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ninevirtuescranky lackofsleepgail learns about TMJ.... ah well, I had fun missing the sleep
Your TMJ is your tempromandibular joint, that is, your jaw. You need that to eat and talk with. It has a synovial capsule and a disk. Frequently, it doesn't work right.
Lab A: Identify the bones in the skull that contribute to this joint. Identify the bones in the mandible (jaw) that contribute to this joint. Identify the bones and muscles on your partner.
Lab B: Look carefully at your partner. Examine for facial asymmetries, neck and back asymmetries, watch them elevate and depress (close and open) their jaw, watch them laterally deviate it (move it from side to side), watch them protrude and retrude it (stick it out, stick it back.... try it). See if the motion is symmetrical. Feel in front of the external auditory meatus (ear hole, I kid you not) as they do that to feel the motion of the jaw joint.
When it was my turn:
I sat on the plinth. C and J looked at me. This was slightly unnerving.
"Hey look, you point left. I mean, your jaw and your neck and everything all point left."
(Lovely.) <-- words in parentheses did not leave the confines of my cranium, I promise you
I elevated and depressed my jaw.
"Hey look, you deviate to the left when you do that."
(Oooh, that's even better. I was healthy when I walked in here. Now I'm not. Better yet, I deviate. I can hardly contain my excitement.)
I laterally deviated.
"And it goes farther to the left than the right."
"Yeah, and the muscles fire on the right, THEN the left, and it clicks when I open it all the way, too. Ow!"
(Formerly healthy triathlete becomes shambling wreck, reduced to drinking Ensure through straw, film at 11)
But here's where this seemingly bizarre exercise will pay off: A person with headaches, hearing difficulties, tooth pain, or sinus pain may in fact be having TMJ dysfunction. Restoring TMJ function (say, perhaps, by loosening the medial pterygoid muscle inside the mouth, or the temporalis muscle over the temple) may make the headaches/sinus pain/hearing difficulties stop.
Now.... where does a hurting person go, faced with sinus pain or chronic headaches? (Uh... the MD, most likely.) How about hearing difficulties? Uh... the audiologist and maybe the neurologist. The trouble here, and it's one I've heard a couple of you say to me (not in so many words but in your experiences), is that you have to really hunt around and be persistent to find a solution for chronic health problems. An MD is likely to give you a prescription for pain pills rather than sticking with you to diagnose what exactly is wrong.
Hmmm. Now what?
Well, for me, "now what" is (a) do the TMJ reading that was assigned (b) swim (c) get up early tomorrow to teach spinning again. (Hooray!) Reforming the US healthcare system will have to be back-burnered for now. ;-D
Your TMJ is your tempromandibular joint, that is, your jaw. You need that to eat and talk with. It has a synovial capsule and a disk. Frequently, it doesn't work right.
Lab A: Identify the bones in the skull that contribute to this joint. Identify the bones in the mandible (jaw) that contribute to this joint. Identify the bones and muscles on your partner.
Lab B: Look carefully at your partner. Examine for facial asymmetries, neck and back asymmetries, watch them elevate and depress (close and open) their jaw, watch them laterally deviate it (move it from side to side), watch them protrude and retrude it (stick it out, stick it back.... try it). See if the motion is symmetrical. Feel in front of the external auditory meatus (ear hole, I kid you not) as they do that to feel the motion of the jaw joint.
When it was my turn:
I sat on the plinth. C and J looked at me. This was slightly unnerving.
"Hey look, you point left. I mean, your jaw and your neck and everything all point left."
(Lovely.) <-- words in parentheses did not leave the confines of my cranium, I promise you
I elevated and depressed my jaw.
"Hey look, you deviate to the left when you do that."
(Oooh, that's even better. I was healthy when I walked in here. Now I'm not. Better yet, I deviate. I can hardly contain my excitement.)
I laterally deviated.
"And it goes farther to the left than the right."
"Yeah, and the muscles fire on the right, THEN the left, and it clicks when I open it all the way, too. Ow!"
(Formerly healthy triathlete becomes shambling wreck, reduced to drinking Ensure through straw, film at 11)
But here's where this seemingly bizarre exercise will pay off: A person with headaches, hearing difficulties, tooth pain, or sinus pain may in fact be having TMJ dysfunction. Restoring TMJ function (say, perhaps, by loosening the medial pterygoid muscle inside the mouth, or the temporalis muscle over the temple) may make the headaches/sinus pain/hearing difficulties stop.
Now.... where does a hurting person go, faced with sinus pain or chronic headaches? (Uh... the MD, most likely.) How about hearing difficulties? Uh... the audiologist and maybe the neurologist. The trouble here, and it's one I've heard a couple of you say to me (not in so many words but in your experiences), is that you have to really hunt around and be persistent to find a solution for chronic health problems. An MD is likely to give you a prescription for pain pills rather than sticking with you to diagnose what exactly is wrong.
Hmmm. Now what?
Well, for me, "now what" is (a) do the TMJ reading that was assigned (b) swim (c) get up early tomorrow to teach spinning again. (Hooray!) Reforming the US healthcare system will have to be back-burnered for now. ;-D
