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How To Avoid TMJ

If you’ve been researching TMJ for some time and how to treat it, you’ve probably found one overall statement from every reliable source:

There is no reliable cure for TMJ!

Your doctor is probably doing all he can. He’s most likely given you strong pain relief pills and maybe some muscle relaxation medicines. But there is not much more he can do.

All these medicines fail. Even if they reduce the pain a little for a while in the beginning, they’ll stop working little by little as your body gets immune to them.

Your dentists may try his best to help you by making a dental implant. These implants are mostly meant to save your teeth from grinding down. It is not a permanent cure and usually doesn’t relief the pain, although it may be well worth it to save your teeth.

So why do TMJ experts fail you?

You can’t really blame them tough.

TMJ is one of the most complex conditions you’ll ever find.

Every TMJ patient has different original causes for his or her condition. And not only one cause or accident. There are probably several contributing factors causing your pain. Both physical and emotional.

Overwhelming feelings like stress, grief, or intense anger are often basic triggers of TMJ. Injuries, like car accidents or sport injuries are another common triggers.

You may not even have noticed at all when your condition began to develop. Maybe you bumped into something but didn’t give it a second thought. Few days later you began to experience pain. Most often, there is no way to know the original trigger.

Okay, that’s enough. Lets talk about what we DO KNOW!

What we know for a fact about TMJ is, the jaw joints are always misplaced in some way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be complete misplacement (although sometimes it is). Small wrong misplacement can be enough. And the symptoms can be both nerve racking and painful…

• Clicking, popping jaw joints • Grating sounds • Jaw locking opened or closed • Extreme pain in cheek muscles • Uncontrollable jaw or tongue movements • Clenching or grinding at night • Discomfort or pain to any of these areas • Limited opening • Inability to open the jaw smoothly or evenly • Jaw deviates to one side when opening • Inability to “find bite” with teeth • Frequent, migraine type headaches

… are just few obvious symptoms of TMJ.

Another thing we know for a fact is, the jaw muscles are always very tense. It varies how painful they’re or if they’re torn but they’re always too tense. These weak, tense jaw muscles will push your jaw further out of position and make the problem worse.

This is similar to back problems. Most people who suffer from back problems have weak, tense muscles. The back problem may have started by using bad position when working, by minor injury, or something else that didn’t seem very serious at the time.

To avoid the mild pain, the muscles in the back get tense. It jut happens. This is a function nature gave us to deal with pain. The real problem begins when the tension in the back muscles push the spine (even just a little bit) out of place. What should only have been minor problem if the person had exercised and strengthen the back muscles, is now chronic, serious condition.

The same thing happens with TMJ. What might have started out as minor problem (maybe you got hit in the jaw or had short period of intense stress) is now becoming chronic problem, because the jaw muscles now push your jaw out of place.

This, then leads to series of other problems.

The misplaced jaw causes unbalance between the left and the right jaw joints. It’s like driving a car having one wheel turn left and the other right. You can imagine the strain this puts on the wheels and the steering. Well, you know the strain it puts on You.

Nerves get squeezed. Either directly by the misplaced jaw or the tense muscles around it. The same nerves lie around the jaw as the ears. The same nerves that control the balance system. That’s why you may experience dizziness or lack or balance for example?

No muscle is an island. They’re all connected, either directly or through the nerve system. If your jaw muscles get stiff, all the other muscles around it will tense up too. You’ve probably experienced your shoulders and neck become more tense, as your TMJ has grown worse. This is only one example.

Less noticeable is the tension in all the small muscles in your head. Including your other face muscles, tongue, throat and even eyes. You may also feel like your throat is narrower now than before (you’re not crazy it’s true).

As this tension builds up little by little, you’ll begin to feel the secondary symptoms of TMJ. Including…

• voice fluctuations • sore throat without infection • swallowing difficulties • bloodshot eyes • tongue pain • balance problems, “vertigo”, dizziness, or disequilibrium • feeling of foreign object in throat • clogged, stuffy, “itchy” ears, feeling of fullness • watering of the eyes

…plus hundreds of other secondary symptoms!

There is no way to heal your TMJ, unless you loosen up and strengthen all the muscles connected to the jaw and the jaw muscles.

This can be accomplished using easy, yet extremely effective exercises:

1)The jaw exercises are self explained. They strengthen and loosen up the jaw muscles directly, so the muscles will not push the jaw joint out of place but guide them into right position.

2)The tongue exercises, loosen up the tongue muscle. Even healthy people have too much tension in their tongue. People who suffer from TMJ are way off balance there.

3)The throat exercises strengthen the throat. The throat muscles are some of these ‘hidden’ muscles we seldom pay attention to. They’re however extremely important and if they’re stiff, you’ll suffer several symptoms in your throat.

4)The neck and shoulder muscles are directly connected to the Jaw muscles. These muscles are usually the first one to freeze when the jaw muscles get stiff. They can, however, easily be put back into regular function using powerful neck and shoulder exercises.

5)The breathing exercises will nurture and loosen up all the muscles in your head. What’s more, they’ll will also relief any emotional stress built up in your muscles. You’ll be amazed how effective they’re.

These exercises have been practiced successfully by thousands of people suffering from TMJ and it still surprises me how effective they are, considering how many causes lie behind this complex condition.

But before you celebrate, let me be brutally honest with you.

You won’t be totally pain free over night (although it’s amazing how quickly these exercises sometimes work). It will take some time to reverse the tension that has been building up in your muscles for long time (even before you noticed any symptoms.

The exercises rebuild your jaw function little by little.

The the muscles around the jaw must first regain their old strength and flexibility. Then the jaw muscle will guide your jaw joints into their natural healthy position. This usually happens slowly and gradually.

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