Dr. Konig, iHATEheadaches Blog

Houston, Texas

Saturday, October 24, 2009

HEADACHES & TMJ: Often Overlooked

HEADACHES & TMJ: The Often Overlooked Cause

Headaches and pain symptoms caused by TMJ (temporomandibular joint) disorders often go overlooked and undiagnosed. This is especially common in patients who experience ear pain and headaches. It is debilitating for individuals to have a headache everyday. Not only is this painful but it decreases a person's ability to work, function, and even care for their families.

I am fortunate to work with many medical specialists who understand what TMJ is and after ruling out other medical issues often refer to our office to assist these patient's with their TMJ problems. However, many doctors do not recognize that TMJ is a big culprit in so many cases. Doctors are trained to look for abnormalities. Often they will run a series of tests, looking for something abnormal to pop up and making sure that there are no serious medical problems. Once they find something wrong on your x-ray, MRI, blood work, etc., they can look in a book and find a description of the usual presentation of that abnormality.

Unfortunately, in many cases there is no way to "see" that individuals have TMJ problems. Patient's have all these wild symptoms and nothing to show for it. How is your physician supposed to know that a "normal" activity can result in such abnormal symptoms?

Many times, we see patient's and the problem is obvious to us. However, with our sophisticated computer TMJ analysis we are now able to see the underlying cause of the TMJ problem that is causing headaches and pain. This computer analysis is FDA and ADA approved.

The good news is that most TMJ and associated headaches can be treated non-surgically.

For more information, please feel free to contact our office at 713-668-2289 with any questions as we welcome the opportunity discuss these issues with you. Ronald W. Konig DDS, FAGD, LVIF

posted by Ron Konig at 9:54 AM

Sunday, October 18, 2009

UNKNOWN REASONS FOR HEADACHES

So many of our patient's whom we see for headaches have seen internists, ENT's, neurologists,

and even had MRI's to ensure that they do not have a brain tumor. Whereas it is great to rule out medical issues, headaches caused by TMJ problems and facial musculature problems are very common and often overlooked.

Some of these patients have popping and clicking of the joints, limited movement of the jaw,

soreness and headaches in the morning and afternoon, neck and shoulder pain and many other symptoms. However, some seem to be asymptomatic.

The easiest way to understand why patient's can get headaches and facial pain from TMJ issues is to see how it would feel to hold your arm up (or level with your shoulder) all day long. Spasms and muscle tightness ensue and cause the problems. In essence, if the bite is incorrect then every time you place your teeth together your muscles are overworking or "working out" and when you open the do the same. So your jaw and facial muscles can never relax and in turn cause facial pain and headaches.

It is truly amazing that this can occur, however, every day we see the same scenario from one or more new patient's who are looking for relief from their headaches.

If you have any questions about TMJ related headaches, please feel free to contact our office at 713-668-2289, as we welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you. Ronald W. Konig DDS, FAGD, LVIF

posted by Ron Konig at 9:14 PM

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