Neuromuscular dentistry could be your tinnitus treatment
Do you suffer from a ringing in the ears that is often referred to as tinnitus? Do you experience pain in your jaw or problems opening and closing your mouth? Have you been formally diagnosed with a disease called TMJ? You may be surprised to know that temporomandibular joint disorder, or TMJ, may actually be responsible for the tinnitus that you are experiencing. You may be equally surprised to find that by successfully treating the TMJ, you can significantly reduce or eliminate the tinnitus as well.
How are tinnitus and TMJ related?
TMJ is a disorder that affects the joints of the jaw, often as a result of excessive stress or pressure. For example, grinding your teeth or clenching your jaw may eventually cause you to experience TMJ. Over time this can cause inflammation in the joints of the jaw as well as misalignment of the jaw itself. Many things contribute to TMJ which can cause a great deal of pain in the jaw and may make it impossible for you to open and close your mouth normally.
A TMJ disorder can cause tinnitus because the inflammation due misalignment of your jaw?which causes pressure on the nerve endings in the muscles that connect the jaw and the ear. There are two muscles that connect the jaw with the ear canal and when these muscles becoming irritated as a result of the information in the joints of the jaw, the condition can manifest itself in the ear as well as the jaw. This causes a number of conditions such as ringing in the ears, ear pain and swelling that makes it difficult to hear normally.
Tinnitus treatment
Fortunately, there is effective treatment for TMJ and this in turn has the potential to eliminate your suffering from tinnitus. Your dentist in Racine can prescribe you with treatments that are proven to be effective against TMJ, such as mouthpieces that are designed to reduce or eliminate the pressure that is placed on your jaw while you are sleeping or during other times of the day. This in turn gives the joints in your jaw an opportunity for the inflammation to subside and for the muscles that had been subsequently irritated to regain their normal health. This can often eliminate the problems that you are experiencing in your ear because they are directly related to your TMJ.
Learn more
If you are experiencing problems with your ears such as ringing in the ears, pain or difficulty hearing due to swelling do not automatically assume that it is only an ear problem. It may in fact be a problem related to TMJ. If you would like to learn more about TMJ, download my free TMJ e-book. You may be surprised how effective TMJ treatment can be against your ear problems.