TMJ Pain - One of These Traumas is Often the Cause

TMJ pain often occurs when someone's jaw is misaligned or their bite is off. As a result any one or more of the nerves, muscles or ligaments in and around the temporomandibular joint become tight and strained. Over time this leads to inflammation of these tissues. This is what is known as TMJ disorder or syndrome which can lead to many painful TMJ symptoms. Dental TMJ treatment is widely considered to be a quick, easy and very effective way to get TMJ relief.

The question many patients ask is, "How did I get this problem in the first place?"

There are many possible ways TMJ Pain could have developed. At some point there was a trauma. It was either a macro trauma or a micro trauma.

Macro Trauma

A macro trauma is a major trauma which could be in the form of a fall of some sort. This may have happened either as an adult or it could have even happened as far back as childhood with an event like falling off of a bicycle. In either case the head may have been distorted in some way because of the trauma or bumps may have occurred around the jaw.

Another major source of trauma is being hit. A very common example of this is being involved in an auto accident. Again, this trauma may have happened many years ago but it is still causing pain today stemming from a TMJ problem. When you are hit from behind in an auto accident whiplash can occur. When this happens the head moves forward and backwards aggressively. The head accelerates and decelerates very quickly. As this happens, the muscles and ligaments of the neck can be stretched and start a process that leads to pain in any one of a number of locations throughout the head or body.

Wisdom teeth extraction is another example of a situation where muscles, ligaments or nerves related to the jaw and TMJ could be overly stretched and this can lead to TMJ related pain. This would have occurred when a patients' jaw was stretched open while asleep.

Micro Trauma

A micro trauma is a minor trauma. Examples of this type of trauma is clenching or grinding your teeth. This can occur while awake or even during sleep. In both cases it is common for the person to not be aware they are even doing this. On the surface this seems to be a less severe type of trauma but the real power behind this type of trauma is that it can be constant or nearly constant. It can also occur over the course of many years, often without the person even realizing they are doing this.

As clenching and grinding of the teeth occurs over time, the jaw and body starts to reposition itself. As a result, the surrounding tissues such as nerves, ligaments and muscles become strained and get tighter.

In both types of trauma, as tissues become injured or strained and become tighter, inflammation sets in which in turn is responsible for the pain.

TMJ Symptoms

TMJ pain is felt because of a structural problem. And, it is important to clearly understand that the pain someone feels from a TMJ problem is not limited to only the jaw area. Chronic pain is often not felt at the site where the root cause of the problem is. TMJ problems can be the root cause of jaw pain and lock jaw but it can also be responsible for headaches or migraines, neck pain and even have effects much further away such as with tingling hands or hand numbness.

The opposite can happen too. A problem in the lower back can come all the way up to the TMJ area because when there is a structural problem many areas of the body are connected.

This confuses many patients as well as health care practitioners. As a result, many people needlessly suffer with TMJ pain for years or even a decade or more even though have been to five or ten or more doctors or specialists.