Reasons why children grind their teeth at night

One of the things parents are most concerned about is whether their children can grow up healthily. However, we should also know that since children’s organs are not fully developed, their disease resistance and immunity are relatively weak, and children are prone to various symptoms. Therefore, we recommend that parents learn more about some common diseases among children, so that once children have problems of one kind or another, they will not be at a loss. Below we introduce the reasons why children grind their teeth at night.

(1) Excessive mental excitement and tension

Playing too much before going to bed, being too excited or tired, being frightened, restless and anxious, or being stressed out during studies can cause the excitation and inhibition processes of the cerebral cortex to become unbalanced, inducing temporary irregular spasms or contractions of the chewing muscles, resulting in nocturnal bruxism.

(2) Intestinal parasitic diseases

Ascaris likes to move around in the intestines after the child falls asleep and secrete a variety of toxins. Toxins stimulate the intestines, speed up intestinal peristalsis, cause indigestion, pain around the umbilicus, and restless sleep; if toxins stimulate the nerves, causing nerve excitement, it can lead to teeth grinding. Pinworms also secrete toxins and cause anal itching, affecting children's sleep and causing teeth grinding sounds.

(3) Digestive dysfunction

For example, if you eat too much before going to bed, a large amount of food fills the stomach and intestines and stimulates the digestive tract. The nerves transmit these stimuli to the brain, making the brain cells that manage digestion excited, and through reflex action, causing teeth grinding.

(4) Nutritional imbalance

Some children are picky eaters, especially those who don't like to eat vegetables, which leads to nutritional imbalance and deficiency of calcium, phosphorus, various vitamins and trace elements, causing involuntary contraction of the facial chewing muscles at night, and the teeth grind back and forth.

(5) Others

Poor tooth development during the tooth replacement period can cause dental occlusion disorders, chronic periodontitis, psychomotor epilepsy, hysteria, or eating in dreams, etc. can all cause nocturnal bruxism.

In the above article, we introduced that parents are very concerned about their children's physical health. Parents should learn more about common childhood diseases so that they will know how to deal with problems once their children have them. The above article details the five reasons why children grind their teeth at night.