|
If you confine your dental visits to one general dentist or one cosmetic dentist, you are missing out on a large area of dentistry known as neuromuscular dentistry. This is a fairly new area of dentistry and has a different focus from general or cosmetic dentistry. Many people have never heard of it. Neuromuscular dentistry is not typically taught in dental school. It requires post-graduate dental training for a general dentist to become qualified in it. If you have persistent, unexplained headaches you would do well to find a good neuromuscular dentist and have him or her examine your bite. Your headaches may have a dental cause. Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMD or TMJ)
A neuromuscular dentist approaches your dental care from a wider perspective than a general dentist. He or she looks not just at your teeth and gums, but also at your bite and jaw joints, and at the muscles and nerves connected to the lower jaw. The dental term for your bite is occlusion. Malocclusion is a misaligned bite. The jaw joints are in front of each ear. If you open your mouth while placing a finger in front of an ear you will feel the joint on that side moving. They are ball-and-socket joints with a rounded piece on the lower jaw fitting into a concave area of the skull. Between the two bone surfaces is a cartilage pad to cushion movement. If that pad is knocked out of position the bone surfaces will rub on each other and cause pain. The lower jaw can also be knocked or slowly pushed out of alignment with the upper concave area and the cartilage pad. Some people are born with misaligned jaw joints. Diagnosing TMD/TMJ
A qualified neuromuscular dentist has special equipment for measuring and recording jaw movements, jaw muscle activity, and jaw joint sounds. TMD has a long list of uncomfortable or painful symptoms, of which headaches are just one. You might have earaches, neck or shoulder pain, worn-down teeth, limited jaw movement, clicking sounds in the jaw joints, or even tingling in your fingers. When you visit a qualified neuromuscular dentist, he or she will listen to your list of symptoms, do a very thorough mouth and jaw examination, and use their technology to gather more subtle data. In this process, your jaw will become relaxed, perhaps for the first time in years. If you are diagnosed with TMJ, the goal of your customized treatment plan will be to make that relaxed jaw position permanent, thus relieving you of the painful symptoms. In choosing your neuromuscular dentist, be sure to choose one who has training from the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies. That is the world’s premiere school for post-graduate dental training and it has a rigorous program for neuromuscular dentistry. If you are looking online for a neuromuscular dentist, you will see the LVI logo on some dentistry sites and those are the ones to look into further. You can trust any dentist who has that logo on his or her site, because it is a hard-earned privilege to display the logo. It means that this dentist will be highly-qualified to diagnose your bite and jaw joints and to give you a coherent and effective treatment for your TMD. In choosing your neuromuscular dentist, be sure to choose one who has training from the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies.
Related Articles -
Neuromuscular Dentistry, Overbite, Popping Jaw, Realign Bite, Realign Teeth, Restorative Dentistry, Ringing ear, Ringing in the ear, Shoulder Pain,
| 
