TMJ & Sleep Therapy Centre
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TMJ & Sleep Therapy Centre
Request an Appointment Click to CallTemporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ) is a disorder of the nerves and jaw muscles caused by injury to the temporomandibular joint. The joint is the connection between the jawbone and the skull.
The injured TMJ leads to pain with chewing, crackling, popping, and clicking of the jaw, tooth grinding (bruxism), swelling on the sides of the face, nerve inflammation, Morning headaches, including migraines, and sometimes eustachian tube dysfunction.
TMJ head pain and jaw pain are two of the most common TMJ symptoms. Sufferers often describe a dull, aching pain in the jaw joint and surrounding muscles. This discomfort can intensify when chewing, speaking, or simply opening the mouth wide.
Some people report a feeling of tightness or restricted movement — as if their jaw is "stuck." To alleviate this symptom, try gentle jaw exercises and apply warm compresses to relax the muscles. Avoiding hard or chewy foods can also give your jaw a much-needed break.
Many people confuse TMJ headaches with tension or stress headaches. The pain can range from mild discomfort to completely unbearable. Over-the-counter pain relievers may offer temporary relief, but addressing the root cause is crucial. Stress management techniques, such as meditation or yoga, can help relax jaw muscles and reduce headache frequency.
Academic Stress and Teeth Grinding. Teenagers and school students are well known to pull an "all-nighter" before a big examination or to "stress out" regarding grades. That stress may lead to tooth grinding (bruxism) that wears down the teeth.
Poor Posture. Chronic poor posture, particularly hunching or slouching, can have far-reaching consequences beyond just back discomfort. It may significantly impact your jaw alignment, potentially leading to temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD) symptoms.
Research from the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) suggests that improper spinal positioning — a result of poor posture — can place undue stress on the jaw joint. This misalignment can trigger a cascade of issues, including TMJ headaches, which are often characterized by pain in the jaw, face, and surrounding areas.
Tax-Time Stress and Clenching. Clenching your teeth while worrying about filing your taxes – in conjunction with all of your alternative financial burdens – might be putting a burden on your mandibular joint.
Stress usually manifests itself in such behaviors as clenching the teeth, according to the AGD. In small doses, the habit is not harmful. However, long term, it will result in TMD.
Supersizing: opening too wide to bite into super-size sandwiches might cost you more than you bargained for! Taking bites that are too huge to chew could lead to jaw and muscle pain and worsen already existing TMD conditions.
Folks with TMD should cut food into smaller portions that are easier to chew to avoid opening their mouths too wide.
Frequent Drug Use: The use of amphetamines, like cocaine, is known to extend parafunctional activity like teeth clenching and grinding. This might increase an underlying TMD problem or increase the incidence of a problem.
TMJ dysfunction, in its broadest terms, is broken down into pure joint and bone problems or muscular problems. Muscular issues tend to be the contributive agent more than 90% of the time, which amounts to parafunctional habits like clenching or grinding of teeth.
A vast majority of these abnormal habits are stress-related. The bone and joint-related problems might have caused the degeneration of the gristle disc or the bone surface of the joint. An MRI can often be a great diagnostic tool if the problems are chronic and severe.
However, in the early stages, simple splint therapy is all that’s required, and it's easily reversible.
Many TMJ syndrome sufferers do not have to endure the pain they're suffering from for so long. At Raleigh TMJ, we offer a series of TMJ treatments to help alleviate symptoms.
The main reason for this suffering is that the healthcare provider they visited failed to perceive how the ligaments, nerves, and muscles work. Since they weren't conscious of how the soft tissues around the mandibular joint radiate out and affect other bones and joints in the body, they couldn't properly diagnose the problem.
The result is that once the TMJ is affecting the joint, ligaments, nerves, and muscles, the pain is going to spread out to other areas of the body, which are connected to those which are surrounding the temporomandibular joint.
The solution to the problem is to treat the TMJ properly. The headaches, facial pain, neck pain, and other issues can all be addressed once the root cause is prohibited.
For this reason, you've got to treat the TMJ to eliminate the pain and symptoms. If you want to know more, visit our office in Cary, NC. Also, you can get on your way to treating the condition you suffer from by calling us to make an appointment.
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TMJ & Sleep Therapy Centre of Raleigh-Durham
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