TMD Treatment / Teeth Grinding

A lot of patients come to us complaining of jaw pain. Some are not in pain, but we see all the wear and tear on their teeth, so we know something is going on. There are a lot of different avenues we can take here.
Patients tend to do really well with what we call a night guard or a bite splint, and that's an appliance being worn at nighttime, and it's protecting the teeth. The last thing we want is to lose the healthy tooth structure. It's something that we can't regain.
Even through bonding procedures, veneers, you're never going to regain that natural tooth structure. So in wearing an appliance like this, we can at least prevent further tooth loss. There are other options to look at as well.
So with the jaw pain alone, Botox treatment can help alleviate that. I love pairing it with a night guard. If we're able to get that muscle under control and we're getting you in a well-fit night guard, we can try to decrease that kind of domino effect of that muscle tension.
I would say one of the most comprehensive avenues to take is to do what's called a full, detailed diagnostic exam and records appointment. That's something where we're looking to see, okay, why are you clenching your teeth or why are you grinding your teeth? What is actually leading to this? For some patients, it's truly just a kind of disharmony between their joint, their muscles, their teeth, and now we need to really deep dive and figure out, can we do something about this? What can we do about it? Sometimes this involves Invisalign treatment. Sometimes all we need to do is adjust their bite and get that nice balance back.
So there's definitely different things we can look at, and it's very much patient to patient. Patients with chronic headaches and just muscle tightness in general like to do a consultation to figure out what is their best treatment for them. So there is something called trigger point therapy.
We're evaluating multiple muscles, so it is not just truly in the jaw, but we're also looking at muscles in the trapezius, at the base of the head. We carry a lot of tension there. A lot of us are on computers.
We're looking at our cell phones. We're kind of in these postures that are not great for us. And so using the Botox treatment with trigger point therapy, we're able to alleviate these bound up muscles and get a lot of relaxation.
So patients have been really pleased. They've been getting massages every month, and yes, it feels good in the moment, but then they're like, that muscle is still really tight. So this is something where we're actually able to break up those fibers and get that muscle to relax.