Masseter muscles
Bruxism and masseter muscles
Your masseter muscles are a group of muscles located towards the back of your jaw. If you clench your jaw, you can feel them. These muscles help you chew food. If you grind your teeth, you’re using your masseter muscles! Your masseter muscles are the strongest muscle in the body (per pound of pressure). Amazingly, it can exert up to 170 lbs of pressure when closing the jaw!
Bruxism can have consequences for both your physical and mental wellbeing. It affects around 10 percent of the population. Bruxism most commonly starts to affect people between the ages of 25 and 44 and can cause health concerns such as migraine, stress headaches and earache, as well as tooth wear and the breakage of teeth.
Dentists will often be the first to diagnose Bruxism when they notice the wearing of teeth and traditionally have treated the condition with mouth guards, mouth splints, and muscle-relaxation exercises to reduce teeth grinding. Often with limited long-term benefit for the client.
Treating anxiety or stress-related problems are helpful in reducing the severity of Bruxism, but as with any muscle if you use it a lot, it will get stronger, therefore reducing the amount of power in the muscle is the best treatment. Lifestyle changes such as smoking cessation, healthy diet, caffeine reduction and reducing alcohol intake may help. Although there’s no specific cure for bruxism, botulinum toxin injections have proved to be a highly effective and safe treatment.
1 hour appointment
£250
The results speak for themselves
The difference treatment makes
The procedure
How does Botulinum toxin work for bruxism?
Botulinum toxin works by blocking the action of the substance released by nerves that causes muscles to contract. In the case of bruxism, when injected into the muscles that cause clenching
of the jaw, it will reduce unconscious clenching. Put simply, the muscle will not hear the signal from the brain to say ‘contract’ so although the jaw will still function normally, it won’t have the same strength to clench so tightly. At rest, the teeth of the upper and lower jaw will be relaxed and sit apart, they won’t be in a tight clenched grip.
Botulinum toxin is injected in the masseter and temporalis muscle in order to reduce their ability to contract. These muscles may vary considerably in size between clients, and the number of units of botulinum toxin injected will therefore be decided following assessment.
The treatment takes a few minutes to perform and most people experience little to no discomfort.
Multiple studies have demonstrated that botulinum toxin injections can lead to a significant reduction in bruxism, which leads to an improvement in the quality of sleep a client experiences. In some cases, clients will note relief of jaw pain within days of treatment. As with all Botulinum Toxin treatments, the first effects will be noted within a few days, with full results at 14 days. Occasionally clients will find that one side of the jaw is still clenching slightly, this is due to the two muscles being entirely independent and not necessarily the same size or with the same dominance.
A top up treatment is sometimes required for optimal treatment. Once treated the client will experience from 3-6 months of benefit before requiring further treatment to maintain
results.
