Chronic symptoms of the head and neck can often be attributed to:
• Headache -- the
temporalis muscle (it closes and clenches the jaw)
• Sinus pressure and pain
-- the lateral pterygoid muscles (it moves the jaw side to side and/or
forward)
• Neck stiffness and pain
-- trapezius muscle (it stabilizes the skull during jaw clenching and
grinding)
Dental offices have treated and helped more and more people with
their headache problems. For years, we assigned all of these names to
headaches, like muscle tension headaches, neuralgia, migraine and so on,
and it seems that many headache patients share one very common trait-
They clench or grind their teeth at night!
Most medical research has shown that headaches, even people with
classical migraine headaches, have no physical reason, no vascular
problems and no neurological problems; in fact their physician's exam
will give no physical reason for the pain. Many patients have had CAT
scans and MRI's that were negative, and find that drugs really don't
help their problem; instead the medication makes them groggy and
"drugged out."
What we have discovered is that people who can control their
nighttime clenching and grinding will get tremendous relief for their
headaches and neck aches. Many people do so much unconscious clenching
of their jaw muscles that when they wake up, their teeth are sore, their
muscles are already tired, and they are set up for the beginning of a
headache from the start of the day, if they don't wake up with one.
One effective treatment utilizes an NTI appliance (short for
nocioceptive trigeminal inhibition), a dental device that fits between
the upper and lower front teeth. (Detailed information can be obtained
from the website at www.headacheprevention.com) The simple fact
is that this device reduces the intensity of nighttime parafunction by
70 percent immediately, which can explain why so many patients wake up
feeling better very quickly.
A traditional dental mouthpiece, or splint, reduces the resistance
to side-to-side movement, thereby, reducing the effort and resultant
strain to the jaw joint and sinuses (so long as clenching intensity
isn't too intense). However, the same splint also provides an ideal
clenching surface, where maximum clenching intensity may increase and/or
allow jaw joint problems to perpetuate.
Many patients run the gamut of the medical world's attempts to
control their headaches- with multiple drugs, injections and so on,
without ever thinking that the pain might be muscular in origin. But
just like back pain is often muscle spasm, the pain we call TMJ, as well
as headaches of many sorts are very much caused by overuse of the
muscles of closing the jaws.
We would recommend that if you or a loved one has chronic headache
problems, that you go to the web site, or give us a call and let us take
a look. It can do no harm, and it might very well make a huge
difference in your lives!
Afraid of the Dentist? Enough to get a tattoo about it? Well a patient of ours shared his "dental tattoo" about a visit to a previous dentist. And he gave us permission to share it. 
People
of ancient times believed that the stabbing pain of a toothache was
caused by a toothworm, which either had appeared spontaneously or had
bored its way into the tooth. If the tooth pain was severe, it meant
that the worm was thrashing about, but if the aching stopped, then the
worm was resting. Cultures all over the world, many of whom had no
contact with each other, held stubbornly to this myth. The folklore of
the toothworm persisted from ancient times to the beginning of the
eighteenth century.
