Does anyone else experience their teeth not lining up somedays but totally fine other days? My Neurologist told me that she has not heard this comment from her other TN patients. Just curious. If so, any suggestions on how to handle this? Is there anything I can do to keep it from happening?
Welcome Dianne, good topic!
I tend to dismiss past teeth alignment issues, due to my grinding, causing chipping. That was not a memorable time and I am grateful I can catch myself before those reactions occur. I don't have a clue how I 'catch myself', but I start a regiment of what a a nice group of people have suggested. : )
At sleep, I wore a mouth-guard, that my Dentist gave me. bob
Hi Dianne,
This has happened to me a lot. I think that the muscles in the cheek go into spasm and shorten. the worst bit is that my upper teeth then catch on the lower ones and cause the nerve to jump. My chiropracter confrmed that my teeth were out of line so she very gently stroked down my cheek and the jaw relaxed again.
my facial pain actually started after my teeth went out of alignment. it's definitely nerve pain, because regular medications do not help it; but the pain did not start until the bite went out of whack.
vesper
Dianne, this has happened to me as well and I thought I was the only one that had experienced this! I don’t know what could be causing it other than the muscle spasming or contracting as another member mentioned. I live in Olive Branch, MS, just south of Memphis, and would love to chat through email sometime. I wish you well and hope you can get some relief.
Hi Dianne,
My teeth don't meet but I'm not sure if it's because of my ATN or jaw discs displacement. I remember it first started when my jaw discs got displaced (I didn't know that was what was happening then) and I couldn't relax the little muscles around my left eye for a month, at the same time my lower and upper front teeth started to catch on each other which was very, very frustrating. Then the neuralgic pain started to get a lot worse and I also started to experience other issues, e,g. with my neck - the left hand side felt as if it was constantly full. I now have a clearer picture of what was going on then (thanks to my masseur and physiotherapist), that it was the hyperactivity of the nerve forcing my facial and neck muscles into spasm, but it was very frightening at the time I tried to explain this to doctors who had no clue... Night guard seems to help at times, and I also try to watch out for clenching and tension in the jaw during day time when I'm at work, which also helps. Take care,
Oldriska
This has happened to me too. I thought I was just imagining it. So glad to hear that it may actually be happening. I'm recently diagnosed, so I don't know what to expect with this terrible disorder.
I have TMJ and had jaw surgery. That actually made mine worse because where the doc cut into my palate, it relapsed and my top teeth (back molar areas) are turning inward and my jaw is shifting out of position. He says he needs to re-operate and put in a palatal splint to wear 2-3 months to widen back out the palate but I do not want to go through that again but I don't like my teeth not touching either.
Generally, from what I've heard from others whose teeth are no longer touching and they never had surgery, is that their jaws are shifting causing odd spacing between the upper and lower jaws and this causes a "crossbite". Sometimes orthodontics can help but they cannot move the teeth fast, it needs to be a slow move of the teeth so it won't cause more jaw issues. So, braces have to be worn longer than normal.
I've heard another cause is that the disc that sits between the upper and lower jaw is wearing out on one side and causing a shifting of the jaws which appears as a shifting of teeth. An oral maxillofacial surgeon or an orthodontist who deals with TMJ/TMD can tell you more about it. They can do an iCAT and see if your disc is in position or has shifted.
I would not recommend any big surgery like what happened to me because it made my situation worse. But I do know some people who just had arthoplasty to fix the disc and clean out any adhesions around the TMJ joint and they ended up fine but you have to find a good surgeon for that.
Take care,
Tinkerbell
Hi Shindig,
I'm actually going to replace part of my Lyrica by cannabis (the indigo kind); this is after I experienced some really bad withdrawal effects when I tried to lower my dosage of meds due to side effects. I discussed it with someone who said I shouldn't come off the Lyrica just like that, he suggested I tried cannabis to "fool" my brain (he has no financial interest in this). The point is that I'm also on antidepressants, and I didn't know they could interact with cannabis in this way. Do you think the pros of using cannabis overweight the cons in this case? Thanks for your opinion and take care,
Oldriska
shindig said:
I had something like this a couple weeks ago for the first time ever. I was also having weird muscle clenching issues where I'd be either squinting really hard without wanting to, causing tension headaches, as well as my leg muscle clenching while I was driving and my teeth stopped lining up for a few days. Basically I couldn't close my mouth all the way, my lower jaw was forward too much so if I tried to close my mouth the front teeth would hit long before the molars touched.
Forgot to mention it to the neuro, though I did mention the clenching muscles in the face/leg which he didn't know what to think. He said he didn't think it was the meds. I noticed, but didn't mention to him, the tricyclic anti-depressants (nortriptyling/amitriptyline) react really badly to cannabis but doubt you're using it...
Forgive my lack of knowledge here, but what is cannabis? What is it used for?
Thanks,
Tinkerbell