Ask HN: Has anyone fixed their own bruxism?
[I&#x27;m not a medical professional. This is merely my experience, not medical advice.]<p>tl;dr yes; using a pacifier<p>Here&#x27;s my experience with sleep and other issues that I&#x27;ve been dealing with since the beginning of this year. Some background: I was a moderately active male in my 20s with a perfect BMI. I started a company in January working from home. Prior conditions: Chronic pain in the sternocleidomastoid area when I turn my neck. Chronic RSI that made using computer keyboard painful. Chronic pain behind right eye noticeable when I move it around too much e.g. playing foosball. Chronic ITBS. Chronic constipation and ensuing haemorrhoidal problems. I&#x27;d generally consider myself a healthy individual. I believe the average healthy human has dozens of such minor annoyances.<p>I begun experiencing bruxism (as evidenced by damaged gums from one slightly misaligned tooth in the morning), frequent intense dreams where I&#x27;m not breathing, lightheadedness&#x2F;dizziness and memory problems (including amnesia), worsened chronic neck pain, new chronic right-sided post-nasal drip, inability to concentrate, and breathlessness&#x2F;high heart rate after just minor exercise or even just standing up for a long time. These issues were triggered&#x2F;made worse after visiting a proctologist who, in an act of malpractice<i>, medicated me with a drug that made me delirious (it wasn&#x27;t supposed to) and gave me a severe headache that lasted 2 days. After the headache subsided I was left unable to concentrate on work. I tried, and I didn&#x27;t even realize there&#x27;s something wrong for the first couple of days, but my mind was just wandering all over the place and when I looked at my timesheets at the end of the week there were just a couple hours of work done. I gave myself a 3-week vacation, but I didn&#x27;t see much improvement. I ended up doing no work for three months.</i><p><i>I&#x27;ve been to a dentist, GP, ophthalmology, and ENT and neither had any findings except for a deviated septum. I haven&#x27;t been to neurology which had been next on my list.</i><p><i>First off, I fixed the haemorrhoids by eating oatmeal with added fibre and psyllium (the doctor didn&#x27;t even tell me to fix my diet; ironically I read it in a publication that requires the user to declare they&#x27;re a certified medical professional). Note that my case was just prolapsing without bleeding.</i><p><i>I started going to the gym every other day (20 minutes of light cardio + 25 minutes of strength exercise). This had noticeable impact on the breathlessness&#x2F;high heart rate. I should note that when exercised too hard it made the issue worse for the rest of the day.</i><p><i>As for the bruxism, my dentist suggested I get braces, but I can&#x27;t afford that anytime soon so I just got a dummy. I got one that lets some air flow by but not too much so my mouth doesn&#x27;t get dry. I should stress that the dummy is impossible to swallow. It sounds awkward, but I can measure how bad my bruxism is by how injured my gums are and it&#x27;s worked flawlessly - they recovered in a couple of days. When a month ago I tried to sleep without it once they got injured again.</i><p><i>I didn&#x27;t mention that the headache following the medication was much worse in a horizontal position and that it didn&#x27;t subside fully. When I found myself sleeping on the side or on my stomach I would wake up with a headache. Also whenever I slept on the side, I would get dizzy and have very poor sleep. I adjusted my bed so that my head would be above the body level at all times (my thanks for this advice goes to the NHS website), which helped with the headache. As for the dizziness I fixed that by sleeping on my back with sunglasses on because that doesn&#x27;t allow me to sleep on the side&#x2F;stomach, and it also made the bad dreams go away. I wish I got the sunglasses idea earlier.</i><p><i>I moved back in with my parents which relieved my anxiety about spending too much (&gt;half o my expenses were rent). I now drive to do my work away from home, which helps with keeping a regular schedule.</i><p><i>I&#x27;d like to stress that I don&#x27;t know what underlying conditions led to such severe decline. Stress probably played a role as well as everything being shut down due to COVID-19. But in the end I just know the symptoms and what triggered it. Today I&#x27;m almost fully recovered. Not at the top of my game as I was before, but I can focus on my work and I&#x27;ve done a lot of progress with my company this month. Also the RSI that made using the keyboard painful is gone.</i><p><i>p.s. I suspected I may have been suffering from sleep apnoea but I had no way to verify. I decided to create an app that tracks breathing using a phone&#x27;s g sensor and gyroscope. This was when I was starting to recover and I could start doing lightweight programming work. I implemented a Non-uniform DFT-based algorithm that suffices with just one axis from the g sensor to reliably detect breathing while I&#x27;m awake with the phone on my stomach. Unfortunately the parameters that work while awake don&#x27;t work while asleep - the app would wake me up the second I started sleeping, just like holding something in your hand that drops to the floor wakes you at the very moment you fall asleep. I was going to implement data collection and improve the app after collecting enough data, but since I got better I returned to work and I&#x27;m not really interested in continuing with this app. If anyone&#x27;s interested the algorithm&#x27;s here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;aVvh8YDK" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;aVvh8YDK</a> (sorry about the quality it&#x27;s very much WIP &amp; my first Dart project at the same time; but I believe it&#x27;s all the math you need unless you want to go full ML). Here&#x27;s a demo of the app albeit with just uniform DFT which wasn&#x27;t great at fitting the data: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gofile.io&#x2F;d&#x2F;cTf1y9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gofile.io&#x2F;d&#x2F;cTf1y9</a></i>