I’m only 23 years old and last night I chipped and loosened two of my teeth while wearing a mouth gaurd made by my dentist.
I don’t want to lose my teeth but I also don’t want to spend the money on a dental visit if there isn’t anything they can do for me since I don’t have insurance anymore.
There are no easy answers. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach.
I’ve done some reading on this because I grind my teeth, apparently. My wife claims she thought there was a mouse in the room one night because of the squeaking noises my molars were making as I ground them together. She nudges me to make me stop, but she’s been on my case to see a dentist about it.
Beyond relaxation techniques and liberal use of analgesics, I’m not sure there’s much more one can do themselves to prevent damage or treat the pain; but I’m hardly an expert, and it seems to me your best bet is to suck it up and pay for a dentist appt. I’ve read that, beyond mouthguards/splints, one can have orthdontal work done, or even surgery, but only for extreme cases.
Good luck. I may be joining you and the ranks of other nighttime bruxism patients pretty soon.
Methinks somebody at Medicine Plus isn’t a very good cook. I’ve never heard of a hard steak before. Tough maybe, but if it ends up hard it’s time for a lesson or two. 
Well, for what it’s worth, an aquaintance of mine told me last night that she had taken her son to a clinical psychologist because of his bruxism. The psychologist told her that teeth clenching and gnashing are usually the result of a person refraining from saying what they want to say. She said that as soon as she encouraged her son to simply say whatever was on his mind, the bruxism stopped almost immediately.
Would chewing gum during the day help by wearing out the jaw muscles, or would it hurt by stimulating them?
FWIW…
SWMBO has suffered from bruxism most of her life. Her current dentist prescribed a muscle relaxant for her (Elavil). She takes one right before she goes to bed and her bruxism has diminished greatly.
My problem with those kind of solutions is that I don’t want to be dependent on pills the rest of my life. Maybe if I could take some muscle relaxers for a few weeks and the bruxism would stay gone when I quit taking them it would be worth it. Otherwise, I’d rather keep searching for a (IMO) “safer” solution.
I’ve found that if I take calcium suppliments, I stop grinding my teeth. It’s worth a shot, and certainly cheaper than a dentist visit.
I have news for you, Elavil is not a muscle relaxant, it is a tricyclic antidepressant. Whatever therapeutic effect your wife is getting is a result of its mood altering properties rather than any effect on the musculoskeletal system. Indeed, muscle stiffness is one of the side effects.
It does however, have an effect on controlling muscle spasms in the human digestive tract, as the doctor explained to me years ago when he prescribed it for the problems I was having, it works better at that, than it does as an antidepressant, and at much lower doses than are necessary for it’s antidepressant effects to be noticed.