#27 TMD/TMJ Symptoms are the Body’s way of Telling You to Ask for Help

It never ceases to amaze me how many patients live with serious and life limiting symptoms before asking for help.  This lack of interest in seeking assistance and a solution stems from many different reasons.  Here are just a few.

• Hope that the symptom will resolve by itself eventually
• Lack of time or money to go to the doctor
• The symptom does not seem important to the patient
• The patient thinks the symptom is normal
• Fear that the symptom will lead to an unwanted treatment
• Fear that the symptom is an indicator of a lethal disease
• Plain old procrastination

The most common symptom of TMD/TMJ is headache.  Patients describe their headaches in hundreds of different ways, in multiple different locations, with varying degrees of intensity and frequency.  Headaches are so common many patients tell me they have “normal headaches”, as if having headaches is an expected part of living.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are many causes for headaches.  A headache can indicate a problem as serious as a stroke or cancer, or as minimal as allergy to pollen in the spring.  But if your head hurts, you are being told by the body there is something amiss.

Since headaches are so common most people use one or more of the above reasons to delay asking for help. If the head pain is rare and only occasional I would not fault the patient who delays.  But if the headache is frequent or recurrent it is time to put aside your justifications for not seeking help.

Frequent and/or recurrent are the buzz words indicating the line in the sand.  It is not uncommon for a patient to tell me they have normal headaches once or twice a week. A headache once or twice a week is not normal. Then the patient will most likely offer that the headaches have been going on for years. Then on further questioning the patient will admit the headaches are getting more frequent and severe with time. And this is what the patient considered ‘normal headaches.

This history is all too common during a consultation for TMD/TMJ.

The rule of “frequent and/or recurring” can apply to each of the common symptoms of TMD/TMJ.  Besides headache, the common symptoms of TMD/TMJ are:

• Neck pain
• Earache
• Tinnitus (Ringing/Buzzing in the ears)
• Subjective hearing loss (like your ears of full of water)
• Dizziness/Vertigo
• Upper back and shoulder pain and tightness
• Arm/Hand/Finger tingling and numbness
• Locking of the Jaw (Continuous or Intermittent)

If you have one, several, or all of these symptoms that are frequent or recurrent, your body is telling you its time to ask for help

If you are diagnosed with TMD/TMJ help is simple and living symptoms free is only a short time away.