It may well range from a vague, achy feeling throughout your head, neck and shoulders to severe pain that you just would swear was a migraine. The reality is, your painful symptoms could very likely be brought on by TMJ. And it will possibly range in intensity from a minor irritation to enough pain to almost put you down for the count and make each day living difficult.
TMJ stands for Temporo Mandibular Joint and by itself will not be an issue because everyone has two of them. It is the joint where the lower movable jaw bone, or mandible, is attached to the skull with a sling of muscles, ligament and a capsular cartilage. It’s when the joint becomes dysfuntional that issues arise and actually the condition has grow to be generally known as TMD or Temporo Mandubular Dysfunction Syndrome. And more recently many medical and dental professionals are referring to this broad group of painful symptoms as MPDS – MyoFascial Pain and Dysfunction Syndrome.
The rationale is, that it’s being found more often that the pain will not be originating from the joint. The joint was the unique suspect because again and again when individuals with painful symptoms were being examined it was noticed that the jaw joint was making a clicking, popping or grating sound. So where there’s smoke there’s gotta be fire, right? Fallacious! When healthy people without symptoms were examined their TM Joints made the identical sounds in in regards to the same proportion as those individuals with pain. So it’s not at all times the joint.
One other thing that’s being touted as a explanation for the symptoms is an improper bite, or malocclusion, causing stress on the TM joint resulting in the symptoms. And while it’s true that a poor bite may cause the ligaments surrounding the joint to stretch or be stressed this may occasionally not be the cause. There are a lot of instances of people that don’t have any teeth, and don’t wear their dentures with none history of pain. The identical may be said of individuals with many missing teeth or severely misaligned jaws.
So if it is not the joint and it is not the bite, then what may be causing all of this discomfort? Quite simply, muscle spasms. And the muscle spasms are the results of either physical or psychological stress. There’s an enormous complex of nerves throughout the pinnacle and spasms may cause referred pain anywhere along these nerve branches.
The final result could be very painful situation but the excellent news is there could also be some very easy ways to get relief and break the cycle of pain. The important thing to relief lies to find the origin of your pain. As I discussed earlier the pain may be brought on by stressors, either physical or psychological so let’s go about relieving a few of these:
- First, and maybe the best key, is to be certain you’re adequately hydrated. Although water consumption has increased only a few people drink a full 8 glasses of water a day. And plenty of experts feel that every soft drink, coffee or alcoholic beverage cancels out an equal amount of water. How does dehydration result in the facial pain related to TMJ? Well the right amount of water helps flush out toxins, lactic acid and the byproducts of muscle activity. A buildup of those toxins within the facial muscles may cause fatigued muscles to spasm or not allow them to loosen up. So, drink up!
- Many victims report increased discomfort after they get up within the morning that finally ends up resulting in a day long head ache or neck ache. If the pain is more severe on one side of the face or neck it could be brought on by your sleep position or habits. Should you sleep in your side or rest your jaw on a hand laid in your pillow when you are asleep the muscles on that side of your face might be stretched. The joint on the alternative side of your face might be displaced into the socket in a painful manner. So the muscles on the side next to the pillow will try and contract to return to their “rest length” and relieve the pain on the socket on the alternative side. Repeatedly, just becoming aware of this problem and changing your sleep position will relieve the symptoms.
- Should you get up with pain on each side of your head or face or in case your teeth feel sore or loose, you’re probably clenching or bruxing when you are asleep. Many dentists will prescribe a bite guard for this but this really only serves to guard the teeth and provides a cushion for the joint. The muscle spasms remain.
- Should you take stress to bed with you it’ll get worked out with nocturnal clenching. The important thing here is to search out something that relieves and relaxes you before you fall asleep. A hot bath, herbal tea or a glass of wine are all helpful to begin the relief process. Take your worry hat off half-hour before the time you propose on going to bed and make a vow to think only about enjoyable past experiences.
- Your facial muscle spasms have a spotlight, locate the main target and begin knocking out the pain. TMJ pain will not be spread uniformly across the affected area of the pinnacle and neck. Some areas might be more painful than others and one spot might be essentially the most painful of all. To seek out the focus, start pressing along the painful areas of your face. Start at the bottom area of pain and work your way towards the highest of your head. One area will feel extremely tender to your touch – that is the focus. You’ll be able to concentrate your relief effort on this spot and the remainder of the pain will melt away. Start off by placing a warm compress on the world for about 20 minutes, after which massage the world together with your thumb. Apply maximum pressure and move in a circular motion. Then finish off with something like Ben Gay or Icy Hot. Break the muscle spasm in the focus and the remainder of the muscles will loosen up.
And eventually, just a degree of common sense. The more you exercise and use the facial muscles during your day by day activities, the more likely they’re to enter spasm when you are sleeping and develop more intense symptoms. So if you will have ever experienced discomfort, then gum chewing is certainly a no-no. And even when you have not, don’t leave a bit of gum in your mouth longer than 20 minutes. Most foods eaten carefully is not going to cause a difficulty, but you’ll need to avoid chewing ice, hard candies and if crusts cause an issue, they’ll should be cut off. Also, tongue and lip jewelry result in para-functional habits that can result in spasms of the muscles in the pinnacle and neck. So those will need to come back out.
If it’s good to discover more information to alleviate the pain out of your TMJ symptoms this is a superb resource. It’s also very vital to recollect, when you notice no improvement in your symptoms over several weeks time you’ll need to search out skilled advice.
You is not going to get up one morning and be entirely pain free but you must notice slight improvement every day. These common sense ideas should relieve your TMJ symptoms over time, and being pain-free might be great!
