See If Any of the Below Factors Apply to your Daily Life:
* Stress - Stress relating to your work and/or home life may cause you to be tense over the course of any day. Stress may cause you to grind or clench your teeth during the day or night that can cause you to wake up with pain and fatigue the following morning. If your teeth do not mesh perfectly the teeth that are out of alignment will receive the brunt of the force each and every time your
teeth come together. During the clenching and grinding that occurs while sleeping these forces are as high as hundreds of pounds/square inch. Try this: have someone just punch you in the shoulder mildly for a few minutes, then a half hour or longer. How sore do think your shoulder would get after 8 hours/day, 7 days/week, year in and year out. And this is at a mild force. Within the bite these forces are enormous, and they displace and stress the TM joints. The stress applied to the teeth, and the displaced joints both gets transmitted to the 5th cranial nerve, the trigeminal. This is the largest of the 12 cranial nerves, and it is the chief sensory nerve of the head and face. It is capable of referring pain and symptoms throughout the upper regions of the body. See Symptoms on site, and trigeminal nerve.
* Caffeine and Nicotine - Studies have been conducted concluding that use of caffeine and nicotine enhances TMJ pain. Caffeine is like drinking liquid stress, which causes more clenching and grinding of teeth. Nicotine closes off the small vessels that supply the TM Joints and other joints of body. This cuts off vital nutrients that help keep the joints healthy. If at all possible, try to avoid these two drugs entirely or at least evaluate your intake and try to decrease it. It has been shown that 1 cigarette significantly closes the small vessels of the body for hours.
* Yawning - This action unconsciously forces you to open your mouth as wide as possible, unless you control it. This can be accomplished by doing two things to prevent stress on your joints:
1. By placing one or two fingers underneath your chin and not allowing your mouth to open as wide as it normally would. Remember; do not try to keep the mouth completely shut since that will put strain on your jaw joints.
2. Placing your tongue on the roof of your mouth and concentrate on not opening as wide.
* Bite imbalances- (Including but not limited to)
o Crooked Teeth don't mesh properly with opposing arch or teeth.
o Malocclusions (bad bites) of all types: deep over bites, cross-bites, open bites, etc.
o Crowns or dental restorations that are to high, or not supportive enough
o Missing Teeth can totally malalign both arches. And when a couple teeth are missing on one side it can drastically reduce the vertical support causing compression and over stimulation of the joints on both sides and the trigeminal nerve on both sides.
* Abnormal Habits - (Conscious or Unconscious)
o Posture habits such as cradling a telephone between your head and shoulders.
o Grinding of teeth or bruxing during sleep
o Clenching of teeth
o Lip biting
o Fingernail biting
o Gum chewing (like running long distance on a sprained ankle)
o Sleeping on your stomach is hyper-extended poor posture for any neck.
* Trauma - Such as whiplash from auto accident, athletic injury, childhood accident or blow to the head can easily trigger the onset of TMJ problems, and yet the symptoms may not appear until years later.
* Protrusive Movements - This is jutting your jaw forward. Movements such as smoking or playing a musical instrument like the flute, clarinet, etc. exaggerate protrusive movements and increase your jaw pain and muscle fatique.
* Synovitis - Inflammation of the joint lining.
* Systematic Diseases - Such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Osteoarthritis, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Strokes and Myasthenia Gravis.
* Athletics - Any form of athletics where blows to the head or jaw are common.
o Boxing - repeated blows to the head.
o Football - multiple high impact collisions with the head, neck and back involved.
o Basketball - elbows to the face.
o Weight Lifting - people tend to clench their teeth intensely when lifting.
o Soccer Players - kicks and shots to the face and bouncing ball off of head.
o Aerobics - high impact aerobics such as running, jumping, step aerobics, etc.
If any of these activities cause the meniscus to be displaced or dislocated you have just hyper-stimulated the protect mode of the trigeminal nerve and even more symptoms are likely to follow.
The good news is there is a treatment that still can eliminate 90% of the pain and other symptoms even though it cannot recapture the meniscus. This is only possible because the mouth is the only place in the entire body that the skeleton comes through the tissue or skin. The teeth are part of the hard structure of the skeleton. We can increase the vertical height of the teeth and make them mesh properly and reduce the stress on the trigeminal nerve and the prevent some of the over compression of the TM joints. This keeps the trigeminal from continually over firing and keeping the pain anxiety cycle continuing endlessly. It's a long-term cure for most of the symptoms listed on this site.
See also: Symptoms of TMJ
