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.