There is no real cure for TMJ.
The only thing doctors can do is give out strong pain relief medicines or muscle relaxation drugs. There is nothing else they can do.
All these medicines fail. Even if they reduce the pain a little for a while in the beginning, they'll stop working little by little as your body gets immune to them.
Many dentist try to help TMJ patients. They make special dental implants. These implants, at best. save your teeth from grinding down at night. But they don't take your pain away.
So why has science failed you?
You can't really blame them though.
TMJ is one of the most complex conditions you'll ever find. Every TMJ patient has different original causes for his or her condition. And not only one cause or accident. There are probably several contributing factors causing your pain. Both physical and emotional.
Some people begin to experience TMJ after an accident of some sort. Stress is an other trigger. But most of the time, doctors have no idea what really causes their patients TMJ. This can be very depressive for people who suffer this condition. Okay, enough of what we don't know?
We know for a fact, the jaw joints are always misplaced to some degree. Tiny misplacement can be enough to cause terrible pain. Some patients think the irritation is even worse than the pain. Here are some obvious symptoms...
Jaw locking opened or closed
Uncontrollable jaw or tongue movements
Clicking, popping jaw joints
Clenching or grinding at night
Grating sounds
Inability to open the jaw smoothly or evenly
Jaw deviates to one side when opening
Inability to "find bite" with teeth
Limited opening
Frequent, migraine type headaches
Extreme pain in cheek muscles
Discomfort or pain to any of these areas
...are just few obvious symptoms. You may have some or all of them. Or non at all. Like I said, this is very complicated condition.
Here is another fact we know: The jaw muscles are always very stiff. They're sometimes, not always, soar, or torn. But they're always stiff. The pressure from your tense jaw muscles pushes your jaw further out of position. It supports its misplacement. This makes your problem way worse than it has to be.
This is similar to what happens with back problems. The back muscles are stiff and weak to begin with. Then something happens, which puts strain on the back. Maybe working in a wrong position or small injury. It didn't really feel very bad in the beginning.
As self defense, the back muscles get tense to avoid the pain. This is unconscious and uncontrollable. That's why you often see people with back problem walk bent. The back pain becomes chronic when, the tension in the back muscles actually push the spine out of place. What was only supposed to be temporarily pain relief has caused serious condition.
The same thing happens with TMJ. What might have started out as minor problem (maybe you got hit in the jaw or had short period of intense stress) is now becoming chronic problem, because the jaw muscles now push your jaw out of place.
This is the beginning of series of other problems. Now the two jaw joints do not cooperate together. They're unbalanced and uncontrollable. It shouldn't really come as surprise that everything gets stuck. The pain is unbearable. It's like begin constantly tortured.
It's inevitable that some nerves get squeezed when the joints are misplaced. The nerves that control your balance system, for example, are directly connected to nerves around the jaw. This is partly what causes your headaches and also dizziness and lack of balance.
All the muscles in your body are connected. If one gets tense, all the muscles around that one become tense too. You've probably, for example, felt your shoulders and neck get stiffer as your TMJ grows worse. But there are other muscles not as obvious. You may not have noticed all the small muscles in your head. Your throat and eye muscles. Your tongue. Your forehead. There are muscles all over the place and these muscles all get stiff too.
As this tension builds up little by little, you'll begin to feel the secondary symptoms of TMJ. Including...
voice fluctuations
swallowing difficulties
bloodshot eyes
tongue pain
balance problems, "vertigo", dizziness, or disequilibrium
feeling of foreign object in throat
clogged, stuffy, "itchy" ears, feeling of fullness
watering of the eyes
...and hundreds of other secondary symptoms, you may or may not have experienced your self.
There is no way to heal your TMJ, unless you loosen up and strengthen all the muscles connected to the jaw and the jaw muscles.
This does actually not require hard effort tough. The exercises are simple and easy to do. But you have to practice them if they're are going to work for you.
1)Working directly on the jaw muscles strengthen and loosens them up. Healthy jaw muscles guide the jaw joints into right position instead of misplacing them.
2)The tongue is a strong muscle. Many people have lot of tension in this muscle for some reason. It's very important to relies the tension in the tongue, using simple tongue exercises. Remember all muscles are connected. Tension in tongue means tension in jaw and vs.
3)The throat exercises strengthen the throat. The throat muscles are some of these 'hidden' muscles we seldom pay attention to. They're however extremely important and if they're stiff, you'll suffer several symptoms in your throat.
4)The neck and shoulder muscle exercises are very important to remove tension you may have in your shoulders and neck. These muscles are directly connected to the jaw muscle and quickly tense up as soon as there is any tension in your jaw.
5)All muscles need oxygen to function properly. Stiff muscles, reduce the amount of oxygen they can process. Using specially designed breathing exercises, you can bring these muscles back to life, so they may begin to function properly again.
These exercises have been practiced successfully by thousands of people suffering from TMJ and it still surprises me how effective they are, considering how many causes lie behind this complex condition.
But before you get your hope to high, I'm going to be brutally honest...
This will most likely take some time and effort. The exercises take less than 10 minutes a day on the average. But you must commit to them for some period of time. Some people literally get healed over night but that's not the norm.
Your TMJ has been developing for years (even if the symptoms just showed up). So give the training few weeks. Even couple of months. The exercises rebuild your jaw function little by little. The the muscles around the jaw must first regain their old strength and flexibility. Then the jaw muscle will guide your jaw joints into their natural healthy position. This usually happens slowly and gradually.
The fact remains, this is the only method proven effective to heal TMJ. Nothing else helps!
Do you want to learn more about these exercises and try some of them for free? If so, follow this link to Cure TMJ
Christian Goodman is the founder of The TMJ No More Program (Cure TMJ). The program has helped thousands of people to cure their TMJ without having to undertake dangerous surgery, dental implant or having to buy and use drugs every day.
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