When I was eight, I fell off my bike - a graceless, dramatic face-planting that sent my kid sister running and screaming into the house for my dad. I was a bloody, bruised mess!

The tumble cracked and loosened my two front incisors (already “grown-up” teeth) and set me on a path of many, many dental and orthodontic procedures and years of braces, retainers, and - yes - even headgear, which I thankfully only had to wear at night.

You’d think all those visits would assuage my fear of going to the dentist. Not so! Even as an adult, I get nervous right before an appointment. Still, I thought I’d left my bad childhood dental history behind me.

But at a recent dental checkup, my dentist held a mirror up to my teeth and asked me to take a good look. What I saw surprised me.

I could see all of these tiny cracks and fissures spreading across some of my teeth!

“Have you been stressed and tense lately?” my dentist asked. “Not especially,” I replied. She explained to me that it looked like I’d been grinding my teeth quite regularly, causing those tell-tale cracks. She said I should think about my habits and that next visit she’d check to see if it had gotten worse.

I left the office and rode the train home, wondering about it. And as I thought, I noticed I was clenching my jaw! Do I do this all the time? I suddenly wondered. Could this unconscious habit be contributing to the continuing grinding-down of my teeth?

Then the thought occurred to me that maybe I’d been grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw ever since that bike accident decades ago. I thought back to my childhood dental history.

One of the complications of the whole ordeal was an achy jaw that popped and clicked whenever I opened and closed my mouth. My dentist at the time warned me that I might be grinding my teeth at night, making the pain worse. He encouraged me to wear my retainer when I slept, figuring I’d either outgrow the habit or that all the braces and retainers would align my jaw properly and take care of it.

Through the years, an occasional ache around my jaw (the TMJ or temporomandibular joint) would sometimes trigger headaches, and the popping noise annoyed me. Most of the time, though, I ignored it.

Not long after my face-plant and the initial “repairs”, I was sent to speech therapy to help me learn a neutral mouth position - a way of keeping my jaw a bit slack, my top and bottom teeth not touching, with the tip of my tongue gently rested on the roof of my mouth. My speech therapist gave me little sticky dots to place around my house and on my school books to remind me to check my mouth position and train me not to clench my jaw or grind my teeth.

Whatever is causing my clench-and-grind habit to recur, my dentist decided to fit me with a mouth-guard to wear at night. Oh man - flashbacks of retainers past! I wore the mouth-guard for awhile, but I actually think it makes me clench my jaw more! I started having more headaches and more jaw pain than ever! Anyone else have this problem?

I’ve now ditched the mouth-guard (don’t tell my dentist). I do want to slow down the spreading of cracks in my teeth. Maybe it’s time to bust out those little fluorescent stickers again!