Are You Wearing Down Your Teeth? A Guide to Attrition, Abrasion, and Abfraction

Tooth wear rarely occurs overnight and can have a significant impact on oral health. However, according to Stanisic (2025), over a quarter of adults report grinding their teeth while awake, while an even greater number do so while asleep.

Understanding common dental issues like these can help reduce their prevalence by providing improved ways to ensure better oral health maintenance. So, what can Batavia adults do to mitigate this risk and prevent dental erosion?

Below, we provide a guide to this issue and offer protective dental habits to help protect your teeth. By the end, you should contact the dentist's office of Ronald A. Murphy, DMD, for a checkup and ensure that your teeth are in peak condition.

Early Recognition of Tooth Wear

Tooth wear is more than simply cosmetic chips, as most people in Batavia think. Minor damage and erosion, for example, can start to expose dentin, the underlying layer of the teeth, potentially causing lingering sensitivity that can lead to discomfort. Recognizing this early allows you to take action, supporting more long-term oral health maintenance steps and helping you to avoid more complex restoration later.

One of the most common mistakes people make is not understanding that most cavities do not come from breakages. Instead, they tend to stem from the acid that bacteria living on the teeth form. The chemicals they produce begin to erode the outer layers of the tooth, revealing more of the underlying layer.

However, there are other ways that teeth can break. Physical damage is always a possibility, and can occur due to mechanical forces, such as trauma, or stress, such as through grinding one's teeth.

The damage from this not only impacts the teeth and jaw, but also, with enough time, untreated wear can gradually affect the height of the teeth, altering the shape of the face and potentially causing jaw joint discomfort as it sits in a position it has never had before. Therefore, catching it early is essential, as it allows you to modify your dental habits to slow or even reverse this process before your tooth enamel is lost completely.

Signs of Enamel Wear and Tear to Look For

When reviewing your tooth help, look for thicker, opaque lines close to the edge that you bite. Often, these can signal early decalcification, which typically results from consuming acidic drinks such as sodas or juices.

Then, check whether your molars have shallow cups rather than deep spaces. If that is the case, you may have been eroding your teeth due to grinding or food choices.

To track these signs, use your smartphone. Take photos each month, comparing the differences between each, in the same light. You can also take these to your dentist during your yearly checkup to provide them with an estimate of the ongoing changes you have been experiencing.

If you suddenly notice that you are more sensitive to cold on your teeth than usual, that can also be a sign that you are experiencing teeth issues. When cold air passes over damaged teeth, for example, it triggers a pain response in areas where dentin is exposed.

You also want to watch out for consistent discomfort when eating citrus. This feeling can signal that you are experiencing erosion and that the acid is uncomfortable for the lower layers of your teeth.

Different Types of Wear

As well as understanding why wear happens, and what it feels like, you should know that multiple different types of wear can occur. Knowing how to recognize each allows you to guide your treatment and follow along with what your dentist is discussing during your visit.

The three main types of wear are:

• Attrition
• Abrasion
• Abfraction

Each of them has different causes, progresses at varying speeds, and requires different treatment methods.

Attrition

Attrition is the loss of tooth material due to ongoing direct damage to its surface, often due to grinding, or "bruxism". This bruxism forces opposing teeth to slide against one another, which can wear down enamel into flat, shiny surfaces, but also cause other damage.

Grinding teeth like this tends to spike during times of stress and can be exacerbated by excessive caffeine consumption. Unfortunately, both of these are very commonplace in office settings where people are trying to perform as much work as possible.

Eventually, this damage can shorten the dimensions of the teeth, and the stress it causes the jaw can lead to several forms of discomfort, including morning headaches due to a change in pressure from previous resting positions.

One of the best ways to avoid this issue is to invest in night guards. These protect the teeth by distributing bite forces and reducing the friction against any specific point of the teeth, and protecting the enamel.

Abrasion

This word refers to scraping, which usually occurs when people brush their teeth. In many cases, this is due to:

• Overzealous scrubbing
• Using a brush with bristles that are too hard

Hard-bristle brushes can cause significant damage to enamel, especially when paired with "whitening" toothpastes, which often work by removing the outer and most protective layer of the teeth. Using a medium or, preferably, soft-bristled brush can help reduce the harm caused and protect teeth from harm, as they can often recalcify at a faster rate than they receive damage.

Also, ensure that you brush in a way that reduces the force you apply to the thinner areas of your teeth. While most people "scrub" left and right, you should go up and down, or in circles, instead. Another benefit of this is that you can clean between the teeth and along the gum line, which you might otherwise miss.

Finally, do not scrub for too long. Most dentists recommend spending no more than two to three minutes to clean all your teeth. However, if you find yourself often going for too long or not long enough, try using a timer or an electric brush with a two-minute timer. Dividing your teeth into sections can also help, with you checking off cleaning the:

• Top-left
• Top-middle
• Top-right
• Bottom-left
• Bottom-middle
• Bottom-right

Either spend ten seconds on each area, then repeat it a second time after spitting, or brush for twenty seconds in each region.

Abfraction

Tooth abfraction is the loss of tooth structure at the neck of the tooth, around the gum line. Abfraction tends to occur due to flexing and stress, often appearing as a result of biting and grinding, especially when bites are misaligned, as these can cause areas of stress on the teeth that would otherwise distribute this force in other circumstances.

Lesions, or cracks and holes, tend to appear on one side of the mouth first. These will match your dominant chewing side, as you will be using these teeth more often. They appear as V-shaped notches that are usually very hard to reach with a toothbrush, making them all the more perilous, as you will not be cleaning off bacteria as frequently.

Visiting a skilled dentist is one of the most effective ways to address this issue. They can often use resin bonding to seal exposed sections of the tooth's dentin, which also redistributes the tooth load and can help in the long term. However, with enough damage, you may need to consider orthodontics or other adjustments to correct the underlying stresses and perfect the bite.

Protective Dental Habits to Prevent Tooth Wear

There are several ways that the average person can ensure that they get the best possible protection for their teeth. However, the best advice may be to adopt better habits related to your oral hygiene and diet.

Consistent brushing helps protect your teeth against dental erosion by re-hardening them with fluoride from the toothpaste. For example, recent studies by Creeth (2024) have shown that using fluoride mouthwash after fluoride toothpaste increases remineralization and enhances the hardness of the teeth. For these reasons, many dentists highly recommend fluoridated products to ensure the long-term health of your teeth.

Local Batavian water sources also tend to be fluoridated, with local government sources reporting that faucets output, on average, 0.98 parts per million fluoride. This approach has consistently been proven to promote stronger teeth in the general population and is considered a popular method for enhancing local health.

Also, make sure to review the beverages you consume. A study by Memon (2025) even found that some sports drinks can increase the risk of dental erosion, highlighting the variety of circumstances in which one might need to be cautious. Instead, schedule acidic treats with meals, as the saliva you produce helps to reduce the effect a drink could have on your teeth by diluting it.

Keep Your Smile Strong for Longer

Finally, remember that the best way to receive personalized advice for your unique oral health is to schedule regular visits to your local dentist, at least once every year.

Ronald A. Murphy, DMD, can assist you with both regular dental visits and, if necessary, restorative steps to address tooth wear. With his expertise, he can identify potential issues before they become problems. So, schedule your check today and keep your teeth working for you, rather than against you.