Solutions for discomfort
The temporomandibular joint, right, is an interesting joint, and it’s highly specialized. And we use it every day to talk, eat, and swallow. It’s different than my elbow or any other joint, your knee, your hip, the joints that orthopedists talk about. So one of the things that is interesting about that is dentists need to know a little bit more about this specialized joint. Not everybody wants, as a dentist, to treat TMJ. And what we like to call it is TMD, temporomandibular dysfunction. So a dysfunction because if it’s dysfunctioning it’s not working properly.
Maybe you’ve had an injury in the past and maybe it’s just a click or a pop and it’s something that needs to be monitored. We need to know that and that’s one of our exam policies is that we’re going to examine your jaw joint whether you say I have a problem or not. We’re going to know if there’s a click there or a pop because we use special techniques. Sometimes we get a stethoscope out and listen to make sure that we’re documenting injuries that you may have had that you might not even know about. Wouldn’t you want to know about if you’ve had an injury? Because when something happens like lockjaw, and when something happens like pain, when you wake up in the morning or you’re stressed from driving home in traffic and you find yourself clenching, and over time that flexing causes dysfunction. Whether it be muscle or joint pain, it’s all related to this fancy joint here called the TMJ.
And so our office is trained in identifying a whole host of issues. And what we can do is offer solutions. Some solutions might be simple, some solutions might be, you know, orthotics, things that help you to get better. Some might be just therapies. We employ a myofunctional therapist here that we know, and myself, in our team that can really help patients get the guidance they need and the treatment they need to help improve their pain or dysfunction. But if you have temporomandibular disorder and there’s pain with your TMJ, we want to know about it. So call us.