For patients of TMJ, there a variety of treatments that can be pursued to relieve symptoms such as pain. Some people prefer natural methods to medications however. For those types of patients, lifestyle modifications are always better than drugs or invasive procedures.
There are two main aspects of your lifestyle you’ll need to modify in order to treat TMJ. These are diet and jaw exercises. Dietary modification for the treatment is not widely practiced by physicians but changing a few things here and there in your diet can prove to be greatly beneficial.
The most important thing you have to look at when choosing your food is its consistency. The jaw, especially if in a fragile and damaged state, should not be overworked. Excessive straining on hard or chewy foods will result in the symptoms becoming even worse. That is why soft foods that require less effort to bite and chew are always preferable.
As for jaw exercises, these are simple and can be done in the comfort of your own home, in front of your mirror. They aim to relieve the tension and spasm in the jaw muscles thus helping to correct the jaw alignment. These should be observed regularly to produce tangible results.
Never neglect to consult your physician regarding your condition. Keep in mind that not all TMJ patients are the same and some conditions are more grave than others, therefore requiring a different type of treatment to alleviate the symptoms and prevent their recurrence.
Headaches associated with TMJ can be attributed to a variety of reasons. Most of these reasons unfortunately, do not respond to traditional pain medications. This article discusses the various TMJ-related causes of headaches and how to deal with them if they occur.
TMJ associated headaches are characterized by the severity of their pain. They can be so painful that they might keep you up at night and they also occur rather frequently. The first step in curing these headaches is understanding what causes them
The temporomandibular joint is the joint that moves your lower jaw to talk, eat and so on. It is liable to arthritis just like any other joint and this inflammatory condition can cause they surrounding muscles to be in a continuous state of spasm. This spasm will then result in pain radiating to the surrounding areas because of the constant state of tension. As a result, a TMJ patient can end up experiencing pain in the face, the neck, the shoulders, the back and of course, the dreaded dull aching headaches.
Another possible mechanism causing TMJ related headaches is by the pressure exerted on the nerves nearby the jaw joint and the ears as a result of the inflammatory process affecting the joint. Pain will then shoot up straight into you head causing excruciating headaches. These types can be trickier to cure, since the pain is nerve-related and not simply due to muscle tension.
Over the counter anti-inflammatory medications can work well but they can only relieve pain for so long before they are rendered ineffective by your chronic condition. Instead, here’s a quick home remedy for pain relief:
Fill up a plastic cup a with a small amount of water and then freeze it. Rub it in slow circular movements around your affected join area to relieve your pain. In addition, it’s advisable to perform regular jaw exercises for positive long term effects.
Understanding what a TMJ splint is
Patients with TMJ may have heard of the TMJ splint, also known as a appliance or mouth guard. It sounds like a good and efficient device but in many patients, it not only fails to relieve pain but can even make it worse in some cases
The explanation for this is quite simple. There are many underlying causes for TMJ, some of which may still be unknown. Therefore, in many cases of TMJ, the mouth guard may not be very effective because of the root of the problem, as in cases of a past history of trauma to the jaw area.
Many of these underlying causes also result in a deviation of the lower jaw. In these cases, the jaw fails to open or close normally because of the weakness and tension of the surrounding muscles.
A TMJ splint won’t work in this sort of condition because of the bite being crooked. Pain won’t be relieved permanently because the splint acts by keeping the mouth open for long durations of time. This will only cause temporary believe and will not succeed in keeping the pain at bay in the long run.
In advanced cases of TMJ, where arthritis has developed, the splint may actually end up worsening the symptoms instead of relieving them. It will then be painful to close the mouth and the end result may be having to keep your mouth in almost permanently open state.
While TMJ mouth guards may provide temporary relief, the long term side effects overshadow their temporary benefits. The true means to treat TMJ is to attack the root of the problem instead of using the equivalent of a disposable band-aid.
The symptoms of TMJ can be many and variable. This article examines the commonest five complaints patients with TMJ present with as well as some methods to relieve these symptoms.
Some of the commonest symptoms of TMJ include :
1. Painful jaw or jaw muscles: One of the absolute commonest symptoms in TMJ patients. This symptom results from weakness and damage of the jaw joint causing the reflex spasm of the muscles surrounding it. This pain is severe and may last for long periods ranging from days to weeks.
2.Headaches: These result from the pain being referred from the jaw muscles’ spasm where the pain extends up around the ear and back to the posterior part of the head leading to severe headaches.
3. Sounds such as clicking or popping when moving the jaw: These usually occur on top of some sort of traumatic damage to the jaw. Most types of trauma will eventually cause the jaw joint to produce these sounds over time as well as the characteristic locking of the jaw at certain positions during motion.
4.Toothaches: This is a misnomer because it isn’t really your teeth that are aching but it’s the flaring up of the nerves around your teeth because of the pain radiating from your jaw joint. It commonly occurs at the back part of the mouth.
5. Ear Pain- Again, this is a misnomer. It’s also pain radiating from your affected TMJ causing the nerves near the ear canal to produce pain.
These are the commonest TMJ disorder symptoms in brief. If you have any or some of these symptoms, try to consult a physician as soon as possible because you’re likely to develop even more symptoms over time.
There are many options for treatment from pain killers to surgical procedures. Exercises have minimal side effects and have proven to be greatly beneficial, so its better if you consult your doctor about these exercises before choosing something as radical as surgery.
I was tweeting back and forth with a TMJ sufferer on Twitter today (you can follow me here @tmjhelp) about TMJ treatments. I was explaining this person that I do not believe in prescribed medication for TMJ. I do believe that drugs can ease the pain for a while, but drugs will not cure your TMJ!
This person was telling me he had been on medication for a few years but it didn’t change anything and didn’t improve his TMJ.
After exchanging a few tweets, this user asked me what I thought was best. At this point, I told him that I wrote a TMJ ebook with TMJ exercises. He was really excited about my exercises. I gave him a couple exercises to practice and after a while, he asked me where he could get a copy of my ebook.
So I directed him to www.TMJ-Help.org so he can buy his own copy of the TMJ Help Program. He obviously checked out the site and got back to me a little later saying: “Not into a $49 ebook… I much prefer a $0 prescription”
I replied that it was fine. I didn’t even try to convince this person. It is so sad that some people still think that drugs will make them feel better. I don’t care much about these people. One day hopefully, they will realize that they’ve been wasting their time taking drugs that don’t do anything but masking the symptoms.
I was reading the news when I found this article about a California dentist that definitely took a whole different approach to treating TMJ. Here is a snippet:
Anderson, 49, has already been stripped of his dentist license, an action taken by the state in October, 2007, after his arrest by Woodland police. In the license revocation hearing, his civil attorney argued Anderson’s practice of sometimes giving chest massages to women patients was an effort to relieve the pain from those suffering Temporomandibular Joint disorder, or TMJ.
In hearing documents, however, one patient claimed Anderson complimented her on breast implants. He also apologized, via greeting card and telephone conversations, to some women patients who complained to him about what they believed was inappropriate touching.
“Massaging the breast of female patients is not within the scope of the practice of dentistry in any circumstance,” said Deputy Attorney General Jeff Phillips at the time.
A civil attorney representing one patient also took issue with Anderson’s defense of giving massages for pain relief.
“He was touching her because he was interested if she had breast augmentation and how the breast implants felt,” said attorney Noel Ferris. “He wasn’t talking about any muscle problem.”
Clearly not the way I recommend…
Temporomandibular joint disorders, TMJ for short, are among the most common chronic pain syndromes in the United States. The focal point where the skull bone and jaw bone interconnect, with assistance by the absorber disc, muscles and joints, function normally like a well oiled machine. Unfortunately this harmony can be disrupted by a multitude of reasons and then TMJ is one of possible consequences. The statistics verify that a predominant number of such disorders are acquired and not hereditary, therefore some relief must be possible and available to the sufferers, without a complicated and potentially lengthy and painful surgical procedure.
Your dental specialist for TMJ dysfunction in Clearwater can assist you with this malady and help you heal and overcome this painful ailment. The first important step is to have your dental professional run diagnostic tests with you, in order to recognize which cause led to the TMJ disorder. By diagnosing the cause, treatment options can be established and the healing process can begin. Treatment options can range from insertion of a custom fabricated intra oral orthotic, more commonly known as the splint, physical therapy, medication, up to stress management. The appropriate treatment combination can be evaluated and prescribed by your TMJ dysfunction specialist.
