TMJ Disorder

Your bite, or occlusion, is simply the way your upper and lower teeth fit TMJ together when you bite down. Seems like a fairly basic idea, but your occlusion is very important and can affect your health in many ways. If your teeth do not come together properly, it can cause stress to the jaw joints, jaw muscles and teeth. Over time, the stress of a "bad bite" can cause damage and pain. Some examples of damage caused by a bad bite (malocclusion) could be a crown that keeps coming off and continually needs to be re-cemented, a filling that cracks a tooth, grinding and wearing down teeth, crowding of lower front teeth, unexplained pain/sensitivity on a tooth, or unexplained chipping of a tooth or porcelain crown.

Until recently, most dentistry has been based on the assumption that wherever your bite was naturally (habitual occlusion), was the correct position. Today, most dental treatments are still planned from the patient's existing or habitual occlusion. Because the habitual jaw position may be in a reasonably good position, and because our body system is often adaptable to less than ideal circumstances, many of these procedures have acceptable results. However, there are also many times that treatment procedures carried out with "textbook" accuracy do not produce a result that is fully functional and comfortable.

The growing field of neuromuscular dentistry goes beyond using your habitual bite as the basis for planning treatment. Neuromuscular dentistry considers the entire system that controls the positioning and function of your jaw, teeth, muscles and joints. The neuromuscular dentist seeks to establish a harmonious relationship among these main factors, resulting in a jaw position is called "neuromuscular occlusion".

reference:
Dr. Shila Yazdani Owner of Revive for revivemetoday.com
article supplied by ymdr.com in association with Dr. Shila Yazdani