When you have frequent headaches or chronic jaw pain, this could be due to common oral health issues, including TMJ disorder and bruxism, or chronic teeth grinding. Treatment could not only ease this discomfort, but help prevent further complications with your smile. In today’s blog, your Astoria, NY, dentist talks about treating TMJ disorder and bruxism.
TMJ Disorder and Teeth Grinding
When the jaw joints connecting your jaw and skull become stressed, this could lead to TMJ disorder. Aling with uncomfortable symptoms, the disorder could impact how fully you can open and close your mouth. With bruxism, you grind and clench your teeth on a nightly basis, and this could actually damage your smile and lead to an increased risk of tooth decay and dental infection. Both disorders could be caused by lost teeth, dental misalignment, injury, or issues with the growth of the smile or the eruption of the teeth. High stress levels could be a factor too. Without treatment, these issues could cause painful symptoms like headaches, jaw and facial aches, popping or clicking in the smile, and tooth sensitivity and toothaches. Untreated TMJ dysfunction could lead to bruxism, and vice versa.
Planning Treatment
When you exhibit the symptoms we discussed above, please call our team to schedule a consultation. We will conduct a diagnosis using advanced digital imaging, such as digital x-rays and intraoral cameras, so we can identify the cause and assess the severity of the disorder. From there, we can plan the most appropriate treatment option. For some, this could mean using clear aligners to correct misalignment or possibly removing missing teeth with a prosthetic, such as a bridge or dental implant. Our team could also use crowns or bonding/contouring to improve overall bite balance. But the most common solution is an oral appliance.
Oral Appliance Therapy
To treat TMJ disorder and bruxism with an oral appliance, our team will begin by taking detailed images and measurements of the teeth from multiple angles. We then combine these to create a 3D model of the smile, which allows us to design and fabricate the oral appliance. The device then fits comfortably and shifts the jaw to ease the underlying factors and bring relief. The appliance is easy to clean and use, and helps protect your smile from further bruxism-related damage.
If you have any questions about how we ease joint strain with an oral appliance, then talk to our team today about TMJ disorder and bruxism (teeth grinding). We want to help protect your smile!
Talk To Your Astoria, NY Dentist About Easing Jaw Joint Strain
Our team is here to help you avoid painful symptoms and enjoy better oral health, then please call Dr. Jeffrey Leibowitz, DDS at 718-728-8320.
