Patients often ask things like:

“Why did my headaches start now; I haven’t done anything different?”

“Why is my bite off today; I can’t take this uneven bite anymore?”

“What would an accident 10 years ago have to do with my headache?”

“Why do I still have pain in the tooth after I had a root canal in it?”

Actually, their brains finally said, “I can’t take this unbalanced bite any longer!” The result is head, neck, tooth, or facial pain.

For most people, the relationship between the bite and the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is frequently out of balance. This means that the remarkable TMJ is quite accommodating. Some people may live their whole lifetime without any pain.

Others may live half of their life before pain shows up. And still others may have pain or symptoms such as dizziness, ringing in the ears, anxiety, confusion, etc., starting in their teenage years. It may start during or after orthodontic treatment; it may start after wisdom tooth removal.

It is very interesting to note that the level of pain is not directly related to the amount of imbalance or unevenness of their bite! Patients with very small imbalances can have severe symptoms, while patients with large imbalances can have mild symptoms. Some patients with their teeth worn down to their gumline report that they never have experienced a headache. And others with almost no wear on their teeth have severe, painful headaches.

Most people do not know that they clench or grind their teeth, especially at night. But clenching and grinding can be likened to an elevator. When you get in this elevator, you only find a “start” button. There is no “stop” button.

It really doesn’t matter how hard you push the button or how often you push it. Once it is pushed, the elevator responds.

Whether or not the clenching and grinding buttons get pushed is totally dependent on two things.

Number one: if there is a conflict or an imbalance in the bite; and number two: the tolerance of the individual to that imbalance.

Each individual’s tolerance of the imbalance is influenced by many things. The psychological makeup, the biochemical balance, the stress level, the general health, the general mood, the hormone balance, and many other things that can be factors.

It is this conflict between the teeth and the jaw and the individual’s intolerance that trigger the clenching and grinding. This is your body’s attempt to get rid of the conflict and neutralize it.

But this is ineffective; it can damage teeth and the TMJ, and it can cause painful muscle responses and trigger points to develop in the head and neck muscles.

Patients have a great deal of difficulty connecting their headaches, dizziness, sleep issues, or ringing in their ears with their bite, since their teeth don’t usually hurt.

They think that since the teeth are in the front of their face and the pain is over their eye, on top of their head, or elsewhere, the bite could not be causing it! For most of them, biting down does not increase the pain, and opening does not relieve the pain. Therefore, they find it hard to connect the symptoms with their bite.

The treatment objective is to eliminate the muscle trigger points and the bite imbalance, so that any small remaining imbalance does not push the “elevator button” and activate the body’s clenching and grinding mechanism.

This treatment can take weeks because the trigger points in the muscles must be eliminated and the bite must be balanced.

But there is hope that you can get relief! You can “live free with no limits.”

A few weeks of treatment for a lifetime of relief!

Heartfelt Headache Relief in Coeur d’Alene offers you a free consultation to discuss your problem.

A diagnostic examination focused on revealing the root cause of the pain, and treatment (dentomandibular rehabilitation) which targets those root causes without drugs, needles, or invasive surgical procedures may be the answer you have been looking for.

Dr. Donald Johnson founded Heartfelt Headache Relief in Coeur d’Alene to help patients stop their pain and live free with no limits! His office is at 114 W. Neider Ave. in Coeur d’Alene, near Costco. Visit the website www.HeartfeltHeadacheRelief.com for more information, or call the office phone (208) 667-4551 now!