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TMJ Symptoms for North Carolina Patients

The temporomandibular joint syndrome 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 dysfunction of the eustachian tube.

Common symptoms of TMJ disorder include the following:

  • Limited jaw opening
  • Clicking or popping jaw joints
  • Severe, one-sided headaches (like Cluster headaches)
  • Headaches that feel like sinus infections
  • Clenching during the day or at night
  • Swelling on the side of the face
  • Recent changes to the bite
  • Grinding teeth at night (Bruxism)
  • Uncontrollable tongue movements
  • An earache in the absence of an infection
  • Stiffness or "locked" feeling in the jaw when talking, yawning or eating (swallowing)
  • Difficulty opening and closing the mouth and/or chewing
  • Upper and lower teeth that do not align properly (malocclusion)
  • Dizziness
  • Eye Pain and Eye Problems
  • Neck and Shoulder Problems
  • Ear pain like hissing, buzzing, ringing, or roaring sounds
  • Frequently waking up with headaches or experiencing frequent tension headaches

Could This Be Causing Your TMD Symptoms?

Academic Stress and Teeth Grinding. Teenagers and school students are well-known to tug 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, additionally on TMD.

Poor Posture. If you regularly hunch or slouch over, you will be throwing more than just your back out of whack. you could also be pushing your jaw out of alignment, inflicting symptoms of TMD. According to the AGD, poor posture puts the spine in a position that stresses the jaw joint. especially, the lower jawbone shifts forward, inflicting the higher and lower teeth misalignment, and therefore the skull to move back to the spinal column. If not addressed, pain and inflammation in the muscles and jaw joints can develop when the mouth opens and closes.

Tax-Time Stress and Clenching. Clenching your teeth whereas worrying regarding 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 on to jaw and muscle pain and worsen already existing TMD conditions. Especially, folks with TMD should cut food into smaller portions that are easier to chew so as 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 occurring.

Solution to TMJ dysfunction :

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 90th 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 purely bone and joint related problems might have degeneration of the gristle disc or the bone surface of the joint as the cause. Many times an MRI can be a great diagnostic tool if the problems are chronic and severe. however in early stages, over and over simply straightforward splint therapy is all that’s required, and it's easily reversible.

Why do you need to see a professional?

Many of the TMJ syndrome sufferers, who endure this pain and turmoil for thus a few years, extremely do not have to endure the pain they're suffering from for so long. The main reason for this suffering is that the health care provider they visited failed to perceive how the ligaments, nerves, and muscles, extremely work. Since they weren't conscious of how the soft tissues in the area of the mandibular joint radiate out and affects other bone and joints in the body, they weren't able to properly diagnose the problem that the patient was suffering from earlier on. The result is that once the TMJ is affecting the joint, and the ligaments, nerves, and muscles around it, then 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 that patients suffer from, can all be addressed, once the root cause is prohibited. For this reason, you've got to treat the TMJ, so as to eliminate the pain and symptoms you're affected by. If you want to know more visit our office at Cary, NC. Also, you can get on your way to treating the condition you suffer from by calling us to take an appointment.

Contact Us

TMJ & Sleep Therapy Centre of Raleigh-Durham

  • 1150 NW Maynard Rd, Suite #140
    Cary, North Carolina 27513
  • (919) 323-4000
  • Monday: 9am – 5pm Tuesday: 9am – 6pm Wednesday: 9am – 5pm Thursday: 9am – 6pm Friday: 9am – 1pm Sat - Sun Closed We always have someone to answer the phone from 9-5pm every day
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