Anxiety from the coronavirus pandemic is leading people to fracture their teeth by clenching their jaw or grinding their teeth from stress, CNN reports.
“We have seen an increasing amount of fractured teeth in probably the past six months,” said Dr. Paul Koshgerian, an oral surgeon at The Oral Surgery & Dental Implant Specialists of San Diego, California.
Before the outbreak, Koshgerian’s office handled about one fractured tooth per day or every other day. But since the coronavirus hit the U.S., his office has dealt with two cracked teeth on a good day, and up to five on a bad day.
Koshgerian said the “anxiety that surrounds everything that’s going on — COVID, the rioting, the protesting, the looting [and] the general state of the country — has gotten everybody’s thermostat dialed up a couple notches.”
He added, “In the oral surgery or dental realm, often that translates to people bruxing their teeth,” meaning involuntarily clenching or grinding their teeth. Koshgerian noted a sore face in the morning is a sign of bruxing in your sleep.
“Also, if people have partners,” he said, “oftentimes the partners are the ones that tell the patient themselves that clenching is happening because it’s audible to the person that may be sleeping or cohabitating with the person.”
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