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You’re Not a Human Coffee Grinder: How to Relax Your Jaw

You're Not a Human Coffee Grinder: How to Relax Your


You’re Not a Human Coffee Grinder: How to Relax Your Jaw

If you’re one of the 30 to 40 million Americans that grind your teeth at night, you intimately know that helpless, sinking feeling that comes with waking up with a headache and sore jaw for the third time in a week.

While this feeling is awful, the reality is that you’re not helpless- there are some awesome ways that you can easily help yourself treat bruxism at home.

Read on to learn how to relax your jaw and eliminate the pains that come with teeth grinding!

Understand the Issue

Grinding your teeth at night is a problem for a wide variety of reasons- it’s painful, for one thing, but it can also cause long-term issues. Repeated jaw clenching and bruxism have the potential to create issues with your bite or other serious dental problems. Understanding the severity of the issue is the first step toward treatment because it serves as a motivator.

There are a few reasons that you may be having issues with teeth grinding. One possible cause is sleep apnea, which can be treated on its own. You also may simply have jaw clenching in response to stress and anxiety, which can usually be treated with a little self-care.

Reduce Stress

Unless you have an anxiety disorder (a totally different issue,) there are tons of ways that you can naturally reduce stress around bedtime. For one thing, you can take a warm bath or shower to relax your muscles. Consider getting natural bath oils– they’re perfect for some aromatherapy as well as relaxing your skin!

You’ll also want to turn off the electronics around bedtime- the blue light they emit keeps your brain active and therefore increases anxiety when turned off. Instead of watching TV or playing phone games, consider reading a good book or coloring an adult coloring page.

Relax Your Jaw Muscles

You can also focus on relaxing your jaw muscles around bedtime. Many people choose to practice relaxing their jaw muscles, repeating the mantra of ‘lips together, teeth apart’ to themselves. Put the tip of your tongue between your teeth during the day to train your muscles to stop grinding. 

Also, you’re going to want to avoid chewing gum or anything else that isn’t food, including pencil tops. If you chew these things, you’re training your jaw to bite down naturally and exacerbating the problem.

At night, you can also relax your jaw by placing a damp, warm washcloth on the sides of your jaw beneath your ears. This is the perfect way to relax before falling asleep.

 

Use a Mouth Guard

Using a mouth guard for teeth grinding is also a way to protect against nighttime bruxism. These guards are comfortable and won’t inhibit you from sleeping, but they’ll also force you to keep your teeth apart at night. All in all, they’re the perfect way to train your mouth to remain in a ‘teeth-apart’ position.

More on How to Relax Your Jaw

While bruxism can be painful, there are ways to make the problem go away naturally.

Now that you know how to relax your jaw and improve your jaw clenching problem, it’s time to learn some other ways to stay healthy. Check out the ‘all articles’ tab on our home page for some more ideas on how to improve your lifestyle and keep issues like bruxism at bay.

Good luck!

Business

Coffee 101: How to Drink Coffee for Increased Productivity in the Workplace

Coffee 101: How to Drink Coffee for Increased Productivity in


Coffee 101: How to Drink Coffee for Increased Productivity in the Workplace

Every year, Americans throw back more than 100 billion cups of coffee. That works out to about 280 million cups of coffee every day.

Some people simply need a cup of coffee in the morning to get themselves up and moving. But others rely on coffee throughout the course of the day to make themselves more productive at work.

Do you fall into the second category here? If so, it’s important for you to learn how to drink coffee to increase your productivity. It’s not quite as simple as just keeping a cup of coffee on your desk at all times to stay caffeinated.

If your workplace productivity could use a jolt right now, coffee might be the answer. Here is how to drink coffee to make the most of it.

Keep a Steady Supply of Coffee in Your Office

Is there anything worse than showing up for work and realizing that—gasp—there’s no coffee? Ugh. It’s the worst.

Rather than risking it, you should always keep a steady supply of coffee in your desk drawer.

In a perfect world, your employer will use this guide to keep the fresh coffee flowing in your office. But in the event that everyone around you drinks it all up, it never hurts to have a backup supply on hand.

It’ll prevent you from ever running out of coffee at work.

Know When to Have Your First Cup of Coffee Each Morning

There are a lot of people who start chugging cups of coffee the second they get out of bed in the morning. They believe that, by doing this, they can send shockwaves through their systems and get their bodies and brains in motion.

You might be surprised to learn that you’re better off waiting for a little while before having your first cup of coffee each morning. In fact, you might want to put it off until 9 or even 9:30 a.m.

Reason being, your body releases a lot of cortisol, which is also often referred to as the “stress hormone,” when you first wake up. It makes it difficult for your body to do much with the caffeine that you put into it.

But by 9 or 9:30, all of the cortisol should be out of your system. It’ll free up space for caffeine to step in and get you going.

It’s why you should always wait on your first cup of coffee if you can.

Avoid Waiting Too Long to Have Your Second Cup of Coffee

Once you take in your first cup of coffee a short time after arriving at work, you’ll feel more productive and energetic than you do at almost any other time of the day. There’s nothing like that first jolt that you get from a cup of coffee.

But within just a few hours, you’re going to start to come down off your caffeinated high. You may even begin to feel sleepy and lethargic.

This happens when adenosine molecules are able to build up inside of your brain. They make you feel very groggy and can drag your productivity way down.

The best way to defeat adenosine molecules is by having your second cup of coffee long before the sleepiness associated with them starts to kick in. Time it out so that you’re drinking your second cup about 30 or even 60 minutes before you would normally begin to feel sleepy.

For most people, drinking a second cup of coffee at around 2 p.m. is a good idea.

Consider Combining a Cup of Coffee With an Afternoon Nap

There are going to be times when you aren’t able to drink a cup of coffee before the adenosine molecules build up in your brain. You’ll feel like you want to take a nap, and you’ll try to drink coffee to combat that feeling.

If you’re able to swing it, you may want to combine your second cup of coffee with a quick nap for best results. Try drinking your second cup and then lying down right away to sleep for about 15 minutes.

During your brief rest, your brain will work to eliminate the adenosine molecules that have congregated in it. The caffeine from your coffee, meanwhile, will work its way through your system and hit just as you’re waking up.

When you learn how to drink coffee and use caffeine like this, you’ll make your afternoons more productive. You’ll achieve an unmatched level of focus and be able to concentrate like never before.

Stop Drinking Coffee Before It’s Too Late

Two cups of coffee should be more than enough to get most people through the workday. But if you find that you run out of steam around 4 p.m., you might be tempted to reach for one more cup.

Be careful! A third cup of coffee can get you up and moving again. But it can also keep you up at night if you drink it too late in the day.

Try reaching for a cup of tea instead. Tea contains caffeine like coffee does, but it doesn’t have anywhere near as much caffeine in it.

You’ll be able to get just enough caffeine to power through the rest of your day without disrupting your sleep cycle.

Knowing How to Drink Coffee Can Make You a More Productive Person

Studies have shown that most people are only productive at work for about three hours every day. They’re not spending nearly enough time focused on the various tasks that they have to get done.

If you’ve found that your productivity levels are low in recent weeks, learning how to drink coffee the right way might be the best solution for you. You can turn yourself into a much more productive person at work and put yourself into a position to advance in your career.

Follow the tips listed here to ensure that you’re using coffee to its full potential. And read our blog to find some of the other ways that you can make yourself stand out when you’re on the clock at work.