Guide

You can't stop grinding if you don't know it's happening.

You can't relax a jaw you're not awake for. Guards protect your teeth from grinding — they don't reduce it. Knowing when and how much you grind is where change starts.

Take the 2-minute jaw quiz How biofeedback works

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The Problem

Why nothing has worked yet

Your dentist gave you a night guard. Maybe you tried stress management. But sleep grinding isn't just about stress — it comes out of sleep itself, and how easily your jaw muscles fire. You can't willpower your way out of something that happens while you're asleep.

A cue you can feel is enough to reach a jaw that is working while you sleep — you don't have to be awake to let go of it, and one of our first users described it as someone lightly pulling the hairs above your forehead. In our first cohort, 13 of 17 gave the lowest possible score to “did the cues wake you up?”

Why it happens

The jaw is where you feel it. It isn't where it starts.

Your jaw doesn't decide to do this. Your nervous system does — mostly without asking you first. It isn't your bite. It isn't weak willpower. And it's never one thing.

Stress & emotionThe best-established piece — for daytime clenching. At night it colours the picture rather than flipping the switch.
Sleep & breathingMost of the night's activity clusters in lighter sleep, around the moments your brain briefly surfaces.
Daytime loadEight hours of quiet bracing at a desk doesn't politely clock off at bedtime.
What you drink & takeAlcohol, caffeine, nicotine and some medications are all associated with more jaw activity.
GeneticsSome of this simply runs in families. It isn't something you did.
Posture & habitsWhere your head, neck and tongue sit changes what the jaw is quietly asked to hold.

Single-cause fixes keep disappointing people for the same reason. Fix the bite, manage the stress, buy the guard — each aims at one input and hopes it was the one. We'd rather measure the thing they all end up in.

The research behind this

The Jaw Behaviour Quiz

Two minutes to a clearer picture of what your jaw is doing.

Fourteen questions about your days, your nights and what you put into them — and a read on where yours points. A starting point, not a diagnosis.

Get my result Or see the whole system

14 questions · about 2 minutes · free, no account needed

1 of 14

Do you wake up with a tired, stiff or sore jaw?

Most mornings
Sometimes
Rarely or never

Get my result

The pathway

Three steps for night grinding

Measure it first, then change it. Nothing here starts from a guess.

01 · See it
Jaw Activity Assessment
Find out how much you actually grind — events, duration and intensity, measured over two nights in your own bed. The app's daytime check-ins run alongside — they map the half you're awake for, and the sensor takes that half over directly once the Day Biofeedback Programme ships.
- Two nights in your own bed
- Your Jaw Score and your Jaw Activity Report, yours to keep
- The Results Walkthrough — a 15-minute call to go through your results
Read about the Assessment
02 · Change it · nights
The Night Biofeedback Programme
Then work on it: twelve weeks of gentle cues timed to your own grinding pattern, so the habit gets interrupted while it is happening. Release work in the app runs alongside, free — guided exercises, and tracking for whether either half is shifting.
- Starts from your own Assessment, never from a guess
- Twelve weeks of biofeedback tuned to your own jaw, in small groups
- A cue the moment your jaw goes to work — so the habit gets interrupted, not just recorded
Read about the Programme
03 · Alongside · days
The daytime half, in the app
The nights are one half. The other happens while you are awake, and it does not wait for a device — check-ins that catch a clenched jaw while you can still feel it, release work you can do at a desk, and a record of whether either half is shifting.
- Daytime check-ins, at varied moments so they keep catching you
- Guided release and jaw-relaxation exercises
- Yours whether or not you ever measure a night
Read about the app

Why JawSense

What two measured nights tell you

We don't just protect your teeth. We help you understand and reduce the grinding itself.

Multi-night home monitoring — captures what single sleep studies miss

Based on EMG biofeedback — a technique used and studied since the 1980s

Cues at sensory level — designed not to wake you

UKRI Innovate UK funded for device development

Track your patterns, triggers, and progress over time

Start for free with the app. Add the device when ready.

~21%

of adults grind or clench in their sleep

Higher when measured in a sleep study

Two nights

before they agree

One sleep study can't capture this

Decades

of published research behind the approach

Our own validation is in progress

2,600+

people in the community

Growing mostly by word of mouth

Real Results

"It's so interesting to see how much I'm actually clenching and grinding my teeth. I finally understand why I feel so bad in the morning."
— Device user

Backed by

Frequently Asked Questions

Can anything actually stop sleep grinding?

Night guards protect your teeth from wear — that's real, and worth having. They don't reduce how much you grind, and with a hard splint some people clench more for a while. A gentle cue in the lighter sleep phases can help without waking you.

Won't a device wake me up?

No. Grinding happens during micro-arousals — brief moments of lighter sleep. JawSense ONE delivers gentle cues precisely during these moments, which your brain processes without fully waking you — and they're calibrated to your own threshold.

My dentist says it's stress. Is that true?

Partly, sometimes. By day, people clench when they concentrate, when they sit badly, out of habit, or simply because that's how they're built — stress can play a part, but it's rarely the whole story. At night it's more complicated: grinding in your sleep is an interplay between the sleep patterns in your brain and how easily your jaw muscles fire. Stress can play a part, but genes, sleep quality, medication and things like alcohol, caffeine or nicotine can matter at least as much. Less stress is good for you, but for most people it doesn't stop the grinding and clenching.

How is this different from a sleep study?

A single-night sleep study (PSG) runs €700–2,900 privately and only captures one night. But how much you grind swings from one night to the next, so a single night is a snapshot rather than a picture. JawSense ONE monitors multiple nights at home, giving you the full picture that a single study misses.

Is the app free?

The free part stays free: check-ins through the day, a symptom diary, the first exercises, and the basics of what your jaw does. No card, no trial that runs out. Premium adds the full exercise and education libraries and your statistics — a subscription that supports our small team's research.

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