At The Dental and Cosmetic Clinic, Leicester we
treat patients who present any of these problems:
Headaches
Pain behind the eyes
Pain from the temples or the back of the neck
Facial pain after a car accident or assault
Tooth clenching or tooth grinding at night
Shoulder pain
Painful or clicking jaw joints
Migraine
Fillings which keep on breaking
Crowns which keep falling out
The clinic aimsto educate patients
so that they better understand their pain problem as well as
explain how their problems can be treated. He is a member of
the British Society for Occlusal Studies (BSOS).
The way that our teeth meet and slide against
each other is like a suit that fits it's owner rather
than the owner having to fit the suit. A lot of patients
have small errors in their bite which make them put their
teeth together in a position of comfort rather than the
right position.
These tiny interferences have precisely the same effect as a
nail protruding from a shoe. Instead of limping, patients jaw
muscles are left to take up the strain of keeping their jaw
in a comfortable position and it is usually in these muscles
that the pain begins simply because the muscles can never relax.
Some muscles close the jaw, other open it, move it back or forwards
and another group allows for sideways jaw movement. Neck, back
and shoulder muscles also contribute as bracing muscles which
allow our jaws to move smoothly and efficiently.
If a patient's teeth don't fit and slide together in harmony,
one or more of these muscle groups may begin to suffer from
fatigue. This may be felt as headaches, eye pain, shoulder pain
- or pain from any of the muscle groups described above. Stress
levels are known to make matters worse. Patient's under pressure
at work, at home or in their personal lives are more likely
to suffer from these problems as are those who have recently
changed job, had a death in the family, moved house, divorced
or been put into a job that they cannot cope with. We also know
that each individual can cope with some bite errors without
getting symptoms at all. These patients are living within their
own limitations without problems. Adding a certain amount of
stress to those patients lives, damaging any of the supporting
muscles as in a car accident or adding new errors such as a
dental crown which does not fit properly, can push these patients
from having no problems at all to having lots of problems.
Sometimes it is a partner who knows that something is wrong.
Many spouses can hear their partner grinding their teeth all
night long. The patient only knows that they do not wake refreshed.
What is going on here is that even when we are asleep our brain
is trying to position our jaw into a comfortable position. The
problem here is that this comfortable position cannot be maintained
- so the jaws grind against each other in a never ending search
for a good night's sleep for their owner.
