Hi all of my wonderful TMJoiners! I’m Priya Mistry the TMJ doc and today
I’m going to talk about HOW to clean your TMJ orthotic or splint.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a general dentist with a practice in beautiful Vancouver,
Washington where we are dedicated to taking care of patients with TMJ disorders.
Before getting right into it with the "meat" of todays video,
be sure to check out and my social media accounts. There's a lot of information there
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sure to take a look at my office website or give us a call to schedule an appointment if you're
looking for relief from TMJD. The links for my website and my social media accounts are below.
So let’s get right into it! What is the best way to clean your TMJ orthotic?
There are three great methods to clean your TMJ orthotic and I'll be going over them one by one.
So the first is using a soft or medium bristle toothbrush
with liquid dish soap. Many people are surprised when I say liquid dish soap instead of toothpaste.
Liquid dish soap is a lot less abrasive than most of the commercial toothpastes that are out there.
So if you're using toothpaste and it has abrasive materials in there, it can actually cause
microcuts - little microfractures - in your brand new orthotic and we don't want that because that
will lead to it breaking faster. So using liquid dish soap is always a good alternative - it's
a lot more gentle and it's approved for things that go inside of our mouths. So that's one way.
The other way to clean your orthotic is to get a denture cleaning tablet.
So you can take one of these tablets and dissolve it in water. Once it's dissolved,
you can gently place your orthotic inside of the cup where it's dissolved and you can let it
soak for about an hour. Please don't soak it for longer than that. Once you've soaked it,
you can place it in the case with the lid open so the moisture has an escape route.
The third way of doing this is to actually purchase on of these handy dandy sonic cleaners.
So these are really good too because they can definitely get your orthotic nice and
clean. I'm going to go ahead and demonstrate all three of these techniques right now.
All right, friends. I'm going to be demonstrating the three methods to clean your orthotic.
First, we'll start with the toothbrush and liquid dish soap method. I've got a medium bristle tooth
brush here, which I mentioned before - soft bristle or medium bristle is what I recommend.
So I've got that here and I've got my wonderful liquid dish soap. So the first thing you're
going to do is grab your dish soap and you can put a drop on either side or so.
Good..perfect. And then you're going to get your medium or soft bristle
toothsbrush and go for it my friends. Scrub-a-dub dub. Three men in a tub. OK..
So hold it very carefully while you do this because it can get very slippery.. it's dish soap.
So I have quite a grip on it here. You don't want to drop it on a hard surface,
it could break. We don't want that. Very good..
So now, we'll rinse it really well and again, I can't stress how important it is to rinse all the
dish soap off because you don't want to taste it. It does not taste good my friends. Rinsey rinsey.
Alright and once done,
shake it off. Get the extra water off. Place it in the case with the lid open. And we're done.
Method #2 involves using these denture cleaning tablets. So these are really great. What you're
going to do is is you're going to grab a tablet. So they come in these little packages like this,
which I've already pre-opened one. So I've got one right here. So I'm going to go ahead
and place it in a cup that's big enough to accommodate the orthotic. This is a good
size cup. I'm going to place it in here with very warm water. That's what the instructions call for
so this actually does dissolve. OK.. we're going to go ahead and fill that up.
And you can see it's kind of starting to get a little opaque as that tablet dissolves and
that's OK, that's what we want. So once it's fully dissolved, then you can go ahead and
place the orthotic in there. So you can kind of see that it's bubbling if you look close enough
and that's what we want. We want to see that so don't get concerned if you see that.
Go ahead and place this in there and you can actually let it soak for about an hour. So you're
gonna take that out and you can see that the color changed. That happens as [the tablet] dissolves.
And then you're going to rinse it really thoroughly - you're going to get everything
off of there. Again, warm water is good here. We're going to rinse it really well.
Again, I'm guessing this stuff doesn't taste good. Maybe not as bad as liquid dish soap,
but probably not great so you're going to want to rinse it really well.
And then, again, place it in the case with the lid open so the moisture has an escape route.
Alright so the third and final method involves the
cordless sonic cleaner AND the denture cleaning tablet so we're combining a few things here.
I've got both of these here to show you guys. So you're going to take this guy right here
and you're going to open it up. And then you place it on a flat surface to start with and
then you're going to take your denture cleaning tablet. So go ahead and place the tablet inside,
like so. And then you fill it up with warm water. Just enough water so that it will
cover up the orthotic, so that's enough here. You can see it's sort of bubbling, foaming while
that tablet dissolves. Once it's fully dissolved, you can go ahead and place the orthotic in there.
Then you're going to close it
and on the back, there's an on switch. I've already put the batteries in here - this comes
with batteries so I've already put them in there. Then you turn this on. You're
going to leave this on for 5-10 minutes. So we're going to do that and then we'll return.
About 7 minutes have passed, my friends, so I split the difference. I'm going to go
ahead and turn this off. I'll get the orthotic out of there. And then once again, you want to
rinse it really well so none of the solution is on there. So you'll rinse it really really well
and you're going to place it in the case with the lid open so the moisture has an escape route,
my friends. And then keep in mind that it's really important to store it up high, away from pets,
dogs, or toddlers. Pets like to turn this into a chew toy because it smells like mommy or daddy
and toddlers like to throw these around - they end up in corners,
you can't find them OR it makes it easier for pets to access these and then chew them up.
Placing it high, up away from pets or toddler is always a good thing.
Then to clean, to finish cleaning up the sonic cleaner. You just want to separate the pieces
carefully. This is the part that's wet. You're going to take it out, rinse it really well,
and keep the pieces separate while this dries. So the advantage of the Sonic cleaner that the
other two methods of cleaning this has is that it actually vibrates at a frequency that our hands
cannot move at. So any smaller particles, any bacteria.. it can just sort of shake that off
a lot better than we can do it manually. So that's the advantage to that one. And then additionally
I did want to mention you can actually leave it soaking in the denture cleaner for longer than 5
minutes if you'd like to. It's not going to harm the appliance. You can leave it there for like an
hour - that's fine. Don't leave it for multiple hours is what I'm trying to get at. You can leave
it for about an hour maximum and then you can put it to dry. Alright my friends, that's it!
You can use any of these methods to clean your orthotic 3-4 times a week or even every day if
you’d like! Once you’ve cleaned your orthotic with any of these methods, place it in the case
with the lid open so the moisture has an escape route. We don't want these collecting mold.
Secondly, please be sure to make sure that you're drying orthotic is out of reach of cats, dogs,
really any pets, or toddlers. Cats and dogs, we've found, tend to turn these orthotics into
chew toys because they smell like mommy or daddy. Not good - that's the number 1 reason we actually
have to replace them - it's because a pet gets to them. And then toddlers don't typically
chew on them - I suppose they could - but what they do is they end up throwing them around or
placing them in corners so they get lost OR they make it easy for the dog or cat to get to them.
Keeping these out of the reach of small children is always important as well.
So that’s really it my friends! Again, I’m Dr. Priya Mistry and I truly hope you found this video
helpful. If so, please share it with your family and friends and please be sure to Subscribe.
If you'd like to find TMJD relief from the comfort of your own home,
please be sure to download my free PDF Guide called “3 Steps to TMJ(D) Relief”. You can
find this easily on my office website which linked below. Questions and comments are always welcome,
my friends, in the comment box below. And remember - you can never have TMI about TMJ! Thank you!