Getting the Bite Right

Do you have signs of wear and chipping of your teeth? Do you have facial pain, TMJ pain, clicking of the joint, chronic headaches and neck pain? The presence of any of these symptoms is highly suggestive of bite disease. Bite disease exists when the muscles and joints supporting your jaw are not balanced properly thereby causing these systems to overwork. The side effects of this overwork include pain, tension, grinding of the teeth, as well as many other associated symptoms. "Sometimes to thoroughly evaluate and diagnose and patient with TMJ type pain, we begin with gently electrical stimulation (TENS) pads attached to the outside of the face to pulse and relax the muscles," he says. Once muscle tension in the face is relieved, a patient's ideal bite position can be determined based on where the face muscles should be rather than where worn-out teeth incorrectly position the jaw. As a result of proper relaxed bite not only does the patient feel better, they tend to look better and more relaxed.

TMJ / TMD, or temporomandibular joint disorder, is a term used to describe a group of symptoms including headaches; facial pain; jaw pain; sore, chipped, broken, or worn teeth, clicking or popping in the jaw, and limited jaw movement. In many cases, people report chronic pain in the jaw, teeth, face, head, neck, shoulders, or back, or any combination of these areas. Snoring, grinding of teeth, frequent ear infections and restricted airway are other.

These symptoms can often be resolved through neuromuscular dentistry. We first measure the most relaxed position of your jaw to determine the goal for normal jaw positioning. Then we work to realign the bite and restore the teeth and thus the jaw and joints to their optimal position. Once the bite is realigned and the jaw is in place, pain that resulted from the imbalance disappears.

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