The Role of Oral Health in TMJ Disorders

A stable bite is a fundamental requirement for TMJ health, but dental diseases can destabilize a bite by causing teeth to shift.  A cavity on one side of a tooth can cause the neighboring tooth to tip into the space, which causes the opposite side of that neighboring tooth to tip upward in a way that interferes with the bite, which causes the jaw muscles to change their firing pattern in order to avoid the bite interference.  Gum disease can shift a tooth by changing the shape of its bony socket. .

 

Dental diseases reflexively increase jaw muscle tonus, because the teeth form a joint between the upper and lower jawbones, and joints are wired with protective reflexes that respond to any noxious sensory input by increasing the tonus in the muscles which cross that joint. Cavities and gum disease can provide that noxious sensory input and thereby trigger jaw muscle tightness.  

 

Preventing dental and periodontal disease requires cleaning your teeth after you eat, massaging your gums frequently, and getting good routine dental care.  The goal is not to sterilize your mouth or kill as many germs as possible, but to grow and maintain a healthy oral microbiome which protects your tissues from pathogens much like a healthy garden prevents weeds.  Your oral microbiome health is affected not just by how often you brush and floss, but also by what you eat, how much stimulation your gums receive, and your overall state of health. 

 

Cavities on the biting surfaces and the spaces between teeth occur when bacteria digest sugars in plaque and trapped food, producing acid which eats holes in the enamel and dentin wherever the food gets trapped, primarily in the spaces between the teeth or in the valleys on the tops of the teeth during the first two decades of life. Cavities at the gumlines and root surfaces often occur later in life when older people undergo dry mouth (common side effects of drugs), which prevents saliva from rinsing away the acids created by bacteria in plaque that accumulates .  

In adulthood, mouths become more alkaline (less acidic), and they tend to deposit minerals to form calculus (tartar) rather than dissolving minerals to form cavities.  The gums of older people have usually receeded far from the bite table, leaving large spaces where food gets trapped and where plaque (the white paste of flour and water) can accumulate at the gumlines and between the teeth.  When plaque remains undisturbed, it picks up minerals from saliva and hardens to form a crusty structure much like a coral reef - with tunnels and crypts where bacteria can hide.  This is the material that your dentist scrapes off your teeth when you get them cleaned.   

 

Preventing gum disease requires not only regularly removing food and plaque after eating, - it also requires gum massage.  Our gums evolved with an almost constant source of rhythmically alternating compression and release from chewing tough food on a bite table that stayed close to the gums, because the teeth wore down as the gums receded.  Each chew compressed the gums, which pumped out the old blood, and each release let in new blood.  Today, most of our food is too soft to provide much massage from chewing, and any tough chewing that we undertake occurs too far from the receeding gums to provide the massage needed.     

 

RUBBER TIPS 

You can recreate healthy gum massage by using one of the rubber tips that were on the end of every toothbrush for the better part of a century, until they were removed for marketing reasons - they last too long.  Rubber tips are still available, but they must be purchased separately.  Teeth are like glass, and this little pointed cone of rubber cleans them like a squeege cleans a windshield.  It should be rubbed along the gumline from one tooth to the next and pushed into the space between each pair of teeth until it briefly blanches the gums.  The gums turn white when they lose the old blood, and they turn pink again when new blood flows back in to replenish the tissues.  In this manner, massage provides an accessory circulatory pump for the gums.

 

Flossing is one way (along with bristle brushes and water picks) to remove food that has become stuck between adjacent teeth.  If you have areas in your mouth that trap food when you eat, you need to find a way to get the food out shortly afterwards.  You cannot wait until you brush your teeth before bed, or you'll get gum disease or a cavity.

 

Most toothpaste contains an abrasive, flouride, a foaming agent, and a sweetener.  Abrasives help scour the surfaces, flouride is one of the minerals that helps harden the surfaces of teeth, and foaming agents make your mouth feel clean. Some toothpastes also contain herbs and essential oils or whitening agents. Salt and baking soda help prevent cavities, because they buffer the acids that microbes produce to drill holes through the enamel.  

 

Bentonite clay is a good alternative to toothpaste. It is sufficiently abrasive, and it contains flouride in about the same proportions it exists in the earth.  In fact, the amount of daily flouride that prevents dental decay is similar to the amount that our ancestors received daily just from their food and water.  We evolved on this big rock (earth) with the constant presence of almost 100 trace minerals that were in all our water and food.  Our bodies were designed to be able to pick out from that supply whichever minerals they needed, including flouride.  Today we know of our need for about 8 trace minerals, mostly from experiments which go to extremes to deprive lab rats of one trace mineral or another. Companies then extract those trace minerals from rocks and sell them to you; which seems foolish; because it's much cheaper and very likely much healthier to simply consume trace minerals in their natural balance, directly from the rocks, in the form of clay.  Such a balanced source of minerals, in about the same concentration as the earth, gives you the trace minerals for which we understand the need as well as those for which we don't yet understand the need. Also, we know that some minerals (like calcium) cannot be absorbed without the presence of other minerals, and the earth provides all the minerals in a balance that we were designed to handle and easily absorb as needed. The minerals in a typical sample of bentonite clay are listed below:

 

 If you wear an oral appliance every night, you should leave it soaking in clean water all day to prevent it from building up the hard crust of minerals that you can see on most old appliances. This crust is made of minerals from saliva that as on your appliance when it dried out. It is called tartar or calculus. It is the same material that the dentist scrapes off your teeth during a cleaning, and it's the last thing you want to put in your mouth every night.  One way to prevent it from accumulating on your appliance is to keep the appliance wet. 

 

DISINFECTING - your appliance by soaking it in something that kills bacteria should be done daily or at least weekly.  Denture cleaners, which include bleach, baking soda, and citric acid to remove stains, are available at all drug stores.  Alternatively, you can soak your appliance in any type of mouthwash, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, or even vodka.  To your health!