/24-7PressRelease/ - June 28, 2008 - Nearly half the population of the United States suffers from chronic headaches. About eighty percent of them are due to muscle tension. But did you know that most tension headaches are caused by a problem with your dental bite?
Your bite is the way your upper and lower teeth come together. The lower jaw connects to the skull in a ball-and-socket joint, the jaw joint, which can be out of alignment. Between the ball of the lower jaw and the socket in the skull, there is a cartilage pad which cushions the two bone surfaces. It can be knocked out of position by an impact to the side of the head.
The jaw joint can also be slowly pushed out of position by a habit of tooth grinding or clenching. Misaligned teeth can also do it. The causes of a misaligned jaw joint are many and not always fully understood. You may have a misaligned jaw joint without realizing it, and it may have caused your headaches for years.
How does your dental bite cause a headache?
The jaws are of course moved by jaw muscles, and if you have a misaligned jaw joint, for whatever reason, the jaw muscles cannot bring your teeth together properly. There's discomfort in your bite, and perhaps upper and lower teeth are bumping each other and causing premature wear and tear.
Several large nerves with many branches run through the jaw, face, head, neck and shoulder areas. When the jaw muscles are chronically strained from trying to bite correctly and continually failing, inflammation builds up. This puts pressure on the nerves, and you feel pain, often a headache. This condition is known as Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ or TMD).
Other symptoms of TMD
Each person with TMD has a unique cluster of symptoms.
• Tired or sore muscles in your jaw upon awakening from sleep
• Grinding teeth
• Jaw joints that click or pop
• Head or scalp is painful and tender to the touch
• Pain behind the eyes
• Earaches
• Ringing in the ears
• Neck pain
• Shoulder pain
• Tingling in the hands
Neuromuscular dentistry
Most dentists cannot diagnose or treat TMD, for lack of training and proper technology. To get an accurate diagnosis you need to find an experienced
neuromuscular dentist. If you are browsing dental sites on the web, look for one which has the LVI logo. LVI stands for Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies, and it is the world's premier school for dentists to learn neuromuscular dentistry. The logo clearly has LVI on its image of a Greek-style building.
What does a neuromuscular dentist do?
He or she will use the K7 Evaluation System to test, measure, and record your jaw muscle activity and jaw joint sounds. A great deal of data will be collected using electrodes. You will be given a patient's printout of it all, with understandable graphics and notes. The dentist will analyze it and determine whether or not you have TMD.
A neuromuscular dentist is often a cosmetic dentist too, and therefore approaches your dental care with a different perspective from that of most dentists. Such a dentist looks not just at your teeth and gums, but also at your jaw joint and its related muscles and nerves, at your overall facial structure, even at your coloring and personality.
If your neuromuscular/cosmetic dentist diagnoses you with TMD, she will treat it with your smile's beauty in mind. Dental health is the underpinning of dental beauty. Your treatment(s) to correct your misaligned bite may include a custom orthotic to wear at night, which would retrain the jaw muscles. It may include physical therapy for the same purpose, and to relax your entire neck, face and shoulder area. There would probably be dental work to reshape or reposition teeth, and perhaps orthodontic work to realign all your teeth.
With a properly aligned jaw joint, you can be pain-free, maybe for the first time in years. Why not contact an experienced
neuromuscular dentist who treats people from any state, giving special care to out-of-town guests at his office.
If you think you may be suffering from TMJ,
contact Dr. Guy Spinner for more information about your treatment options.
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