TMJ Pain and Dysfunction
Did you know that over 30% of adults in this country suffer from chronic facial pain?
What you think is joint pain is actually a muscle spasm. Stress-related clenching and grinding forces your muscles into over-drive, causing pain and dysfunction. Your grinding habit will make things ten times worse, in the same way as running with a pebble in your shoe throws off your alignment.
How to treat TMJ and facial pain?
We often start by getting you out of pain with a simple appliance called a QuickSplint. Customized to your bite, you’ll feel relief as it calms the muscles in spasm by taking you off your back teeth (often within minutes of wearing it). Although you will feel some immediate relief, this is a form of physical therapy and will take some time for your system to calm and find a comfortable resting position. Next, we’ll evaluate why you’re having this pain, solve and treat and recommend a customized bite splint—a beautifully designed custom appliance that you’ll wear when sleeping.
Do you have one or more to these symptoms?
- Any kind of headache (migraine, cluster, stress)
- Clicking or popping of the TMJ (jaw joint)
- Pain or locking of your jaw
- Facial pain
- Jaw pain
- Ear pain
- Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)
- Stuffiness in the ears
- Difficulty chewing
- Limited mouth opening
- Uncomfortable bite
- Teeth shifting position
- Excessively worn teeth
- Gum recession
- Cold or hot sensitivity of the teeth
- Sensitivity or pain on teeth that have had endontic treatment
- Neck pain
- Dizziness
- Deep pain behind the eyes
Why you should trust Dr. Bloom?
Dr. Bloom (a TMJ pain specialist) has decades of advanced training and an impressive success record treating TMJ pain and dysfunction without medications and non-invasively.
There are many causes for your TMJ pain and dysfunction. The most common are bite issues caused made worse by grinding while sleeping, daytime clenching and/or poorly designed restorative or orthodontic treatment that have thrown off your correct alignment. Our first priority is to get you out of pain. We’ll fit you for a QuickSplint, that acts as a de-programmer to calm your muscle spasms. If you have limited jaw opening, we’ll treat with our high powered laser for rapid pain relief and deep tissue healing. Our goal is to keep you stable so we can pinpoint the origin of your pain.
For definitive treatment (short and long term) we believe in bite splint therapy. This therapy allows your joints to settle into their resting position (centric relation), your muscles will calm and your pain lessens. Your bite splint is also diagnostic aid. If you feel relief from wearing your splint, then your issue is with your your bite. Once we’ve made your custom bite splint, Dr. Bloom will make adjustments so that you are 100% comfortable wearing it for sleep. For most patients, once they sleep with one they’ll never ever give it up sleeping sounder and waking rested. We have countless testimonials about our patient’s love affair with their bite splint. Just keep it our of harm’s way, our puppy almost made mine a chew toy.
For over 30 years, Dr. Bloom has successfully treated headache pain and related discomfort in the TMJ’s, facial muscles and tooth pain through bite splint therapy. Now a master in this discipline, with over 10,000 hours—he was fortunate to have taken TMD hands-on intensives from former masters, Peter Dawson DMD and Henry Gremmion DMD (University of Gainesville).