The Silent disease!

Monday, January 23, 2012

The Silent disease!

I have decided on a subject in which I would like to write about. It's something that I have struggled/lived with since 1998 when I was a freshman in college. Many people have this disease and it's known as the "silent disease". Many people go un-diognosed for years and just say they get bad headaches .

The name of this silent disease is called, TMJD.(Temporal-mandibular  joint disorder) It is considered to be a chronic disease. I'm going to give a brief overview of what tmjd means to me.

I had never dealt with any type of head ache until my freshman in college so having a headache in the back of my head scared me!  It didn't help that I was ten hours from home either.  It took the doctor's a while to figure out what was going on with me.  They tried taking out my wisdom teeth and cleaning my ears out.  Not sure how cleaning my ears out would help.

So, finally during my sophomore year I was sent to a TMJD specialist and was told that I had been grinding my teeth so badly  that my teeth were black on the bottom in the back of my mouth.  CRAZY!  I  was also told that my jaw joint was not in the correct alignment. I was told that I had T MJD and that I would need to wear a mouth splint.( I have had three different ones since then.)

I'm now 31 and still dealing with tmjd.  I deal with it in different ways then I did back in college.  I used to get headaches in the back of my head. Some days/months I will go pain free which I thank the Lord for! Then there are days, where my jaw hurts to laugh, cry, sing or just to talk. TMJD can also make my ears, nose, head, and shoulders hurt.  I have been given exercises to help with the shoulders and jaw.  I need to stick with them. I usually stop the exercises when I feel better but I need to do them even if I do feel better because I never know when the symptoms will pop up again.

About a year ago, my symptoms were the worst they had ever been.  I couldn't open my mouth to eat and I was having vertigo.  I have had vertigo  twice in the past but doctors told me it had to do with an inner ear infection. Well, after reading information on the internet, purchasing a tmjd book("Taking control of TMJD" ( "http://www.amazon.com/Taking-Control-TMJ-Temporomandibular-Fibromyalgia/dp/1572241268) and talking to two different dentist I learned that a TMJD patient can deal with vertigo symptoms.  It sounds crazy I'm sure but if you really think about where your ear canal and  tmj joint are located in relation to each other , it just makes sense.


So, I hope to write more often about this issue.  Some people have their jaw joint surgically moved into the correct position and some get their jaw joint replaced.  I haven't heard great feed back on those surgeries as of yet.

I will say that being relaxed helps with tmjd. Doing relaxing exercises , drinking peppermint tea, using a hot rag on your jaw joints, doing the tmjd stretches in the book,"Taking Control of TMJD", wearing a mouth piece at night helps with the grinding, using a nice firm pillow, and firm mattress.......  This is something that I deal with everyday.  Like I said, there are times when I'm pain free!  :)