06/03/2022
“TMD” stands for “Temporomandibular Disorder” or “Temporomandibular Dysfunction” with the group of muscles that surround and support the jaw. These muscles can get trapped in a chronic pain/spasm cycle and start hurting the surrounding areas of the jaw joint, headaches, neck pain etc.
The exact cause of a person's TMJ disorder is often difficult to determine. Your pain may be due to a combination of factors, such as genetics, arthritis or jaw injury. Many people who have jaw pain also tend to clench or grind their teeth (bruxism),which can be related to sleep issues.
Imagine if you have been running all day-how tight would your calf muscle be? Without proper stretching and care the overuse leads to hypertrophy and pain and loss of stability of joints. In the same way if you are clenching and grinding all day and night-the smallest movements of eating, smiling, yawning will result in pain. With the pain being multifactorial, it can be difficult to diagnose. Many people go to ENTs, neurologists, headache specialists, Chiropractors and more before coming to see us and feel frustrated with the soft diet and drugs or the nightguards their dentist gave them.
Also not all dentists treat TMJ, many just give you just a nightguard. Don’t get me wrong, we also do night guards but we do so much more-sleep analysis, nutrition ,LASER therapy, Tekscan-we analyze your bite, jaw, disc and get you comprehensive and personalized care.
We take people that are a 9/10 pain and can bring them down to a 4/10 many times with just 1-2 LASER appointments. Most likely, if you’ve been diagnosed with TMJ dysfunction you may have used pain-killers, medications or soft diets or Botox. All these offer just short term results for a chronic problem. TMJ will always be some part of your life. My goal is to make it a much smaller part of your life, keep it manageable, without medications and surgery. We are well versed in treating TMJ/TMD in a conservative fashion and with a 90% success rate!
Keep smiling!
