Dentists Discuss the Scourge of Stressful Modern Living in New York City: Temporomandibular Joint Disorder, PART 2

This two-part article series provides an in-depth discussion of temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) and its various causes, symptoms and treatment options.

Welcome to the second half of this two-part article series on the causes and symptoms of temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD), as well as the various treatment options available for this painful condition. Previously, in Part 1, we spoke to an experienced dentist in New York City who explained what TMD was and that the most common causes for it are stress-induced jaw clenching and teeth grinding. Since it’s not always possible to tell if you do these things yourself – because they’re often done subconsciously or while you’re asleep – it’s advisable that you seek professional attention from a dentist for a diagnosis. This is especially the case if you ‘ve been experienced TMD-like symptoms.

Speaking of which, what ARE the symptoms of TMD? Let’s take a look at them before moving on to explaining the various treatment options available to sufferers…

The Symptoms of Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMD)

• A dull ache in the joint that connects your lower jaw to your skull, as well as the neighboring areas.
• Pain in the jaw muscles, head, neck and even shoulders.
• Stiffness of the jaw muscles and difficulty opening and closing your mouth.
• A limited ability to open your mouth or even a total locking of the jaw.
• A bite that doesn’t feel quite right: as though your jaws aren’t aligned properly.
• Difficulty seeing properly. TMD can actually cause vision problems and dizziness.
• An audible popping, clicking or grating sound when you open and/or close your mouth.
• Earache or a feeling of pressure in your ears. TMD has also been linked with tinnitus: a persistent ringing sound.
• Chronic headaches that can make you feel quite nauseous.

“TMD can present with only one or even multiple symptoms,” explains the New York dentist. “If, however, the symptoms you experience are persistent or recurring and are becoming taxing upon your quality of life, it’s important that you seek medical attention right away. While TMD can sometimes go away on its own, there’s no point living with chronic headaches and pain when treatment is readily available.”

What Are The Treatment Options Available for TMD?

“In most cases, the best and most effective, if not the only treatment option available to New Yorkers with mild and sporadic TMD symptoms is therapeutic in nature. By keeping your jaw as still as possible and by applying cold and heat packs to the side of the face, you can give the jaw the rest it needs for the inflammation to die down,” advises the dentist. “Stick to soft foods, don’t chew gum and avoid opening your mouth very wide just for one or two weeks or until the symptoms ebb.

“It is also advisable that you have a mouth guard custom made for you so that you prevent the (common) cause of TMD and that’s teeth grinding. For more advanced and severe cases of TMD, surgery may be required, although this really is a last resort. Only a qualified dental professional will be able to advise you accordingly.”

“Mouth guards or retainers prevent the upper and lower teeth actually coming together, which saves you from the kind of wear-and-tear that could eventually land you up needing new teeth,” says a dentist in New York City.

Life in the Big Apple can be stressful, but a smile goes a long way to lighting up your day, so do what you can to prevent the extreme discomfort and damage associated with teeth grinding and jaw clenching. Wearing a mouth guard at night is hardly any trouble at all when you consider the alternative!

Dentists Discuss the Scourge of Stressful Modern Living in New York: Temporomandibular Joint Disorder, PART 1

This two-part article series provides an in-depth discussion of temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) and its various causes, symptoms and treatment options.

New York City is a throbbing, fast-paced American metropolis, as well as the nation’s economic, cultural and financial capital. Here, if you’re not moving at a hundred miles per hour, you’re not keeping up with competition. The result is that many New York residents suffer, in some way or form, from a high degree of stress and the physical ramifications of this are many. One of the most common physical symptoms of stressful living is temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD), of which dentists in New York report an increasing incidence.

This painful condition centers on the joint between the jaw and the temple region of the head and can cause a great spectrum of troubles, from a stiff jaw that audibly clicks when opening and closing the mouth to crippling chronic headaches. To get a better understanding of TMD, its symptoms, what causes it and what can be done to prevent it, we’ve spoken to an experienced New York dentist and in this two-part article series, we shall be presenting what she had to say.

What is TMD and What Causes It?

“The smooth functioning of our jaws is absolutely vital,” begins the dentist. “Opening and closing your jaw is something you take for granted until the very day you develop a condition like TMD, which impairs this ability by making the joint stiff and/or very painful. Temporomandibular Joint Disorder – TMD for short - essentially refers to a malfunction or the impaired function of the joint that controls the articulation of the lower jaw.”

What causes TMD?

What has happened to you when you are diagnosed with TMD is that the muscles and tendons surrounding the temporomandibular joint or the joint itself has become irritated and inflamed. In some cases, the “ball point” of the mandible can actually slip out of the socket very slightly and in doing so, it rubs against the soft pad that cushions the joint. In certain extreme cases of TMD, the jaw can actually become locked and refuse to open or close!

“What causes any of these conditions to happen is not precisely known,” says the dentist. “At our New York practice, we see many patients with TMD and there doesn’t seem to be a clear common cause with the exception of one: stress. Jaw clenching and teeth grinding – something people often do sub-consciously or while they’re asleep during the night – tends to cause the kind of joint inflammation and pain we typically see with TMD patients. And of course these two bad habits are linked with stress.”

Am I a Tooth-Grinder / Jaw Clencher?

Determining whether you do grind your teeth or clench your jaw is a good start to diagnosing TMD, however it’s not always possible to know the answer to this question. Oftentimes, New Yorkers grind their teeth at night or they clench their jaws subconsciously. You might be doing terrible damage to your teeth and be completely unaware of it! A good dentist in New York will be able to tell from the general condition of and wear patterns on your teeth whether you do clench your jaw and grind your teeth, so if you do experience the symptoms of TMD, you should book yourself a dental appointment.

“Ask your bedfellow if they’ve heard you grinding in your sleep… it’s a fairly loud and disruptive sound like nails on a chalkboard,” advises the NYC dentist. “If they say they’ve heard you, you will need to do something about it or risk permanent damage to your teeth.”

Stay Tuned for Part 2

To find out more about temporomandibular joint disorder and what you can do to minimize or even eliminate the symptoms of this painful condition, stay tuned for the second half of this two-part article series.

Dentist News NYC: Oral Bacteria Found to Cause Chronic Blood Vessel Inflammation

This article explains how the oral bacteria Porphyromonas gingivalis is able to avoid our body’s natural defenses and in doing so, cause chronic systemic inflammation.

Brushing and flossing your teeth is integral to maintaining good oral hygiene and for preventing the proliferation of oral bacteria that can cause tooth decay and gum disease. But did you know that good oral hygiene also helps to prevent a whole host of potentially deadly illnesses that are linked with chronic inflammation? The connection between gum disease and, for example, cardiovascular disease is well established in the medical literature, but now deeper insights have been gained into the exact mechanisms of how oral bacteria can make us sick. Let’s take a closer look with the help of an experienced NYC dentist…

Meet the Oral Bacterium, Porphyromonas Gingivalis

Porphyromonas gingivalis, or P. gingivalis for short, is a nasty critter that is known to cause local inflammation of the oral soft tissues, namely, your gums. It commonly found in people who suffer from gum disease and is linked with an increased risk of tooth loss and jawbone deterioration. According to a scientific article published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, chronic infection of the gums by P. gingivalis can lead to an increased risk of inflammation of the blood vessels. A condition termed atherosclerosis.

“P. gingivalis is a type of oral bacteria whose bodies are covered with an outer layer or coating,” explains the NYC dentist. “Our immune system has evolved to recognize parts of the composition of this layer – in particular, a lipid termed “lipid A” - and when it does it triggers the alarm. This kicks our defenses into action.

“P. gingivalis, however, has wizened up to our standard immune reaction and has actually developed a smart way around it. It produces a variant of lipid A, which goes unrecognized and undetected by our biological defenses. This ability essentially enables this pathogen to survive our immune system and to cause widespread trouble, both locally in the jawbone and systemically, throughout the blood vessels of our body. And of course, the major organs of our body are easily accessible via the blood vessels.”

The Link Between Gum Disease and Other Systemic Diseases

To a large degree, this explains the relationship gum disease shares with many other inflammatory diseases that affect our body’s major systems and organs. While the exact mechanisms of some of these connections are yet to be established, people with gum disease are known to be at a greater risk of:

• Diabetes, • Cardiovascular disease, • Respiratory disease, • Stroke, • Liver and kidney disease, • Oral cancer, • Osteoporosis, • Rheumatoid arthritis.

Inflammation is the common thread here and with P. gingivalis able to travel through our blood vessels undetected and unchallenged by our immune systems, it’s no surprise how these oral bacteria can cause such serious illness throughout the rest of our body.

A Final Note

“The health of your mouth is intimately linked with the health of your body,” says the New York dentist. “If your mouth is unhealthy you can risk making yourself sick, not only because you’re swallowing all these nasty pathogens, but also because you’re breathing them in. Then, to make matters worse, they have developed sophisticated defenses that enable them to go undetected by our immune system. This is why good oral health and hygiene are so important: it’s not so that toothpaste companies can make millions of dollars, it’s so that you can live a longer, healthier and better quality life!”

Dental Implants News New York: New Study Reveals Link Between Implant Failure and Common Anti-Depressants

This article reveals the results of a study that was conducted on the use of common anti-depressant medications (SSRIs) and the incidence of implant failure in a group of almost 500 patients.

SSRIs or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors are the most common anti-depressant medications prescribed by New York medical practitioners. However, according to a recently published scientific paper by the International and American Associations for Dental Research, the administration of SSRIs could be resulting in a higher risk of implant failure for patients receiving new teeth. The exact mechanism for this is suspected to be the impediment of bone healing, as well as the greater risk of bone fracture.

A Dental Implant Surgeon in New York Explains…

“In the weeks and months following implant placement in the jawbone, the bone will actually bond to the surface of the implant as it heals. In doing so, the implant becomes permanently fixed in the jawbone, very similar to a natural tooth root. The problem with SSRIs, according to this study, is that they would seem to impede the natural process of osseointegration, which describes the healing of the bone around the implant and the attachment of the bone to the implant,” says the dental implant dentist in New York.

The picture above shows bone tissue bonding to the surface of a titanium implant. This process is termed “osseointegration” and it’s what makes bone repair and replacement using titanium metal a possibility.

More About the Study

This study, which was published in the Journal of Dental Research (JDR), examined a total of 490 patients who had dental implants placed in a 6-year period from January 2007 to January 2013. A whopping 916 implants were placed of which 94 were done on 51 patients who were actively taking anti-depressant medication at the time. After anywhere between three months and 5,5 years – with continuous follow-up appointments with a dental implant surgeon – a total of 10 dental implants failed in the group of patients who were taking SSRIs, while 38 failed in those who weren’t.

The Outcomes and What They Mean

“The most obvious result yielded by this study is the link between an increase in the risk of implant failure and the taking of SSRI medication,” says an experienced dental implant surgeon in New York. “According to the study, the failure rate amongst those patients who weren’t taking SSRIs was 4.6%, while it was 10.6% for those who were. This is a significant result that could very well indicate that anti-depressant medications could render you twice as likely to experience dental implant failure.”

The study did emphasize that there were secondary risk factors that included the size of the implants used (smaller diameters = greater risk of implant failure) whether bone grafting had been done (bone grafting = greater risk) and whether the patient was a smoker (tobacco-use = greater risk). Further research is needed to better understand the relationship between anti-depressant medications and implant failure.

The Importance of the Study

“Dental implant surgery represents a considerable investment by any patient, both financially and in their good oral health, smile aesthetics and bite functionality,” comments a professional dentist in New York. “It’s not undertaken lightly, so understanding the various risk factors for implant failure is a very important step in maximizing the positive outcomes of this approach to treating tooth loss. If we can understand the risks, we can do our best to avoid and/or mitigate them.”

Invisalign Dentists Explain Revolutionary Orthodontic Treatment To NYC Public

This article takes a look at Invisalign treatment, how it works and what patients can expect from their experience of getting a straighter, healthier and more beautiful smile.

Invisalign is a revolutionary orthodontic treatment that has generated tsunami-sized waves in New York because of its ability to treat a wide variety of common dental problems without the need for painfully sore and painfully obvious metal braces. In this article, an experienced Invisalign dentist in NYC explains how the treatment works and what NYC residents can expect on their journey to a healthier, more beautiful smile.

How Does Invisalign Work?

The Invisalign system consists of a series of totally translucent aligners or mouth trays. You begin with the first aligner, which you wear for a period of two weeks and throughout the day and night, except when cleaning your teeth or eating. After a fortnight, you change over to the next aligner in the series.

"How Invisalign works is quite simple," explains a cosmetic dentist in New York. "Each aligner is custom fabricated to fit over your teeth but with the smallest difference in configuration so that it actually applies a pressure to the surface of the teeth that aren't oriented correctly. At first, the patient will be conscious of this pressure, but that will soon dissipate as the tooth or teeth move into their newer, better positions.

"After two weeks, the patient will discard their aligner and insert the next in the series, which is once again very slightly different to the existing alignment and configuration of their teeth. The teeth will, again, be forced into better positions and treatment continues this way for anywhere between 12 and 24 months until the teeth are in the best possible positions."

What Problems Can Invisalign Treatment Correct?

Invisalign can be used to treat most common orthodontic problems, from skew and crooked teeth to a badly aligned upper and lower dentition: bucked teeth, over bites, under bites and cross bites included. While there are some advanced orthodontic problems and severe cases of the afore-mentioned conditions that will need to be addressed with more conventional treatment methods, Invisalign can help most New York residents achieve the smile of their dreams!

Key Differences Between Invisalign and Traditional Braces

Traditional braces can almost look quite charming on a child, but for adults, they could very well be a considerable social and professional impediment. The biggest and most immediately noticeable difference between braces and Invisalign is that the former is painfully obvious while the latter is wholly discrete and actually invisible to the casual observer.

"It is this benefit that has compelled many New York residents to seek orthodontic treatment, whereas before the introduction of Invisalign, the idea of having to wear metal braces for more than a year might have put them off," explains one NYC cosmetic dentist.

Other Benefits of Invisalign Include:

• The correction of badly aligned teeth.
• The promotion of good bite function.
• The prevention of tooth decay associated with skew, overlapping teeth, which are difficult to keep clean.
• The prevention of dental trauma and uneven wear patterns associated with badly aligned upper and lower teeth.
• Much better and more beautiful smile aesthetics.
• Greater self-confidence.
• No pain and discomfort! The Invisalign aligners are smooth and comfortable and don't cause the ulceration of the cheeks and tongue as traditional braces typically do.

Considering all of the above, it's not hard to understand why Invisalign has become the recommendation of cosmetic dentists and of New Yorkers who demand only the highest standard of aesthetics.