We can help if you suffer from chronic headaches

Chronic headaches can severely impact on your quality of life.

You may have had many consultations with your doctor and hospital specialists. Despite this you may not have had a satisfactory diagnosis or treatment prescribed.

This can lead to a vicious cycle of despair if you continue to endure chronic and disabling headaches.

What are the dental causes for chronic headaches?

An important cause of these headaches may be related to your jaw joint.

Unknown to you this joint may become displaced and this stops the jaws from fitting together in a stable central position. Consequently the muscles around the jaw joint go into spasm and this can lead to a number of problems including:

• Headaches
• Migraines
• Tooth clenching or tooth grinding at night (bruxism)
• Painful or clicking jaw joints
• Neck and shoulder pain
• Difficulty in opening the jaw wide

What factors make the headaches worse?

Stress is known to make things worse. Patients who are under pressure at work or in their personal lives are more likely to suffer these problems.

Some individuals can cope with mild jaw joint displacement without getting any symptoms. These patients are living within their limitations without problems.

Adding a certain amount of stress to those patients lives, damaging the supporting muscles due to an injury or adding a new error such as a poorly fitting dental crown, can push these patients from having no problems at all to having lots of problems.

How can we help?

We can only consider treatment after a thorough examination and diagnosis.

The treatment options we can provide include:

• Wearing a splint.
• Using a deprogrammer.
• Braces.
• Or in severe cases adjustment of teeth (occlusal equilibration).