Could TMJ Troubles & an Unstable Bite Be Harming Your Health?

For most Americans, November means things like Thanksgiving, football, Black Friday, and the start of the holiday season. For dentists – especially those like Dr. T – it also means

“TMJ” stands for temporomandibular joint, and you’ve got two of them – one on each side of your head. They’re the hinges that let you open and close your mouth. But they also allow sliding movement, such as moving your jaw side to side or jutting your chin forward. They even let you move your jaws in multiple directions simultaneously.

This makes it one of the most versatile joints in the human body, allowing for the intricate jaw movements we often take for granted in our daily lives. Many of us probably don’t even think about it too much – until problems arise.

Often, people with TMJ disorders (TMD) focus mainly on symptoms that affect the mouth and head: clicking and popping in the joints; chronic headaches, even migraines; tinnitus or ear pain; facial pain or pain/tenderness in the joints themselves. They may have a hard time eating, drinking, and speaking due to an inability to open their mouths fully.

But TMDs can – and do – manifest symptoms beyond the mouth and head, as well, that you might not even realize are related to problems with the jaw joints, not to mention the alignment and stability of the bite itself. So while most say that TMDs affect roughly 10% of the population, the actual number of people affected may be even higher.

Much higher.

Dr. T once had to grapple with such problems herself after childhood orthodontics left her with debilitating migraines that her mother – our own Dr. Carroll, who was then focused on traditional neuromuscular dentistry – ultimately traced to TMJ issues. That experience sparked Dr. T’s own curiosity and set her on the path that’s brought her to where she is today, helping others with TMDs through expert diagnostics and integrative treatments that can bring long-term improvements in mouth/body health. Her pursuit led her to train extensively in Gneuromuscular Dentistry with expert Dr. Chan, a clinically advanced use of neuromuscular science to treat complex problems at a far more detailed level.

You can hear her story for yourself and learn much more about the surprising ways in which TMJ disorders can manifest and affect whole body health and well-being on a recent episode of our biweekly podcast, Your Mouth Matters. After that, you’ll want to jump to part two of the discussion, in which she takes a deep dive into the innovative methods she uses for evaluating and correcting TMJ troubles.

A misaligned bite, TMD, and their related consequences aren’t something you just have to live with or try to “manage” with pain medication or therapies that never quite get to the root cause of the problem. Identify and address the root cause, and you can, as many of our patients have described it, “get your life back.”