Encouraging news to report!
It all started about a month ago when I caught another annoying head cold. In the interest of encouraging a good night’s sleep, I stopped wearing the SleepGuard for about a week, allowing the Nyquil to work its wonders. During this time, I wore my bite guard each night in case of clenching. The cold subsided after about 10 days, but I was hesitant to start wearing the SleepGuard again. I just didn’t feel like dealing with the beeping!
I took a break from wearing the SleepGuard for almost a month.
When I decided to try it again, I put my jury-rigged contraption on and hoped for the best.
When I woke up in the morning, I had: ZERO grinding events!?
The device definitely was responding to clenching, because it still beeped when I consciously clenched. But this was unprecedented.
I took a look at the configuration and realized that I had been using the level 4 setting instead of level 3. Strange. I don’t recall changing the setting to a higher threshold for clenching. But still. Zero grinding events? This was very interesting. For the past week I’ve been wearing the SleepGuard at level 4, and consistently getting readings under 6 grinding events every night. What I think is happening is that this setting is drastically reducing the amount of false positives that I had been experiencing before, where the sensor would be set off by fitful sleep and bad connections.
Either that, or by taking a month break, my lizard brain started learning new behavior. I am cautiously optimistic.
I was googling for reviews on the sleepguard and found your detailed blog entries. Thanks for recording your experience. I hope you are still clench free. I am debating trying it…been grinding and clenching for 20 years and hate the mouthguards. Thanks again!
Two years later, and I should probably write a new report. Essentially, I stopped using the SleepGuard because it was just too annoying. There are two issues that I really couldn’t get past: The fact that I could never get a reliable connection between the sensors and my skin all night, (my forehead is narrower than the headband is designed for) and that the alarm for lost connection was the same as the alarm for grinding events.
Also, I noticed that in the months of wearing the SleepGuard without my bite guard, I had caused some damage to my molars. When I run my tongue along them, there are some subtle new “sharp” spots. So, even though my grinding events had decreased, I was still doing damage to my teeth with the few events I had. I figured that if I was going to go back to my bite guard, I would give the SleepGuard a break. I haven’t worn it for a year now, and I’m almost certain the grinding has come back!
If SleepGuard engineers were able to fix the two main issues I have, I would consider using it again.