#96 TMD/TMJ and Night Guards

It is very common for a patient to arrive at our office for a TMD/TMJ consultation with a bag full of night guards.  Often the bag contains 2-3 guards, and I have seen as many as 8 from the same patient.  Sometimes the guards have been made by the same dentist, and sometimes they have been made by several different dentists.  The patients bring them in because they want to show us the devices they have used that have not been effective in relieving their symptoms.  Many of them are very frustrated because they have seen many different health care providers trying to solve their problem.  Some have tried many different types of treatment besides wearing a night guard.  Al have been told by one dentist or more that the night guard is the solution for TMD/TMJ.

Many of these patients ask during the consultation, “Why is your night guard so different than all the others I have in this bag?”  The answer to the question is simple. The Urbanek device and protocol is not a night guard.  It is something quite different. Its design is totally different, its purpose is totally different, and the way you use it is totally different.

First, let’s define a night guard, what it is and what it isn’t.  Just about all patients and most dentists are confused by the words “night guard”.

A night guard is a device that is custom made by a dentist to cover the surfaces of the teeth.  It can cover the upper, or the lower teeth, and can be made of either hard or soft material.  Its purpose is to keep the tooth surfaces of a patient prone to bruxism, (clenching and grinding) protected while the patient sleeps.  It protects the surfaces of the teeth and nothing else.  It is very effective in inhibiting damage to the teeth as one bruxes while sleeping.  It does not inhibit or stop patients from clenching or grinding.  They do not help people with sleep apnea or people who snore even though you will find many dentists and web sites that claim otherwise.  And they certainly do not help people with TMD/TMJ.  They do only one thing.  They protect the surfaces of the teeth.

There is just about as much confusion among dentists as there is among patients on the afore-mentioned facts.

There are oral devices that are specifically designed for the treatment of sleep apnea and snoring and they work reasonably well.  Before devoting our practice exclusively to the non-surgical treatment of TMD/TMJ we delivered hundreds of sleep devices for the treatment of sleep apnea and snoring.  These devices are not night guards and have no resemblance to night guards other than they both are inserted in the mouth.

Unfortunately, in 2024, the 50% of dentists who attempt to treat TMD do so providing a night guard, and 49.9% of dentists don’t want anything to do with  TMD/TMJ. By history or experience they are convinced TMD/TMJ has no solution, so they just tell patients, “I don’t treat TMJ”.

This is very unfortunate when 99.9% of dentists either treat the symptoms inappropriately or don’t treat them at all.

The remaining .1% of dentists are divided into two camps.  Those that want to make the treatment process complicated and the few that have found the source of all the symptoms is derived from inflammation in the joints, and treat it by unloading the joints like crutches treats a damaged knee.

Those that want to make it complicated treat each symptom independently rather than treating the singular cause of the problem.  Treating symptoms alone is like playing “Whack a Mole”.  Just when you bat down a symptom in one place, another of the symptoms occurs somewhere else.  This can go on indefinitely.  They also use a plethora of complicated machines, gadgets, tools, programs, surgery, and drugs.  In the worst case, they make it even more complicated by making it a group effort enlisting the help of psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral therapists, physical therapists, social workers, orthodontists, and occlusal reconstruction specialists, usually in universities.

And then there are the few who have discovered that if you simply separate the back teeth according to a simple protocol using a simple inconspicuous device, the inflammation in the joints diminish and the symptoms subside and go away.  That is the simplicity of the Urbanek Device and Protocol and many dentists throughout the United States are now using this patented, FDA cleared, independent university study validated device and protocol.

Now you know the difference between the Urbanek device and a night guard.