Discussion A bad habit you might have: keeping your teeth in contact at rest.

[Peco]

It seems that most people get the idea that their teeth should be slightly in contact or even fully in contact at rest. Most people think that because of mewing but I frankly don't understand where Dr Mew got the idea. I'm curious if you guys know what justification he gives for that. I personally have tried looking for some studies but couldn't find any that supported his idea.

I think your teeth should only touch when swallowing or chewing. There aren't any studies saying that this is best either, but there are some showing that in patients with TMD, tooth contact was a lot higher compared to healthy people. I will link 2 of those just so you can get an idea but there are more.

• Study 1 : https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4263305/
• Study 2 : https://www.jofph.com/articles/10.11607/jofph.21.3.03

The studies also say that it isn't necessarily just clenching that's problematic, even just light contact is enough to cause issues.

Since there are no studies that I know of showing any advantage in keeping teeth in contact and a few studies showing how that could be linked with tmj issues I think it's safe to say that the best option is to keep them apart. So to fix the habit, if you notice your teeth touching during the day bring them slightly apart. Overtime that will fix the issue.

 

[nervous]

It seems that most people get the idea that their teeth should be slightly in contact or even fully in contact at rest. Most people think that because of mewing but I frankly don't understand where Dr Mew got the idea. I'm curious if you guys know what justification he gives for that. I personally have tried looking for some studies but couldn't find any that supported his idea.

I think your teeth should only touch when swallowing or chewing. There aren't any studies saying that this is best either, but there are some showing that in patients with TMD, tooth contact was a lot higher compared to healthy people. I will link 2 of those just so you can get an idea but there are more.

• Study 1 : https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4263305/
• Study 2 : https://www.jofph.com/articles/10.11607/jofph.21.3.03

The studies also say that it isn't necessarily just clenching that's problematic, even just light contact is enough to cause issues.

Since there are no studies that I know of showing any advantage in keeping teeth in contact and a few studies showing how that could be linked with tmj issues I think it's safe to say that the best option is to keep them apart. So to fix the habit, if you notice your teeth touching during the day bring them slightly apart. Overtime that will fix the issue.

I don’t even notice that I do this until I realized my teeth were touching while reading your thread. If this is linked to TMJ im going to riot

 

[Peco]

I don’t even notice that I do this until I realized my teeth were touching while reading your thread. If this is linked to TMJ im going to riot

Yeah there is definitely correlation. It's easy to fix the habit though.