Category Archives: Dental Injuries

Oral Parafunctional Habits Have Serious Consequences In an earlier blog, we showed you how to identify and control behaviors that professional dentists call oral parafunctional habits. In everyday terms, these are unconscious actions that include nail-biting, thumb-sucking, and thrusting the tongue against the teeth. The most common habits by far are clenching and bruxism — that's the dentistry term…

How to Identify, Fight, and Conquer Oral Parafunctional Habits As infants, we possess a natural inclination to suck our thumbs. It provides security and an ability to self-soothe despite limited mobility. Expressing ourselves through our mouths is one of the first things we learn how to do. And as adults, many of us revert to habitual oral behaviors as a…