Causes of TMD

Finger & Thumb Sucking as Infants: As you can imagine, this will help to dictate the formation and the morphology of the jaws. Finger & thumb sucking can be very detrimental to the proper development of the jaws, facial structures, and to airway development which can then lead to TMD in adult years.

Artificial Feeding of Infants: As we all know, breast feeding is the best option for providing optimal nutrition to infants. Human breast milk is very high in nutrients and anti-bodies which help our babies’ immune systems to become very powerful which then enables them to overcome not only multiple diseases, but to fight off allergens, which we will get into in a minute.

• Also, the human nipple is perfectly shaped such that when an infant breast feeds, ideal lip and jaw position take place facilitating proper development of the jaws, facial structures, and the airway.

• As we all know, breast feeding may not be an option…in fact, my own children were bottle fed! It is very important to know that using the correct nipple when bottle feeding can help to facilitate proper development of the jaws, facial structures, and airway. This nipple is the Nuk nipple which was developed in part by the late Dr. Jim Garry who was a pioneer of Neuromuscular Dentistry and the world’s leading expert on airway development of infants. The Nuk nipple has the closest resemblance to the human nipple & therefore, helps to form the infant jaws, facial structures, and airways properly.

Allergies: As mentioned earlier, breast feeding is the best source of nutrients for our infants…one major reason being that the anti-bodies that it provides helps our babies to develop an immune system that can fend off allergies. I’m not saying that breast-fed children don’t get allergies, sometimes it just happens no matter what. The point is, when an infant develops environmental allergies, the turbinates in the nose swell causing nasal congestion, the tonsils & adenoids swell causing airway obstruction, and mouth breathing then takes place. Chronic mouth breathing invariably results in malocclusion (or having a bad bite) because the tongue is not confined within the borders of the teeth causing muscle imbalance which can then cause the teeth to move and/or grow in incorrectly causing a bad bite, which, in turn, leads to TMD.

Trauma: This one is obvious, and is not necessarily developmental. Trauma to any area of one’s body has the potential to cause chronic, long-standing problems. As we all know, sometimes traumas can be treated with 100% healing & recovery, and sometimes they cannot…it merely depends on the patient and the situation.

Overall Skeletal Development: Sometimes, we just form incorrectly no matter what. One may be born with a syndrome or some underlying medical condition that dictates a dysfunctional skeletal development.

Diagnosis of TMD

Technically, there are many, but for our purposes here, we will again just keep the main thing main thing! Misaligned teeth bring about misaligned joints causing the joints to exist in a pathological position which, in turn, causes the lower jaw to be in the wrong position, which causes it to close on the incorrect path, which causes muscles to spasm which causes pain.