Questions about Biting the Tongue

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I have read it is common for people with epilepsy to bite their tongues during a seizure.

I have not been diagnosed with epilepsy but I have bitten my tongue while sleeping about 3-4 times over the past couple of months. I was wondering:

1. Does biting the tongue only occur in people with epilepsy, or is it something that can happen to other people as well?

2. If it was epilepsy, would you wake up from the pain? Each time it happened, I woke up to the pain and knew I had chomped down hard on my tongue.

I have had some other possible symptoms of epilepsy (such as muscle jerks and twitches in the morning) so this is of some interest to me.
 
Tongue-biting can happen in circumstances other than epilepsy:
1. It can result from grinding of teeth (bruxism), which in some cases be an extension of a nervous habit chewing or clenching the teeth. (This in turn can be caused by things like stress, caffeine, nutritional deficiency, etc.)
2. Mechanical factors -- large tongue, sharp teeth.
3. Obstructive sleep apnea -- cheeks and tongue can be injured during violent efforts to breathe.

You might wake-up from the pain if it was epilepsy-related -- folks have different pain thresholds, and if your sleep is otherwise restless you would be more likely to be roused.

It would be great if you had a sleep study done to get a better sense of what's going on.
 
My son never wakes from a nocturnal seizure or maybe better put, goes into deep sleep after seizure…So if he wakes stiff, 1st thing he checks is his tongue...and well, yes we (who is with him) confirm a seizure..and not all T/C seizure lead to toungue bite (if mild)

Agree with Nakamova, if you don’t know what is causing it, sleep study would be mega beneficial.
 
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I bit my tongue so hard in the past that my tongue was so swollen and scarred. And this was before I knew I as having grand mals in my sleep but I haven't had one in months now. I can still see bite marks in my tongue where I bit it so hard.
 
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