Jaw pain-jaw joint pain, what is to be done?
It happens unexpectedly while talking, yawning, or chewing-suddenly you recognise a stitch and the mouth opening area starts hurting and is often restricted. What is to be done?
First of all: Keep calm, cause like every other joint, the jaw joint can be strained. It often happens during mountain hikes with ankles. If it happens in the jaw joint, affected people are more worried about!
Moreover it doesn´t have to be the jaw joint, since muscle pain imitates tooth,- and jaw joint pain very well.
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–You can start with the most important thing, rest and keep calm!
No chewing gums, no chew-intensive dishes, cool it and use pain medication. Moreover you should find a treating person, who is good with face pain. If this person uses the term “craniomandibular dysfunction“ –CMD-forget this person.
The appropriate term is Myoarthropathy-MAP. Through clinical examination the medicating person differentiate between jaw joints and muscle joints and will then start a proper therapy.
What to expect from the therapy? Nothing and everything!
• Frequently a good clarification and rest are sufficient
• Optionally physiotherapy
• Optionally mouth opening practise
• Optionally a splint therapy-the Michigan splint is well established
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Braces, crowns, bridges are not indicated and are useless-except for the dentist!–
The jaw joint is able to adapt to changed loads-e.g. after tooth loss, new dentures,… it just takes a short time since the biological process is not that fast as the dentist.-
Please don´t get insecure by imaging diagnostics such as MRT, statements such as “displacement without reduction”. This has nothing to do with your problems…a lot of people suffer from disk displacement without having problems, some have a “broken joint” as per MRT and have no problems, many have picture-book joints with lot´s of problems!
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Today we know that those things are not in relation to eachother and are irrelevant on MAP!
Get well!
jaw joint