Key result
Sleep bruxism slows microarousal-induced tachycardia by triggering the trigeminal cardiac reflex.
Why the study?
The physiological purpose of sleep bruxism, characterized by tooth grinding or clenching during sleep, remains undefined.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Proposed self-regulatory role of sleep bruxism via trigeminal reflex remains untested; hypothesis-generating and should not change practice.
Sleep bruxism, an intensified manifestation of rhythmic masticatory muscle activity, characterized by tooth grinding or clenching during sleep, lacks a definitive physiological purpose. This paper posits that physiologically, sleep bruxism is an autonomic self-regulatory response to nighttime occurrences of tachycardia stemming from the brain experiencing microarousals during sleep. Sleep bruxism by triggering the trigeminal cardiac reflex leads to bradycardia. Rhythmic masticatory muscle activity-sleep bruxism, thereby, serves to slow the heart rate when brain microarousals cause tachycardia.
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Schames et al. (2012) studied Sleep bruxism. Sleep bruxism was evaluated. Sleep bruxism is proposed as an autonomic self-regulatory response that slows heart rate by triggering the trigeminal cardiac reflex during brain microarousal-induced tachycardia.
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