#95 TMD/TMJ and the Hidden Data

The first scientific paper on the relationship between the symptoms of TMD/TMJ was published in 1934.  The author, James B. Costen MD, an ENT surgeon from St. Louis identified and discussed the problem and theorized the cause of the long list of disparate symptoms as missing posterior teeth.  Thus, began a 90-year marathon of less than successful attempts to explain and treat the devastating problem we now refer to as Tempromandibular Joint Disorder, (TMD).  The long-term confusion about this disease is difficult to explain beginning with the fact that almost everyone, including the doctors who try to treat it, call it TMJ, which is the name of the joint, (Tempormandiblar Joint).  Imagine going to an orthopedic surgeon with pain in and around the knee and after several x-rays and a history and physical examination the doctor said he was pleased to tell you that your diagnosis was “Knee Joint”.  It makes no sense.  Similarly, just about everything having to do with the study and treatment of TMD/TMJ for the past 90 years has ended up not making sense.  Until recently, the only consensus about TMD was that whether surgical or non-surgical, everyone, doctors and patients alike, believe “nothing works”.

Multiple textbooks, hundreds of scientific studies, and thousands of lectures at medical and dental meetings have been devoted to uncovering a solution for a problem that affects millions of people in the United States alone.  Most recently, a meeting was held in Washington DC at the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine bringing in the top academicians and scientists from multiple areas of expertise to address the problem of the totally disjointed and proven ineffective treatments currently available.  The result was a 300-page report which fully admitted there was no workable solution and concluded that more studies and work need to be done.

Wow!  That was the conclusion of the best minds available.  “More work needs to be done.”

I was at that 2 ½ day meeting in Washington and sat directly behind the meeting organizer the whole time.  At the appropriate time I delivered a seven-minute presentation about the 3000 cases of TMD successfully treated by unloading the joint with a non-surgical intra-oral device and protocol.  Upon ending my presentation, I received the customary hand clapping, but documentation of the 3000 successfully treated cases did not find its way into the final 300-page report.

Having done independent research working on both master’s and PhD degrees in cell biology/anatomy along with a two-year research grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research, I am familiar with the phenomenon of the “hidden data”.  When a problem seems unsolvable, there must be a hidden data.  Until the hidden data is exposed, the problem will go unsolved.  There have been hundreds of examples of this in medicine.  Polio was unsolvable until it was determined that polio was caused by a virus.  Once that hidden data was discovered the solution for polio then became solvable with a vaccine.

The hidden data regarding TMD/TMJ is the fact that the temporomandibular joint operates like every other joint in the body.  Every dentist is taught that the TMJ is a very different and a very complicated joint.  They are taught that this joint is so complicated and so different that no one can figure it out.

When the TMJ is studied from the viewpoint that it operates like any other joint in the body it becomes apparent that chronic inflammation in the joint drives all the symptoms just like hips, knees and elbows.  And the easiest way to decrease inflammation in a joint is to unload the joint.  A set of crutches unloads a painful knee, and a sling unloads a painful elbow.  In fact, TMD/TMJ and tennis elbow are the same disease and respond to chronic inflammation of the joints in an identical manner.

The TMJ is not different from other joints in the body.  That was the hidden data that allowed the solution for the devastating problem to come to light.  Just like the hidden data for polio allowed the vaccine to be created.

If you find yourself with an unsolvable problem, look for the hidden data.  When you find the hidden data, you will then be able to create the solution.

The hidden data regarding TMD/TMJ has been discovered, and the result is the Urbanek Device and Protocol.