TMD/TMJ Headaches
Barrie, Ontario - Canada
Have you been suffering from painful headaches that seem to have no known cause? Sometimes people have these chronic, migraine-like headaches and visit a series of physicians for help, but receive only painkiller prescriptions. Certainly painkillers give welcome relief. But they do not address the cause of the headaches.
Perhaps your headaches have a dental cause. Temporomandibular Joint Disorder, (abbreviated as TMJ or TMD), causes chronic, painful headaches that arise from jaw joint misalignment. A physician will not usually assess your jaw joint alignment or bite – that is a dentist’s job. However, most dentists are not qualified in neuromuscular dentistry and you may even have been told by a general dentist that you do not have TMJ.
Dr. Chapnick, being a qualified neuromuscular dentist with LVI training, can diagnose and treat your migraine-like headaches. If he finds that you do not, in fact, have TMJ, you will have at least ruled that out as a headache cause, and can move on to other possibilities.
The Jaw Joints
If you place a finger in front of an ear and open your mouth, you will feel that jaw joint working. They are ball-and-socket joints, with the lower jaw fitting into a rounded cavity in the skull (upper jaw). There is a cartilage pad between the two bone surfaces to prevent any painful rubbing.
Problems with the jaw joints, such as chronic headaches and jaw pain, can be developmental, beginning in childhood. If a child has asthma, poor nutrition, a snoring habit or a thumb-sucking habit, the jaw can gradually be pushed out of alignment. When Dr. Chapnick is working with a child and finds such conditions, he will consult with the child’s parents and discuss ways of correcting these conditions before a dental problem develops.
If one or both of your jaw joints are knocked or gradually pushed out of alignment, a series of consequences occur.
- Your lower jaw now closes incorrectly against the upper teeth;
- Your jaw muscles repeatedly try to close your mouth correctly and fail because the angle of movement at the joint is incorrect;
- Those muscles become stressed and inflamed;
- Inflammation causes swelling in the face and head that puts pressure on nerves in those areas;
- Compressed nerves carry pain messages to the brain and you now have a headache.
There are large nerves with many branches in the head, face, and neck. One of them is the trigeminal nerve, which innervates (provides nerve service) to about 40 percent of the face and head, and has three large branches. It is both a sensory and a motor nerve, playing a role in chewing, swallowing, talking, and breathing, as well as being involved with the eyes, ears, sinuses, and teeth.
You can imagine how painful it can be if this nerve and its branches are compressed by swelling.
TMJ Headaches vs. Migraine Headaches
While the cause of TMJ headaches is known and can be pinpointed by a qualified neuromuscular dentist, the causes of migraine headaches are not fully clear. They may feel very similar to each other though, and in fact many of our patients come to us convinced that they have migraines.
Migraine treatments are different from TMJ treatments. You would have no dental work done for migraines. Treatment can take either of two approaches:
- Preventive -- Migraines often give a person warning that they are approaching, and prescription painkillers can be taken to stop the migraine before it fully develops;
- Abortive -- Painkillers can also be taken after the migraine has fully developed and will be effective for head pain but not for other pain in the body, such as arthritis or back pain.
Migraine treatments are temporarily effective for TMJ headaches, but do not address the TMJ headache cause.
If you suffer from headaches, please contact us today for a personal consultation with Dr. Chapnick. He works offers TMJ diagnosis and treatment at the Barrie dental office as well as the Barrie office. He may find that you have TMJ headaches rather than migraines, and then he can discuss this with you to see if you would like to proceed with any TMJ treatments.
