If you’re one of the many people who experience daily jaw pain, tenderness, and swelling, then it could be a sign of TMJ problems. At our North Richland Hills dentist office, Dr. Williams offers patients several types of TMJ treatment to help eliminate their discomfort so they can feel better soon. TMJ solutions from R. Renan Williams DDS will:
Doctor R.R. Williams on TMJ and Teeth Grinding
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When people come in and they say they have a jaw that hurts, that their jaw is hurting, or their jaw is popping, we have to decide, where is that jaw pain coming from? It can be what we call interarticular pain, a pain from the jaw joint itself, or it could be a myofascial pain, something that’s coming from the muscles. So, we have to determine what the origin of the pain is.
But quite often, we can start with just a simple mouth appliance that helps their jaw muscles relax, and brings them into a relaxed state of their muscles, which often can remove the pain. And sometimes there’s a series of appliances that are necessary to help someone get to a point of comfort in their jaw joint.
Temporomandibular joint can be a pretty challenging thing to deal with, but it can be very rewarding when you’re able to take someone who has a painful jaw to where it’s comfortable. When it comes to treating the temporomandibular joint, it can be pretty challenging. The thing we want them to know is, we want them to feel comfortable and functional most of the time.
One of the things that’s very common, especially today in our tense society, is people grind their teeth, and they might not even know it. Often, they do it in their sleep. It’s night grinding, or bruxism. And so, we have guards that are comfortable, that we custom-make for an individual, that they can wear at night, or any time they need to, to protect them from themselves, as we tend to start to eat our teeth, to start grinding, grinding, grinding.