I’ve been afflicted with bruxism (teeth grinding) for most of my adult life, which is why I recently tried Botox for teeth grinding, rather than for relaxing wrinkles.

I frequently spend periods of my sleeping hours grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw and it almost always flares up during periods of stress.

However, as bruxism is, in my case and most cases, a nocturnal activity, I have no control over it. I am rarely aware that I am doing it, waking only in the morning with a tight, tense and tender jaw and often an accompanying headache.

Occasionally, I will wake myself up if I am grinding or clenching particularly aggressively, which is a horrible feeling and makes me feel like my teeth are falling out when I wake up.

In 2018, due to a particularly stressful period at my old workplace, it became so bad that I split a tooth (my third molar on the left hand side), resulting in excruciating pain and the immediate extraction of said tooth.

Since then I have worn bespoke gum shields from the dentist while I sleep, which have thus far protected my teeth from further damage. But despite attempts to control it through practices such as meditation before bed and breathing exercises, my bruxism still regularly flares up.

So can Botox for teeth grinding really work?

What is bruxism?

Bruxism is a condition where you grind, gnash or clench your teeth. According to the Bruxism Association, around 8-10% of the UK population suffers from the condition, which can be classified into awake bruxism and asleep bruxism. (I have asleep bruxism.)

Nearly 80% of bruxism episodes occur in clusters during sleep and a recent study revealed that women are 22% more likely than men to suffer from bruxism. It is also on the rise, with a 2021 report claiming that people were suffering more from bruxism due to the stress of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The condition is usually caused by stress and anxiety, but bruixism can also be caused by other sleep disorders such as snoring or sleep apnoea. Alcohol, caffeine and drugs can also affect it and I do notice that if I’ve consumed a lot of alcohol before bed, that can often induce an episode.

How does Botox for teeth grinding work?

I visit Dr Ross Perry, whose practice Cosmedics Skin Clinics has clinics in Harley Street, the City of London, Putney and Bristol. Dr Perry explains to me what my Masseter muscles are doing while I am asleep grinding away and what impact it is having on me.

“The muscles in your Masseter, which are your jaw clenching muscles, they basically override all of the normal functions of the Masseter when you are particularly stressed. So what that means is that you’ll be clenching without knowing it, particularly at night. And that clenching creates grinding and that grinding wears down your teeth.”

He adds: “It also has a knock on effect onto the other muscles of that part of the face, which gives you painful headaches and so forth. So it’s a cascade of effects really just from that and generally it’s stress related or can be stress related as a trigger and then it can become habitual. So you do it without even knowing it and then it just gets worse and worse and worse.” Which is exactly what happened with me when I lost the tooth and I do not, I tell Dr Perry, want to experience that again. Which is why I am keen to learn about the effects that Botox – which I have used as a cosmetic procedure in the past to treat the appearance of wrinkles – can have on bruxism.