Jaw Alignment & Headaches

Serving patients in Glenview, IL and surrounding communities

If you have been suffering from headaches that just will not go away, have you considered that they might have a dental cause? At first blush, this might appear to be an odd idea. But think about the jaw joints, where they are, and what they do. The anatomical name for them is Temporomandibular Joint, abbreviated as TMJ.

Some Features of the Jaw Joints

The jaw joints are the most flexible, and also the most delicate, joints in the body. You can feel them if you place a fingertip inside each ear and move your jaw. The lower jaw connects to the skull by means of these two ball-and-socket joints, with a rounded bone projection on the lower jaw fitting into a concave area of the upper jaw.

• In between the two bone surfaces of each jaw joint is a cartilage disk. In a healthy jaw joint this disk is aligned so as to protect both bone surfaces from rubbing against each other, which would be painful.
• The cartilage disk can be knocked out of position by an impact to the head. It can also be gradually shifted out of position by a habit of tooth grinding or jaw clenching, or by years of biting on misaligned teeth.

Unlike all other joints in the body, the jaw joints can move in three directions:

• Sideways
• Up and down
• Forward and back

Think for a minute about how often we move the lower jaw each day – for eating, talking, yawning, laughing, coughing etc. If they are well-aligned, that is no problem. However, if they are misaligned, it can be a very big problem, and can cause very painful symptoms.

TMD Headaches or Migraines?

TMD stands for Temporomandibular Joint Disorder, also called a “bad bite”. The upper and lower teeth are not meeting correctly in a bad bite, and this can have many consequences. Your chronic headaches may be migraines, or they may be TMD headaches – the two can feel similar, but they have different causes.

• Migraine headache causes are not well understood, but one factor is blood vessel enlargement. The temporal artery runs through the temple area (near the jaw joints) and when it enlarges, the nerve fibers winding around it are stretched. They then release chemicals that cause inflammation, pain, and further artery enlargement.
• TMD headaches are caused by jaw muscle inflammation that compresses one or more branches of the trigeminal nerve. That nerve is the largest in the body and supplies about 40 percent of the brain’s incoming data. It has three large branches that emerge from the spinal cord on each side of the head close to the ears. They all have many sub-branches over the entire head, face, and neck area, affecting also the shoulders, arms, and hands. The trigeminal nerve is both a motor nerve and a sensory nerve – it controls jaw movement and picks up sensations of touch, pressure, temperature, and pain.

Migraine headaches are a well-known condition. If you have experienced chronic, severe headaches it is very likely that you went to a doctor for a migraine treatment. You may have seen several doctors and been prescribed several painkillers – but still the headaches persisted. That may be because they were not migraines, but TMD headaches. TMD headaches are not a well-known condition.

You can read more about TMD headaches on our Neuromuscular Dentistry FAQ page. A qualified neuromuscular dentist, like those at Colonial Dental Group, can diagnose and treat TMD. Each TMD case is different, with a different combination of painful symptoms.

To learn more about TMD and whether it might be the cause of your chronic headaches, please contact our Chicago, Illinois neuromuscular dentistry office today. We will be glad to schedule a personal consultation for you.