Do you wake up each day with tension headaches or chronic soreness in your face? If you exhibit these symptoms or difficulty opening and closing your mouth, you may have a condition of the jaw called TMJ disorder. This misalignment of the temporomandibular joint can become worse without treatment, greatly affecting your quality of life. Associated with grinding your teeth, TMJ can also destabilize your oral health as it wears away the surface of your smile.
At Sunny Smiles Family Dentistry, we could provide a noninvasive treatment option to help your jaw relax. Through the creation of a custom oral appliance, we can gently shift your jaw into a more comfortable position that relieves tension as you sleep. When you wake up with less soreness due to your TMD treatment, you may feel more refreshed. The relief of tension can reduce inflammation and put an end to soreness in your facial muscles. By learning more about this alternative to surgery, you can find how a nightly appliance relieves your TMD.
What Is TMJ Disorder?
Any condition that brings your bite out of alignment can put a real strain on your jaw as it shifts unnaturally to compensate. This is because repetitive strain occurs when you attempt to complete dentition that has been compromised. While TMJ has a variety of causes, investigating them can help us put together a treatment plan to relieve the strain on your joints. If specific teeth are worn down, we can place dental crowns or bonding to build back your bite and provide realignment. It could even occur from problems with the growth of your jawbone.
Identifying TMD Symptoms
Any sudden pain or stress that occurs in your head, neck, or face can indicate a problem with your TMJ. Cracking and popping sounds are common when your jaw moves up and down. Pains can even reach back to your shoulders.
Creating Your Custom Oral Appliance
We can take a digital scan of your mouth to design a custom oral appliance that fits the contours of your bite. By wearing this device at night while you sleep, it gently glides your jaw into a comforting position to ease the stress placed upon your joints. For patients with malocclusion, we may suggest orthodontic treatment to bring your bite into position. Once we determine the cause of your TMD, we will know how to best relieve your pain.
SPEAK WITH YOUR DENTIST AT SUNNY SMILES ABOUT TMJ DISORDER
We can help treat your headaches with a nonsurgical alternative! Oral appliance therapy guides your bite to relieve stress on the joints of your jaw. To learn more about how our team treats your TMD, then please contact our Sunny Smiles location on N Zaragoza Rd in El Paso, TX at (915) 849-9000.