TOOTH FRACTURE

      

        Tooth fracture is not an uncommon problem. Most people attribute it to eating - biting down, hitting something hard and fracturing a tooth. While this can occur, there's a much bigger problem which I have seen widely. It can occur during the night or during the day even while not chewing. The vast-majority of people clench or grind their teeth even though they don't know it. These forces can be extreme and can cause fracture on the tooth that has no decay and even no filling.

         I have been practicing dentistry since 1973 and have seen this problem but nothing on the scope I've seen lately. Higher stress levels seem to cause people to clench and grind their teeth with greater intensity and frequency. Sometimes the fracture is above the gum line and a wall or corner of the tooth breaks. However; sometimes the fracture goes below the gum line down into the root. In this case there is no alternative but to remove the tooth.

        Sometimes large fillings can predispose to fracture above the gum line. This can be prevented by restoring the tooth with a crown which protects it from the outside. However, root fractures are another concern and even a crown cannot prevent them. Of course not all fractures can be prevented, but there is something you can do to help lessen the possibility of fractures.

        Wearing a guard or device that helps prevent the teeth from coming together with extreme force can be a big help. This is particularly useful at night when a patient is unaware that they are grinding their teeth. Over the years I have also been the patient suffering from problems related to clenching and grinding. Although I never fractured a tooth, I have many other problems relating to this phenomenon. There are many devices available to treat this problem -- horseshoe devices, posterior pads, etc. The scope of the problem and the devices available caused me to create a new device which I think is superior to anything else. Virtually all the other devices for this problem are simply plastic between the teeth -- they do nothing to treat the problem at its source- the muscles. My product, GrindReliefN, is smaller, covering only the first 6 to 8 anterior teeth and can be worn on the upper or lower teeth. Unlike all other devices, it has a central bar which causes the most force to be at the upper and lower mid-line at the same time. This creates a nerve stimulus somewhat of a biofeedback that affects the muscles causing them to contract with 60% or more reduction in bite force. You can simulate this force by taking a pencil, putting it between your back teeth and biting down, then with the same pencil between your upper and lower front teeth at the mid-line, bite and you simply can't bite with as much force. This device is not just plastic between your teeth, it has science behind it and is the best way to treat the problem at its source -- the muscles. It has a three-year wear guarantee and performs as well or better than expensive professional devices at a fraction of the cost.

More information can be found at GrindReliefN.com.

Stress and Its Affects on The Body

         The human species has experienced stress for thousands of years, however; today more than any other time, problems whether down the street or across the world are in our faces all the time, due to news outlets Internet social media etc., there is no escaping increasing problems in this troubled world. Of Course in the past we've always had troubles but they are more evident to all of us now than at any time in our history.

          How does stress cause physical problems? We all know that stress can cause anxiety, depression and many other maladies. Some people are aware that stress can cause headaches though it's just a stress headache. But how can stress cause a headache? Over 30 years ago I became aware of the connection between clenching and grinding of teeth and headaches. I began to get migraine headaches, sometimes they would last for two or three days. My teeth did not bother me I had no jaw soreness; I simply had shoulder neck pain and frequent headaches. It was so bad that I went to the hospital and had an MRI taken. They could find no reason for my headaches.

       Finally at one point I had some joint pain on my left side. I made a professional device or splint that covers all my lower teeth, and to my surprise not only did my jaw pain subside but my headaches went away. As a dentist I took many courses on the subject but there's nothing like feeling the pain yourself to realize how real it is. This caused me to take many more courses on the subject. Over the years it has been a great challenge to treat my many patients who also suffer from this problem. As I searched for the ideal device to treat this problem, I became aware of a product called the NTI. This device is much smaller than any other device to treat the problem covering only a few front teeth. It has a central bar which elevates above the device -contacting the opposite front teeth at the mid-line. Studies show this contact can actually reduce muscle activity by at least 60%, treating the problem at its source the muscles. Studies also show that in a group study this device was able to treat 80% or more of migraine sufferers with success. However; this device can only be made by the dentist and costs hundreds of dollars.

       Several years ago I began working on a device which could be made by the patient at home. The device uses the mechanism of action of the NTI that actually improves by creating pressure on the upper and lower mid-lines at the same time. After much work with patents, FDA approvals and design changes the device is finally ready for the retail market. Sold online for over three years and now at most of the major retail.com outlets, it is having fantastic success. Not only is this the most effective and durable device I have ever seen, it is also very affordable.

      But now back to the beginning, how can stress cause physical pain and problems. Back in biblical times when troubles were noted it was described as wailing and gnashing of teeth. What does this mean? I believe they were clenching and grinding their teeth. OK fine, but how does this cause other problems? There's another problem which I experienced and I describe it as a musculoskeletal balancing reflex. Once after injuring my back, I found that within a few hours the pain and muscle spasms had traveled to my abdomen. The same thing happens when the jaw muscles contract through clenching or grinding, muscles in the shoulder and neck contract in a balancing mechanism. When this muscle spasm is strong enough, it can actually travel up to the base of the skull and you can get headaches. Over the years I've treated thousands of patients who suffer from headaches, shoulder, neck pain and other pains related to clenching and grinding. By far the most effective and wearable device I've ever used for my patients and myself is GrindReliefN.

More information can be found at GrindReliefN.com.

Shortening, Thinning and Chipping of Front Teeth Causes

    As time goes on, many people will notice a shortening of their front upper and lower teeth. Usually it takes them at least until their 30’s or 40’s before this deterioration is noticed, and before they find out why this occurs. For most people the lower front teeth sit back slightly from the upper front teeth. However; if they push the lower front teeth forward, you'll see that the teeth meet exactly like a lock and key. This is because they have been ground this way. The vast majority of people grind their teeth usually more at night than during the day. Although most people do grind their teeth and are unaware of it they are also unaware that during the grinding motion they will thrust the lower jaw forward causing the upper and lower front teeth to come in to contact and wear.

      I have been practicing dentistry since 1973 and I've seen this problem occur with many people. As this problem becomes more severe you'll notice that when these people smile you don't see their teeth, that's because there's barely any teeth to see in some cases. Some of these cases can be helped with a few fillings or a few crowns. However; when the situation becomes extreme, sometimes a full mouth reconstruction is necessary, and this can cost upwards of 40 to 60 thousand dollars and is not an easy process.

    Many people think damage to their teeth occurs only when they are showing, which is a very small percentage of the day. Actually a lot more damage occurs when people are not showing the clenching and grinding of their teeth, which many are aware causes severe damage from shortening of the Front teeth to many other problems. So how can this problem be prevented? The sooner the problem is identified, hopefully in the patient’s 20’s, or early 30’s and a device is used to help protect against the clenching and grinding, the more this problem will be prevented.

    Until recently it was necessary to go to the dentist and pay hundreds of dollars for a device that would fit properly and help with this problem. Over-the-counter devices simply were ineffective and also did not last very long at all. Now a revolutionary new device has come to the retail market called GrindReliefN. Virtually unlike any other device, it has a central bar which causes the main force of biting to come between the upper and lower front teeth. The central force creates a nerve reflex affect, causing the muscles to contract with 60% less force. Although the patient may slide their jaw forward in the grinding motion, they will now slide it onto the central bar protecting the teeth and preventing damage and wear. It covers only the front 6 to 8 teeth, and the back teeth are kept out of contact.

      While some people have trouble wearing anything in their mouth to protect against clenching and grinding, this device has been the most accepted, the most effective and the most durable, with a three-year wear guarantee. Also, since it is a small fraction of the cost of a professional appliance, it is now available to virtually anyone. More can be seen on this product at GrindReliefN.com.

RESORPTION

One rare problem that I have been seeing more of lately is external resorption of the tooth. On x-ray examinations this can first appear to be decay but it is different. Decay is related to a bacterial invasion and the resulting lesion is soft. External resorption has a similar appearance however the lesion is hard when felt with an instrument. While tooth decay may be treated by mechanically removing the decay and restoring the tooth, external resorption is much harder to deal with.

       These lesions are usually a result of trauma. I have seen it occur when people were exposed to an accident and blunt trauma is impacted onto the teeth. However; recently I've discovered another trauma that can be a causative factor in this destructive eating away of the tooth structure. Severe clenching or grinding of the teeth can put pressure into the teeth and surrounding structures and initiate this disease process.

        There are cells surrounding the roots which are called odontoclasts. These cells come in to play when a permanent tooth erupts under the primary tooth. The root of the primary tooth is eaten away by these odontoclasts. Of course this is the normal process that allows primary teeth to be shed and permanent teeth to erupt.

        The cells are normally dormant around permanent teeth. However; once trauma is exposed to the root and surrounding structure, they can awaken and cause damage on permanent teeth. Again this looks like decay but is a different process and much harder to eradicate. Once it gets started, it is very difficult to stop these cells from destroying teeth. Usually the only treatment is eventual extraction of the tooth.

         In these very stressful times we live in, I have seen an epidemic incidence of clenching and grinding of the teeth. An overwhelming majority of people do this although many do not know they are doing it. This can occur during the day or night, but mostly it happens at night. Other symptoms of clenching or grinding is jaw pain, shoulder and neck pain and headache pain. Resorption of the tooth however is more silent; people usually don't know until the dentist diagnoses or the resorption goes into the nerve and is painful.

           The best way to prevent this problem is to use some type of a guard or device that goes between the teeth and helps them stop coming together with such extreme force and traumatizing the teeth. In my 40+ years of dental practice I have seen many types of devices both professional and over-the-counter. The most common devices are large horse shoes which cover all of the teeth either on the upper or lower. There are also some devices which are posterior pads covering mainly the molar teeth. The professional devices are better than over-the-counter devices but can cost hundreds of dollars. Over-the-counter devices are ineffective and short-lasting.

            Recently a new device has been introduced into the marketplace -- GrindReliefN. While some dentists are making this device for their patients, it is sold mainly online and in some retail stores. It is the only over the counter device that meets or exceeds the performance of the professional devices. Smaller and easier to wear, it covers only the front 6 to 8 teeth, either upper or lower. Easy to fit with online video instructions, it may be formed and reformed as many times as the patient would like. While the small size is a plus, the biggest feature is a central power bar which exerts pressure on the upper and lower front teeth at the mid-line. This creates a nerve reflex or biofeedback which affects the muscles causing them to contract with at least 60% less force. A simple pencil test can demonstrate how the GrindReliefN device works. Take a pencil, put it between your back teeth and bite down, and you'll find that you can put a lot of force into it. Put the same pencil between your upper and lower front teeth at the mid-line. You will find you're just not able to apply nearly the same force. More information can be found on this affordable and effective device at www.GrindReliefN.com.

Overgrowth of Bone

I have been practicing dentistry since 1973 and over the years I have noticed that many patients have overgrowth of bone in the jaw. Dentists refer to this overgrowth as exostosis or tori. They can be found on the upper jaw or lower jaw structures. It can be on the tongue side of the jaw or the cheek side and appears as a knot of bone growing laterally. These overgrowths are benign and usually cause very little problem. The main difficulty with these knotty outgrowths is irritation from hard foods which can cause them to become quite sore. They also present a problem during routine dental impression taking as the impression tray can hit and irritate these areas. They usually take many years to develop but are an ongoing and enlarging anomaly. In some cases, when they appear on the cheek side of the jaw, they can actually cause facial changes.

       While it is hard to find the exact cause of these lesions, most dentists believe they occur in response to stimulation of the bone from extreme bite pressures. Some of the same bone outgrowths can occur in other areas of the body like the foot. My wife has a bone outgrowth on her left toe. I believe there is a common ground with both the outgrowth of bone on the foot and mouth. When you look at her left foot and ankle it is apparent that it tips in putting extra pressure on the left toe. I believe this extra pressure stimulates more bone growth and creates the lesion. In the mouth when excess pressure is delivered into the bone by extreme clenching or grinding forces, I believe the same phenomenon occurs.

        There are a great many pathologies or problems related to clenching and grinding, but this is one that is frequently overlooked. Treatment for these lesions is surgical and can be quite painful. When this condition is first noticed the best course of action may not be excision but prevention of the lesion enlarging. The most practical treatment to prevent worsening is wearing a guard or device that goes between the teeth and helps to minimize these destructive forces. These guards are mostly worn at night.

          Over the many years that I've practiced, I've seen numerous devices -- some professional, some over-the-counter -- to treat problems with clenching and grinding. The professional devices, of course, are better but they're also very expensive costing hundreds of dollars. The over-the-counter devices, while less costly, are flimsy and ill-fitting. Recently a new device called GrindReliefN has come to the over-the-counter market. Smaller and easier to wear, it has a central power bar that causes the principal forces to come between the upper and lower front teeth at the mid-line. This pressure creates a nerve stimulus that affects the muscles of contraction reducing the intensity by 60% or more. It is the first and only device I have seen that performs as well or better than the professional devices but at a fraction of the cost. More information on this device can be found at www.GrindReliefN.com.

Migraine Headaches

Migraine headaches are a huge problem. 30,000,000+ people in the United States suffer from migraine headaches. There are many causes for migraine headaches but the three main categories are dietary, environmental and physical. Dietary causes relate to foods people eat that just did not agree with them and can trigger a migraine. Second is environmental. When people are around certain things that they may smell or come in contact with, it may have a toxic effect on their body that can trigger a migraine headache. Third is physical. Brain vessel abnormalities or neoplasms are in the mix but are certainly rare. Certain activities that we do or overdo may cause headaches. Also listed in this group of physical problems is stress. Very nebulous, how can stress cause headaches? People are subjected to stress more and more, it's overwhelming and it's everywhere, but how does the stress cause a headache?

I have been a practicing dentist for over 40 years. More than 30 years ago I developed a problem with severe or migraine headaches. They began to cluster that was occurring two or three days in a row. I had no idea what could be causing this problem and was worried. I went to the hospital and had an MRI done and they could find no reason for the problem. I was not aware that I might be clenching or grinding my teeth and I had no pain in my jaws or teeth. Finally, one day I experienced some pain in my left TMJ. I decided to make a device or guard to prevent my teeth from clenching and grinding. Not only did it help with the pain in my jaw, but it also seemed to prevent the headaches and also prevented the shoulder and neck pain I was experiencing.

How can clenching the muscles in the jaw cause pain in the neck or shoulders and headaches? I call this phenomenon musculoskeletal reflex balancing and I have experienced this in other areas of my body. For example, I pulled some cartilage in my rib cage one morning and by the end of the day, the pain had traveled 180° to my back, right in back of the injury. Conversely in another incident, I injured my back, and the next morning I had a muscle spasm, a counterbalancing spasm in my abdomen, and actually popped a muscle there. If you clench or grind your jaw muscles hard enough, you will get a reflex balancing, triggering shoulder and neck muscle contraction and even headaches.

As a result of this experience I became very interested in the subject, and took numerous courses to study Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome (TMJ) pain and joint pathology. I began to investigate the various types of appliances or guards to help with problems related to joint pain and jaw pain. The standard dentist-provided guard is a horseshoe device made for the upper or lower teeth covering all the way back to the last tooth. I then began investigating a device called the Nociceptive Trigeminal Inhibition (NTI). This is a very small device covering only the front two or three teeth. It can be fitted on the upper front teeth or the lower front teeth and has a bar or ramp which hits the mid-line of the opposite teeth. I found that this is the only device that has FDA approval for the treatment of migraine headaches. In fact, one study they did showed 80+ percent of migraine headache sufferers had improvement when wearing their device. This device, however, has to be made by a dentist and costs hundreds of dollars.

Over the last several years, I have been working on a device called GrindReliefN. This device uses the mechanism of anterior mid-line focus to relax the muscles, however, instead of just hitting the upper or lower mid-line, it hits both at the same time. Therefore, it has double the mechanism of action. Also this device is slightly larger than the NTI covering up to the bicuspid area. It is sold online and now in some retail outlets at a fraction of the cost of the NTI. The patient can form it at home with the aid of online video instructions. We have numerous testimonies about how this device has saved people the pain and suffering of shoulder, neck pain and migraine headaches when nothing else has worked. If you're sick of the pain and medications treating this pain, then GrindReliefN is worth investigating.

Vertigo

Vertigo, or difficulty with balance, has many causes. The center for balance is in the middle ear, therefore anything that affects the middle ear such as a severe ear infection, sinus infection and other nerve maladies can result in vertigo. If you put your finger in your ear, push forward and open and close your jaw, you can feel the head of the jaw compress into the ear.

One cause for vertigo that is frequently overlooked is clenching or grinding of the teeth. When the jaw muscles contract with enough intensity, it puts pressure on the ear and even the middle of the ear. In my 40 years of practice I have seen this happen, but it seems to be fairly rare. In one instance I was examining a patient with an upper denture and she was having a problem with vertigo. I asked if she was wearing her denture at night and she said no. I knew that without the denture she would probably over close and that can cause the jaw to go further back into the ear. I instructed her to start wearing her denture at night and fortunately for her this solved her problem.

However, even people with a normal set of dentition can have problems of vertigo that relate to the jaw and clenching or grinding can be the main causative factor. The best way to prevent this is to wear a guard or device that prevents the teeth from coming together with such extreme force. There are many guards to treat this problem, some professionally provided and some over-the-counter. The professional device is the better of the two options; however they usually cost hundreds of dollars. Recently a new device called GrindReliefN has come to the market, and is sold online and over-the-counter. It is the only device I have seen that matches or exceeds the performance of the professional device. Unlike virtually all the other devices, it is not simply plastic between the teeth. It has a central power bar that exerts the most force on the upper and lower front teeth at the mid-line. This creates a nerve stimulus that causes the muscles to stop contracting up to 60% or more.

A simple pencil test can demonstrate how this works. Place a pencil between your back teeth and you’ll find you can easily bite into it. Take the same pencil and put it between your upper and lower front teeth at the mid-line, you just can't generate the same force. You can see a lot more about this affordable and effective device at GrindReliefN.com.