Grind Grind Grind

I'm a grinder. A tooth grinder that is. I first learned that I grind my teeth at night when I went to college and had a roommate for the first time. Anna used to tell me how she would wake up to the really large crunching sound, as if "I were chewing on marbles". Eeks. Strangely, I never really realized it. I never woke up with soreness around my jaw nor felt my teeth really rubbed (although a cavity here or there suspiciously may be a result of my grinding). I spoke to my dentist about it recently---and today, I picked up my custom-made night mouth guard, which is a hard plastic mold fit perfectly to my mouth so that when I grind at night, I grind against plastic instead of my own teeth. I'll be sleeping with it for the first time tonight. Hmmm. I found an interesting thread online about the use of night mouth guards---I guess bruxism (the acto of grinding one's teeth) is a more common issue than I realized.