz and be like,
what's up. Yeah, hint hint, Yeah, well we just did.
So you were saying two hundred pounds of pressure. I saw,
and that's per square inch. Um. I saw up to
(10:30):
two fifty pounds of pressure per square inch. That's about
ten to forty times what you would exert normally when
you're chewing. And as you can imagine, like your poor
teeth can only take so much. And it's not just
the pressure, it's the pressure combined with the grinding motion,
right that can really wear down the old enamel. I
(10:52):
saw something like ten times faster than somebody who doesn't
grind their teeth while they sleep. Yeah, So I mean
that introduces yet another problem. So not only will it
make your teeth, you know, wigglier and uh and just
they can crack, they can fracture, you can wear them
down to stumps. You get rid of that enamel, like
(11:13):
you said, and then you're you know, just ready to
get a cavity. Plus your nerves can be exposed. Oh god,
have you ever got a root canal? Uh? Shockingly no,
I have three fake teeth, but I've never had a
root canal. They are not fun. Yeah, and I still
don't even quite know what it is, to be honest,
(11:34):
I got So they go in and they actually remove
the nerve at the at the base of the tooth like.
It's just they can take the nerve out so you
don't have any sensation right there anymore, which is good
because by the time you need a root canal, you
don't want to ever feel anything ever of any kind.
And I got one once by this guy over in Brookhaven,
(11:55):
and he apparently is a master at root canals, because
every den I've been to since then, this is years ago,
has commented on like, what an amazing canal that guy did. Yeah,
you can tell years later, I guess so, yeah, because
I still get comments on it. Whenever I go to
a new dentist and they take X rays, they're like, Wow,
that's a really great root canal. It's not like the
(12:16):
guy in the grocery store parking lot that fixes your
dent when you shop. Not really, he doesn't do that
good of a job. I think the words root canal,
just the combination of those two words is probably a
top tenor for just most loathed combinations of words. That moist,
well that's just one word. Oh combination of words um,
(12:38):
moist anything, yeah, moist, underline, moist size, how about that?
That's pretty bag Uh. They did a little survey with
the Chicago Dental Society, which is a real swinging club,
and they found six of those dentists said that they
(12:59):
are hearing about all clenching being sort of an increasing thing.
I don't know when this was written, but um, apparently
it's bruxism is on the rise, as is stress. Right,
that's what they're saying. That they correlate it to stress
and adults, and they think that it's basically as simple
as that. There's a lot of other things that can
cause bruxism, as we'll see, but stress seems to be
(13:20):
the number one driver of teeth grinding in grown ups.
And as stress increases in our modern watchuma call it
type world. Um, bruxism is increasing as well, which is sad.
But at the same time, it's also like, okay, well
then there's real hope for this. It's not like you
have some biological short circuit in your brain that you'd
(13:41):
have to go get like mot of surgery to cure,
to correct or cure. You're just riddled with anxiety, right exactly. Uh,
And I don't think we've officially pointed out or maybe
you did, that grinding is that back and forth motion
and clinching is just sort of just locking your teeth
together and you know, as if you're biting on ah
(14:01):
irresistible saltwater taffy, so with clinching too. That seems to
be more associated with daytime bruxism than nighttime bruxism. And
the other thing about daytime bruxism, so bruxism is considered
a para functional habit is what it's called, like um,
chewing on pen caps or biting your fingernails or something
like that. It's like it doesn't serve a good purpose
(14:23):
for like you're you're not breathing or eating or drinking,
so you're doing other stuff with your mouth. That makes
it a para functional habit. But the thing about it
is during the daytime, it's unconscious whether you're you're doing
nighttime bruxism or daytime bruxism. But in the day you
can stop and be like, oh, I'm clenching my teeth
and stop yourself from doing it, so it's involuntary, but
(14:45):
it's also unconscious. When you're asleep, you're probably not going
to wake yourself up, so you're going full bore. Yeah,
And you know, I try and catch myself during the
day when I clinch, and I find it happens a lot.
What I've started doing. I don't know if it was
a conscious effort or not, but I've started widening my
(15:05):
tongue between my teeth. Kind of not at all times,
but a lot of the time if my mouth is shut,
I have my my tongue in between my teeth. I
got to prevent that, like in the front or on
the side, kind of all over. Man, So you're just
kind of constantly moving it. No, I just you know,
(15:26):
you fatten that tongue out and it are you doing it?
That's quite a talent. No, I can't do it. I'm
impressed really with your tongue. Look, oh yeah, I guess
I can't. I can, And I should point out to that.
You know, the history of my fake teeth are well
chronicled on the show, and I've talked about why. But
it's not just from grinding like I've always been in
(15:47):
my fingernails and that pressure forward you know, on the
front of your teeth is no good. And I've got
shallow roots and sort of a host of things that
kind of led to those those teeth not working out
for me. Let me let me ask you this Um,
where either of your parents bruxers? I don't know, and
and I just I don't know. I don't I don't
(16:08):
care to ask at this point. I couldn't want to
bring it up. I mean, maybe I could, but it's
not like that would satisfy me in any way. Well,
the thing is they think that it's an inherited trait
because apparently your chances of broux ing are way higher
if your parents are bruxers. But like, do I need
one more thing to blame on my parents? Right? Exactly? Old,
that's right, So just just chalk it up to the
(16:30):
fact that you're a young woman who smokes. That's where
you got it from. Because women are three times more
likely to Brooks, and smokers are five times more likely
to Brooks. Right, Smokers people who drink heavily UM, and
a lot of that they attribute to dehydration. And here's
(16:51):
the thing. This one is what reveals the weirdness of
all this to me. So your body becomes dehydrated um
for whatever reason, and when you're dehydrated, a whole cascade
of stressors just kind of take place in your body. Right. Um.
It can trigger allergies and can trigger inflammation. It's just
not a good jam for your body to be dehydrated.
(17:13):
The thing is is what your body does in response
is make you grind your teeth, like they've shown, like
you grind your teeth more when you're dehydrated. But like
I was saying, that raises the big basic question that
I've never seen anybody answer. Um, like why why? Why
would you grind your teeth? What kind of a weird
(17:34):
physiological response is that two things like stress, whether emotional
stress or physical stress. It's a very bizarre thing for
your body to be like, oh, que the cue the
teeth grinding, let's get rid of some of the stress. Well,
I don't know. I mean, I think you could file
all of the things I'm about to say under that
same weird category of why. But the same reason you
(17:55):
might tap your foot when you're nervous, or the same
reason you might clench your fist if you have anxiety. Um,
I think they're just your body's responses to anxiety. They
come out in these little weird physical ticks. Yeah, I mean,
and then that makes sense. But to me, they're still
like you can still keep walking back to you know,
why teeth grinding? Why why clenched fits? Like, what do
(18:18):
we get from it? The closest I've seen to an
explanation is it's a stress reliever. And I get that.
But again, like, maybe my question is where along the
way in our evolutionary history did teeth grinding become the
response rather than like, you know, blinking um in an
alternating sequence really fast? You know, like why teeth grinding?
(18:40):
Because ultimately grinding your teeth produces more tension and more
stress concentrated in your jaw. It doesn't get rid of it,
It just basically concentrates it into one painful area. Yeah,
I mean, one might say that one reason is because
it's a silent form of releasing that anxiety. It's something
you can do in a business meeting, something you can
(19:00):
do in church or wherever you might feel really stressed out.
You can't do primal screen therapy in the middle of
a tense meeting. Um. But I know what you mean.
You're a man of science. You want to know the
pathways of satisfaction that are that are happening there. I
think yes, because that is the pathway to my satisfaction understanding.
Should we take a break? Yes? All right? I'm gonna
(19:24):
go grind for thirty seconds and we'll be right back.
Oh how you feeling now? That was great? So it
(19:58):
was a stress reliever for you. I'm not stressed right now.
Well except for everything in my life that's super stressful. Yeah,
we got a lot going on, lot going on. We
have a book that we're working on. Yeah, that's has
at times been stressful. It has, but it also has
been fun. Like I'm really proud of how it's coming together. No,
it's great, it's fun, but it's uh, it's like, hey,
(20:22):
you're all working from home now with a five year old,
so you have half as much time and twice as
much work. Enjoy it. This will be a fun process.
But no, we're coming up on the The finish line
is in sight. Yeah, for sure. And it's been more
fun lately for me, which is good. Good. I'm glad.
And what's that book called? Oh oh are we plugging in? Um?
(20:46):
It's called Stuff you should Know, Cole, And you always
make me say that Part two an incomplete compendium of
mostly interesting things. That's right. And you can pre order
now and you get a little pre order gift and
if you have questions of out whether or not you
get a pre order gift with the audio book, or
whether where you can get as signed edition. We're trying
to get answers to that stuff. We're new at this, Yeah,
(21:08):
we're brand new. Yeah we're green, we're green authors. Yes. Um. Okay,
So we were talking about some of the things that
cause bruck is um that they've definitely shown, and again,
no one has ever explained why bruck is um, just
how bruxism I guess, yeah, Like any kind of sleep
disturbance can do it. I mean there's you know, we
(21:29):
already talked about anxiety and stress, that's sort of that
seems to be the go to for doctors. But any
kind of sleep disturbance, if you are on some weird
bed in a hotel that is uncomfortable to you, that
might cause you to to clench up during your sleep.
Weird things like that. Yeah, if your bite doesn't form
(21:50):
um symmetrically, I guess is the word to you? You actually,
So that's called malclusion. And there's all sorts of stuff.
I didn't really as this, but there's all sorts of
stuff to correct it, including shortening your jaw, which I'm like, Okay,
we don't have hover cars, but we have surgery that
can shorten somebody's jaw. I'm impressed. Right, Um, did you
(22:13):
get that done? No? I considered having surgery at one
point where they break your jaw and realign it and
then wire it shut. Um, but there was never a
great time to do it because I have a job
where I run my mouth for a living, right uh,
And it just I don't know, it got to the
point where I got to a certain age Ross like
(22:33):
you know what, I just don't think I want that surgery.
I'll live with my misaligned jaw and my t MJ
and my TMD. Man. I hope you get the last
part worked out. Thanks, so um, maybe it'll just magically
clear up when we're not podcasting any longer. Well, you
never know, so uh, I remember you talking about getting
(22:55):
a surgery, and that kind of jogged my memory. I
didn't I didn't know you ever got it. But yeah,
you probably couldn't wire your jaws shut, just fling just
then you'd see you go. Should we talk work? Yeah,
it would be kind of weird. Now people don't want
to hear that for like sixty eight weeks or whatever
it is, right, man, the soup though. Yeah, it probably
(23:16):
dropped the good wait, drink it to a straw. Yeah,
but I mean there's there's some good soup out there.
Grinded a cheeseburger, yeah, you could into soup. God. So
I saw another thing, thanks to presumably doctor um Mashkevich's article,
that they have connected teeth grinding to parasitic worm infections.
(23:40):
Oh really yeah, And I was like that, I that
doesn't sound right at all. I went and looked, and yeah,
there's there's a definite like um, like a bunch of
papers dating back to the seventies where they're like, yeah,
it seems like if you have pin worms or hookworms,
they directly cause teeth grinding. Weird. I know that certain
psychiatric meta since can and antidepressants and stuff could cause it.
(24:03):
This is one of the side effects sometimes could be
co morbid with sleep apnea, which I've had people right
in and say, hey, Chuck, check about sleep apnea because
you have dreams about breathing water. That doesn't sound fun.
Uh No, I don't think I have sleep apnea though, um,
and maybe I'll get tested for that one day too. Yeah. Um.
(24:27):
One other thing though about parasitic worms is actually correlates
to something else that's mentioned in this article, which is
allergies can kick it off. And remember they think that
parasitic worms has to do with either an increase in
allergies or decrease in allergies or something. But they think
that it's tied with allergies, So that would explain why
(24:48):
it kicks off. Teeth grinding. Yeah, and I don't think
we said that. You may not even realize that you're
a brucks are I do because of my my history,
But um, I think a lot of people don't even
lies they're gnashing their teeth in their night. You may
wake up with a sword jaw and I wonder what
was going on. Think you might have slept on your
face funny or something. But a dentist can help diagnose
(25:10):
that for sure, if you go in and say, hey, uh,
something's going on here. Yeah, yeahs bitz. Yeah. If you
live alone or you're not grinding your teeth enough to
um wake up your partner, Yeah, there's there's gonna be
like little signs or whatever. But if you don't start
paying attention to it, you might not notice it unless
it's a bad case. If it's a bad case. You're
gonna notice because your teeth are starting to crack and
(25:33):
chip and wear down. And even if you don't notice that,
your dentist is gonna be like I think you grind
your teeth, and that might be the first person to
tip you off. Yeah, swollen gums. That could also be
a little tip um. You know, mine sort of happened
all at once with the job, like I've always had
a bad bite, uh in. Two rounds of braces did
(25:53):
not cure it. Oh man, So I've got sort of
a it's not quite an underbite, but you know, my
my top my bottom teeth of my top teeth are
aligned instead of having an overbyte. Right. And I remember
distinctly when I started having these problems, like ten or
twelve years ago, and I would tell Emily and said,
it feels like my lower jaw is from someone else's
(26:16):
body all of a sudden, huh, Like it just doesn't
fit anymore. And that's the easiest way I could describe it.
And it just kind of happened like suddenly, or you
noticed it like in a short time started noticing it
over a shortish span ten or twelve years ago. I
remember one time I was singing in the band for
(26:37):
band night one time, and I had my mouth open,
singing like, you know, if I might say so pretty powerfully,
and something popped like I felt something almost like come unhinged.
And it got worse after that. So I don't know
what that was all about. Was that during your famous
cover of Maria, Yes it was or oh Holy night?
(27:02):
Uh we didn't change those for our closer so um.
Another sign that you might have bruck is um is
if you wake up and you like the inside of
your cheeks hurt because there have been rubbed draw off
from the getting caught up in the bruck s ng
uh huh. Yeah, that's that's when it will be particularly bad.
(27:22):
You might also wake up with um bite marks from it,
you know, not like you can see it, but you
can definitely feel those. I went through a little period
where I was biting, like where my canines are? You know,
I have like vampire canines, And I don't know. It
was almost like what you were just describing, like all
of a sudden, my my bite or my jaw or
(27:42):
something just changed. And for like a month or two,
I was biting this one part of my lip oor
right corner and um, it was happening a lot and
then finally it went away. No idea what happened, but
I'm just glad it it cleared up. Yeah. I'm a
side sleeper sort of side slash chest sleeper, and I
(28:03):
will tuck a pillow up under my arm and face
as well as the one I'm laying on with my head,
and I think that has contributed to sort of misaligning
my jaw. And I looked online and sure enough, there
are t MJ pillows I think to help thwart that.
Have you seen like some of like the I think
Casper makes one, there's one by Avocado. Um, they're they're
(28:27):
basically like anti snoring pillows. M I don't know. It
lifts your head up so that your head's not going downward,
which helps you, um helps it like keeps your your
airway from being obstructed and hence snoring less. I can.
It actually works really well. I'm a bit of a
snorer and they they've cured it. I know you do.
(28:52):
Were like the three stooges, uh and on. Since we're
on the pillow front to the other thing that I
do is I sleep with my arm kind of under
my head. You know and under my pillow Like I don't.
I never know what to do with my arms as
a side sleeper, and that has you know, sometimes I
wake up in my arm will be numb from just
being in a weird position. But they have these pillows
(29:13):
now that that lift you up a little bit and
have a little a little hatch there where your arm
fits through. What. I haven't gotten one of those yet,
but I'm looking into it. Wow, it's amazing. The sleep
product industry, and I'm not talking about mattresses is just
ridiculously dents, you know, dents like memory phone. Yeah, I
(29:38):
love a good memory phone. So so talking about you're
talking about TMJ and t MD. From what I saw,
TMJ is the name of the joint and TMD is
the name of the disorder of the stuff hanging around
that joint. Is that correct? Well, I've always heard it
called a t MJ disorder. They may have just shortened
that to t MD. Okay, Yeah, I've always heard t
(29:58):
MJ two I've I've I haven't even heard it called
t MJ disorder, just t MJ. But from what I
can tell is everybody's been getting wrong all these years
that t MJ is the joint not the disorder. Yeah,
Like if you say I have t MJ, They're like, yeah,
everyone's got a temporo mandibular joint jerk, right, big whoop.
But yeah, t MJ disorder. I think it's just become
one of those things that's shorthand. But yeah, I think
(30:21):
t m D is inflammation of that joint. Uh. And
you know that that can affect kind of your whole face.
It can spread around to the other muscle and tissue
pain swelling. We talked about swelling a lot, inflammation swelling.
That's sort of the key to good health is keeping
that down. That seems to be like what science is
(30:43):
starting to figure out first all about inflammation, isn't it.
It seems like it seems like, um, there's also clicking
and popping that comes along with it too, which is
not fun either, not necessarily because it hurts. It's just
distressing psychologically, like you get worried, like, oh man, is
this next time you gonna is my jaws is gonna
stay open? Yeah? Because isn't lockjaw like a potential outcome
(31:09):
of TMD? I don't know, I don't know anything about lockjaw.
Is that maybe it's like a fleet circus is just
one of those things that was made up, but everybody
started to think it was I thought lockjaw came around
because uh uh tetanus or whatever. Oh, yeah, you're right,
(31:30):
you're right, you're right. It's like an infection. I forgot
about that. And I think it's just it's not your
jaw locking up. It's just a weird name for it. Oh.
I thought, like your jaw like stayed open. Well, I
think it can, cause it can cause muscle contractions in
your jaw. So maybe that is where the name comes from.
But I think it's from like and I'm speaking out
(31:51):
of my butt right now, but I think it's from
like a bacterial infection and this is why you get
TETNA shots. Yes, but that's weird that it would focus
on your jaw muscles, you know, pretty specific. It is
a mystery. Um, you want to take a second break
and then come back and talk about kids and getting
rid of this stuff too. Okay everyone, we'll be right back.
(32:16):
Wh Okay. So everybody knows adults are super angry. Not
(32:48):
to be looked squarely in the eye easily set off
that kind of stuff, and that that explains teeth grinding
and adults mostly um that a M d M A.
With kids, it's a totally different story depending on the age.
And actually kids tend to grind their teeth um almost
as a matter of course. They found that of babies
(33:12):
grind their teeth, but they do it typically when they're teething,
which makes a lot more sense. Although grinding like your
gums as the teeth are just breaking through is like
it's like nails down a chalkboard to me, like that, yeah, yeah,
like moist. I mean, I gotta say, there is something
(33:33):
very creepy about a baby locking down on your pinkie
before the teeth are in, but those teeth are right behind.
That's that gum skin, right, It's very weird. It's very creepy.
It's nothing cute about it. Uh. If your baby, you
might also grind your teeth because your top and bottoms
aren't aligned as of yet, or like allergies like you
(33:57):
were talking about, if they're congested. Um, the same and
with adults it could be a sign of allergies or something. Yeah. Again,
allergies produce inflammation, which produces teeth grinding, which is the
key to the existence of life in the universe. I
think if you are lot older and you're not like
a toddler, then it may be stress. It maybe um,
(34:20):
just that kid anxiety which is super sad. Yeah, you might.
You might have like a trouble at school or um,
if your family just moved or something like that. It
might produce teeth grinding. It might also make you eat
entire ten packs of twigs in one sitting after school. Um,
one of the two outcomes. Yeah, not speaking from experience
(34:44):
or anything, just speaking in generality. By the time, I
think they say not to worry about it too much.
If your kid is grinding their teeth before they're seven
or eight years old, um, after between seven and eight
and twelve is usually when it'll go away, once they
get those big, weird looking adult teeth that are still
(35:05):
in that kid's head. Yeah, and a big old attitude
to accompany. Yeah, no kidding. But if you're kid is
like over seven or eight years old and they're still
grinding their teeth, you might want to go see a dentist.
And they might say, go see a therapist. Yeah, why not, Frank,
(35:25):
I mean, or whatever their name might be. That's right,
Frank the chair therapist. So, Um, the because it's so
prevalent and because it clears up on its own, you're
not going to treat your kids bruck is um, like
you were saying, if it is pretty bad, though, your
doctor might be like, let's get a mouth guard, and
(35:46):
the mouth guard might help, probably will help. It won't
keep him from doing it. But um, one of the
other things that I saw, like, if your baby does
grind his or her teeth, Um, one of the problems
that can have, which is probably why you would want
to treat it, is that it can keep them awake
at night, which makes them cranky during the day. So
(36:06):
I could see wanting to treat teeth grinding, especially if
it starts to become even remotely an issue. Although you're
not you don't have to. I could see treating it
if it starts affecting my quality of daytime life exactly.
But this article is so adorable. Um. It says, you know,
there's some things you can do if you're your young
(36:26):
your young child is grinding his or her teeth, you
can draw him a warm bath before bed, to read
him a story. That is just like that's the most
heartwarming treatment for any condition. I've ever heard try reading
a story to your kid before bed. That's novel, right,
Don't try to read him a novel though, Uh let
(36:47):
me see. I think they also recommend, um, if you're
an adult, something topical like an analgesic like tiger bomb
below the ears, like sort of right there outside the jaw. UM.
I don't know about that. I could give that a try,
but I don't know if that'll keep me from grinding.
Might just provide some relief. Have you tried warm baths
(37:08):
for yourself before bed? Get those thighs moist? Uh. It
says here to keep your tongue in the roof of
your mouth some that's sort of a version of what
I'm doing. But I don't see how the roof of
your mouth helps so much. I think it cuts down
(37:29):
on um like the chance you might bite your tongue,
but it's also keeping your mind focused on what your
mouth is doing at any given time. That's what I
would guess. UM. And of course, like there's a lot
that you could do as far as like just relaxing
is concerned, Like meditation helps with absolutely everything. Um, not
(37:51):
drinking as much, cutting down on caffeine, not smoking all
those things are linked to it, um not chewing gum.
So basically, you know how I think I've said recently
where if you have like a sleep disorder that you
like your bed, Who's I telling this to do you remember?
M H, I don't remember either, but UM, that your
(38:13):
bed should be just for sleeping, like go to bed
to sleep, like no TV, no reading, no nothing. And
then you know, over the course of time, you'll train
yourself to associate bed with sleep and you'll just be
able to sleep better. Um. The same thing goes with
these other um pair of functional habits like chewing on pencaps,
chewing gum, chewing your fingernails, like you have to make
(38:36):
sure you're not doing those because your mouth is just
for eating and drinking and talking and breathing and that's it,
not for chewing or any grinding your teeth. And you
can kind of train yourself And that really kind of
gets to the heart of this whole thing, that it's
a an unconscious habit that your that your body has
said this is what we're going with for stress relief.
(38:56):
So you're clearly stressed out, but you've developed a habit
and you need to break the habit and there's some
other techniques that seem to work fairly well that are
aimed at breaking this habit of grinding your teeth. Yeah,
I mean I I chewed. I've always been in my nails,
and I used to massacre pens and pencils in school
(39:17):
when I was like elementary school in high school. I
don't do that anymore because I literally stopped myself from
doing it because I know how bad that is for
my teeth. But um, you know, that's when I was
a kid. I didn't have the you know, the smoothest
childhood and home life. So maybe that was that stuff
coming out. I don't know. I wasn't stressed about like
(39:40):
work and adult relationships and stuff. I guess, you know,
maybe I always just had anxiety and never dealt with
in a in a healthy way. I tend to think
puberty is a pretty stressful event too, So going through
that will make you go through a few pain caps.
You know. Yeah, what's happening down there, doc stressing me out?
My thighs are all moist. Oh no, so grind care. Um,
(40:05):
this thing I thought was amazing. I looked it up
and I'm like, here you go, this is what cures
teeth grinding. Yeah. I went to buy one today, but
I don't live in Germany, Denmark or Sweden. That's the
only place you can get them. Still, that's what it
said on the website. Huh. So grind Care is a
it's a headband. They describe as a headband, but really
it's these little modules that you put on either side
(40:25):
of your temple basically, and it's a monitor that censors
whether you are about to clench your jaw or not
grind your teeth, and it shoots out a little pulsive
electricity says no, I don't think so, and it relaxes
your jaw. I mean, as soon as I saw this,
I was like, that's it. That's the answer. Man. Well, hey,
(40:47):
like listeners in Denmark, Germany or where, give me one
of these things? Sweden? Yeah, hook choke up. Yeah, it's
it's amazing that it's not available outside those three countries. Uh,
it really is, because it sounds like it works. They
say that it reduces grinding by in the first three weeks,
(41:08):
between weeks six and eight. Yeah, I mean I was sold.
Maybe I can get my hands on one through the
maybe dark web. We found out, so we had this
this portrait made of Momo, and the artist was featured
in Harper's Bizarre Netherlands, and she had the portrait of
Momo in the magazine. So yeah, but try to get
(41:32):
your hands on a Harper's Bizarre Netherlands edition. You can't
do it. I bet you could get one. You me
was like, you know what, I'll bet the stuff. You
should know, Army could help. So she went onto the
s y s K Facebook Army page, was like, just
asked for help and got a bunch of people who
have offered, which is super nice. I am happy to report.
I believe we're getting a few copies. It's fantastic. Yeah.
(41:54):
It was either that or flying to the Netherlands in
the middle of a pandemic. Well, in any other time
that might be a fun little adventure. It could be.
But it was cool because everybody was just so happy
to help to you know, Yeah, we have the best
listeners on the planet. I drove to Vegas one time
with my friend, you know, Johnny Pindell to get a
(42:16):
T shirt and the drove back. Wow. What was the
T shirt? If I remember correctly, Johnny wanted a heart
New York. No, I think it was a was it
a Crispy Cream Vegas or some sort of larger brand
with the Vegas specific specificity hard rock? I don't think
(42:38):
it was. And this was, you know, prey, like you
could buy anything on the internet at all times. So
he's like, hey, you want to drive to Vegas. I
want to get this shirt, and I was like, sure,
let's do it. How long did it take you? I
mean it's from l A. It's not far. Oh, I
was thinking from Atlanta. Good lord. Now it's like, wow,
must have been one hell of a shirt, even from
l A. That's pretty pretty impressive. Yeah, it's a common
(43:00):
Did you guys engage in a huge drug collections free first? Oh? Sure,
and start seeing bats and then blew it all on
amal nitrate and blackjack. That's right. There was one other
thing we should mention, though. There is a um apparently
something you can put in your mouth. It's got a
nasty tasting liquid. I guess it's like a gel pack
(43:21):
or something that you put between your teeth and when
you bite into it when you're asleep, that thing is
punctured and that you get that nastiness in your mouth.
But I don't know that that would work. On me
because I used to paint my fingernails with deterrent when
it was an elementary school my mom. It was just
super bitter, like the most bitter thing you could ever imagine,
(43:45):
and I just chewed right through it. That's greatly didn't
stop me. This was so from from what I could tell,
it was just a patent somebody has. It looks like
a um a retainer. But then in the back where
the molars are those packets and they suggested seawater or
hot sauce, and I was like, jeezus, seems like it
will wake you up. Apparently that's the point. Like, I
(44:08):
guess you just annoy yourself into not grinding your teeth
any longer because you just want to get some sleep.
So what do you think, Chuck, did this cure you?
What's it gonna take? I don't know. I'm not having
that surgery. And I don't like we're in the mouth
guard I've worn. I wear the mouth guards sometimes when
I know that I'm no for sure I'm going through
(44:29):
a particularly stressful period UM but it's just it's not comfortable.
You know, no one wants to wear those things. Well,
if you are listening to us, in Germany, Denmark or Sweden.
Hit chuck ups so he can get a grind care
from you. That's right. Uh. And in the meantime, if
you want to know more about teeth grinding, go check
(44:51):
out the article written by Jordan's Mashkevich called I can't
remember what it's called, but anyway, just up Jordan Moshkovitch.
I don't think there's more than one of them running around.
Um uh. And there's other stuff all over the internet too.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.
(45:12):
By the way, I bet you there are at least
ten dentists in New York City named Dr Jordan Moskovitch.
Do you think so? Sure? Okay, it just sounds like
a dental name. You know. My first innis name was
Dr Tuggle. Uh. That is a really great name in general. Yeah,
Dr Tuggle. That's a great name for like a cat too, Yeah,
(45:35):
Dr Tuggle, Dr Tuggle. One time I was in the airport.
This is when we had our dog Buckley and we
called him Buckles a lot. And Uh, I was in
the airport and Delta was paging someone at the little
uh where you check in there, and they said paging
Mr Buckles, Mr Buckles, can you come to the amazing
(45:57):
just killed me? I immediately called himly. I was like
paging Mr Buckles, all right, I'm gonna call this something
that we got wrong, sort of you got wrong on
the Heroin podcast, and we heard from enough people about
this that I thought it bore an email or a read. Hey, guys,
As a former opiate addict now almost ten years clean,
(46:20):
with lots of education and experience in this area, I'd
like to gently suggest that a correction be noted. On
your recent very good episode on Heroin and discussing the
withdrawal detox period, Josh stated that an addict order to
get through that miserable week of suffering, than he or
she would be essentially over the addiction. While it's true
the acute phase of heroin withdrawal last about a week,
addiction as a disorder far more complex and insidious and
(46:43):
long term than physical dependency, which is only one aspect
that a week's worth of detox can cure. A secondary
kind of withdrawal can occur, known as post acute withdrawal
syndrome pause, in which the brain has to sort of
recalibrate and heal from protracted dopamine and balances. Pause can
trigger episodes of anxiety and profound depression, which can even
(47:05):
lead a recovering addict right back into active addiction. Moreover,
addiction rarely happens in a vacuum. Most addicts need long
term support, therapy and coaching. You weren't suggesting that's not
the case, by the way, to redevelop or develop coping
skills that will enable him or her to live a
drug free life. But recovery from addiction is absolutely achievable.
It's not short or simple as a few days of nausea, aches,
(47:27):
and diarrhea. Thanks for all you do. That is from
Jason and sant in tone nice Thanks a lot, Jason,
I'm absolutely chuck. Thank you for bailing me out on that.
That's not what I meant. But I definitely should have
been a lot clearer than I was. Well, we should
have talked about pause, because that's a big deal. We
heard from a bunch of people talking about pause, but boy,
we heard from a lot of people that were current
(47:49):
informer addicts. It was more so than our other drug podcast.
It was really pretty enlightening and heartening and disheartening all
at once. Yeah, I mean it really kind of got across,
like just how widespread the opioid crisis is. You know. Well,
thanks to everybody who wrote in uh and hang in there,
to everybody who's still struggling with addiction of any kind. Um,
(48:12):
and thanks a lot Jason from Santa Fe or sant
Intone san Intone. Um. If you want to get in
touch with this, like Jason did, you can send us
an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
and send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts, for my
(48:34):
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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