Why Do You Bite Tongue While Sleeping?

biting tongue while sleeping

Having a sound sleep is a good sign of health. Similarly, if your sleep gets interrupted at Biting Tongue While Sleeping at night, you get up as a tired person in the morning.

There are many reasons for getting interrupted sleep. One of the reasons is biting your tongue during sleep. It is widespread, with many people biting their tongue accidentally while awake, but you may do the same thing during sleep.

Sometimes, misalignment of teeth and huge tongue can result in injury during sleep and awake.

Mainly there are three major reasons or conditions which can lead to biting of the tongue during sleep:

Seizures at night

One of the most common reasons found in many people is a seizure at night means erratic, uncontrollable limb movements and loss of bladder and bowel control which can cause you to bite your tongue.

Seizure at night can be diagnosed by observing the brainwaves during sleep. This condition can be cured through medication.

But if it happens only at a time, then seizure can be less likely to be the reason for tongue biting because this symptom should occur during the day. There may be some other potential cause.

Teeth grinding

It is not very unusual, but a prevalent disorder many people suffer from teeth grinding.

It is also known as bruxism, characterized by tonic and rhythmic activity of the chewing muscles that appear in a loud and grating sound during sleep, which might cause biting of tongue in sleep.

Rhythmic movement disorder

 This is one type of disorder some people suffer in which uncontrollable and sudden movement in their bodies occurs. During this process, some people incur tongue injury at night. This normally happens with children and disappears when a child grows older.

Braces

Braces are another reason cause tongue bite in sleep. People suffering from braces may need to use elastics at night to set their jaws into position to avoid injury to the tongue.

Sleep apnea

It is believed that people with more BMI body mass index have a greater risk of sleep apnea.

Your tongue relaxes in your mouth when you are sleeping, but at times, it is likely to slip between your teeth during sleep apnea and get injured. Biting of the tongue may happen several times during each episode of sleep apnea.

Stress

Stress is another factor in biting the tongue during sleep. It mostly happens with pregnant ladies due to hormonal changes and stress they undergo.

Lyme disease

This disease is known to attack your brain and whole nervous system, which would send erratic signals to your muscles and nervous system, causing involuntary movements in your body while you are sleeping. This might result in tongue bite in sleep.

Treatment of biting tongue in sleep

The best way to avoid tongue bites during sleep is to diagnose the actual cause, as mentioned above, and get treated.

In normal circumstances, one should not worry much as the injury to the tongue gets healed automatically within a week or so as our saliva is a perfect natural healing property.

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