Hi Everyone and welcome or welcome back to my YouTube channel! My name is Priya Mistry and I'm
a General Dentist with the practice in beautiful Portland, Oregon. My practice is dedicated to
taking care of patients with TMJ disorders. Today's video is about Covid-19 and TMJ problems.
I want to be really clear by starting out and saying that Covid-19, the virus itself, does NOT
cause TMJ problems, like the way it causes fever, or lung problems, or that dry hacking cough.
It doesn't cause TMJ problems directly that way. However, there is an indirect correlation. TMJ
disorders - disorders of the muscles of the head, neck, and jaw, as well as the joints themselves
have a component to them that is psychosocial. So that means that there's a component to TMJ
disorders that has very much to do with stress. Increased levels of stress equals increased TMJ
problems. When our bodies and our minds sense stress and all the emotions that go along with
it - frustration, anger, anxiety, sadness - what we kind of tend to do instinctually, is just sort
of sink our teeth into it.. which is literally the action of clenching or grinding our teeth.
Clenching and grinding can be an enormous amount of force and it puts too much stress and pressure
on the muscles of the head, neck, and jaw as well as the Temporomandibular Joints themselves.
There's an entire article that I've linked below that shows the direct correlation between levels
of stress and clenching and grinding, so please check that out if you're interested. I would
venture to say that for the majority of the world this Covid-19 pandemic has created an enormous
amount of stress. I've known people who have lost a loved one to it, I've known people who have
contracted it themselves and they're worried about what that means for the future of their health,
I've known people who have become depressed by the lack of socializing due to quarantine,
and I've known people who have really struggled to balance home life and work life in a way that
they've never had to do before. It's been a year for a lot of us, so essentially that
increased stress is something that most - if not all - of us are definitely experiencing.
All of this increased stress has led to increased clenching and grinding;
that increased clenching and grinding has then led to more fractured teeth than I've ever seen in all
my years doing dentistry! When we clench or grind our teeth, we can generate 80 to 100 times more
force than when we're chewing - so think about that! That's enormous! Think about taking a
bite of a toasted, crunchy bagel... multiply that force by 80, multiply it by 100, or more!
Those are the types of forces we can generate when we're clenching or grinding our teeth at night,
when we have no awareness of it, when we have no recall of it. Of course all that force is going
to go somewhere and something's going to give. Even though enamel is the hardest substance in
our whole bodies - it's harder than bone! - it is not built to withstand that kind of force, The
forces that come along with clenching or grinding. And same thing with the muscles that surround the
head, neck, and jaw as well as these joints here. They're just not built to take that much force
-regular chewing and speaking forces, yes of course. But all that extra force thrown
into them night after night, day after day - it's gonna add up and something's gonna give! So again,
I've seen more fractured teeth than I've ever seen and I've also seen a huge uptick in cases with
our TMJ patients - so that means that people have either had setbacks, or it's taken them longer to
recover, or even that we are seeing more patients in general. We've had patients walking in with
locked jaws, with headaches, jaw pain, neck pain. Suddenly their joints are making noises that they
were never making before and I think it's fair to attribute a fair amount of that to increased
levels of stress that we're all seeing this year, that we're all feeling this year. So to summarize,
this pandemic - Covid-19 - is causing increased stress. This increased stress is leading us to
clench and grind our teeth more, which is then leading to broken teeth, locked jaws,
muscle dysfunction, headaches, neck pain, jaw pain, tingling in the arms, vertigo,
a lot.. I've seen a lot! So I'm creating this video as a way to make you guys aware of this,
make you guys aware that you might be clenching your teeth all day without realizing it and sort
of just give you some tools to get some help if you are going through this. What can you do:
I would say definitely if you're having moderate to severe levels of pain, try to see a TMJ doctor.
What we do at my office is make custom-made mouthpieces that put the muscles at their correct
resting length and align the joints to allow for optimal healing of this unit. If you can't see a
TMJ doctor, I'll give you some sort of things that you can try at home. One thing that you can try
is this topical cream That I've linked below called Theraflex. I had patients that swear by it;
they used it all through quarantine when we were closed and they couldn't come in and get treatment
and they said it did help a lot with jaw pain. There's something else called the dolphin massager
and I have this at home. Literally, it looks like a dolphin, and I've linked this below as well.
For me, I have a trigger spot in my trapezius muscles especially on my left side here,
so when I just hold it against there. it really helps to release that.. so you can use this kind
of all along the back of the neck and even a little bit further forward in here as well.
These are areas that we hold a lot of tension. I probably wouldn't advise using it on the jaw
itself - we don't want to damage anything! I was actually in a motor vehicle accident at
the end of August where I was rear-ended and I got whiplash and my car was totaled - fun times! And
my neck really took off after that. I'd always had some mild chronic neck pain but,
it became moderate and even severe some days.. and so I started using this wonderful microwavable
neck pillow. You can microwave this; it gets nice and warm! I usually do it for about a minute and a
half and then I just place it around my neck, similar to one of those airplane pillows and
it brings a lot of relief to the tight and tense muscles. That's something that's worked well for
me and again, I've linked that below too. There's a wonderful book called "the TMJ Healing Plan"
that I've talked about in some of my other videos, and it has some postures, it has some exercises,
some do's and don'ts that you can definitely try at home and that's linked below as well.
Then of course, magnesium supplements - I always recommend those for people who are prone to jaw
pain, neck pain, and headaches. Those are usually all caused by dysfunctional muscles and magnesium
is wonderful for those dysfunctional muscles, so I've linked that below
in a formula that we really like to use because it makes the calcium and the magnesium that's
in that supplement - it's in a form that's very bioavailable. I like that supplement
in particular, so that's also linked below. And then of course - stay hydrated, exercise,
meditate, have a nice, nutritious diet that's feeding your body and serving your body well.
Being mindful and aware of all of these things is always good and on top of that,
I'm going to throw in one more challenge: try not to clench your teeth during the day!
A lot of people will say, "well, I don't do that!".. but assess yourself right now!
Your lips should be together if you're listening to this video, your teeth should be apart and
a lot of people, when I ask them to check on this, they find that they're clenching their
teeth together literally all day long! You can train yourself to stop doing that during the day.
Set a timer on your phone for every 15 minutes and every time your timer goes off, assess where
your teeth are. You can't do really anything at night when you're asleep and you don't really
have that awareness, but during the day - yes, we can help ourselves! We can train ourselves to stop
clenching our teeth. Things not to do: don't have too much caffeine. Caffeine will dehydrate your
muscles and dysfunctional muscles need a lot of hydration. Don't lean your fist against your jaw
or your jaw against your fist, however you want to say it.. or sleep like this! It puts lateral
pressure on these joints and they're not built for that, so it can cause problems. Don't open things
with your teeth, or chew on ice, or bite your nails! All these extra habits are just putting
extra forces on the teeth, the muscles, and the joints. I hope this video provided you with some
good information or some insight as to why you may be experiencing an uptick in your TMJ symptoms.
If you liked what you've heard or you learned something, please click "Like" below,
comment - I'd love to hear from you guys! And please SUBSCRIBE - don't forget to hit that
SUBSCRIBE button! I have so much more to come for you guys, including some patient testimonials in
the near future! Thank you so much for your time and I hope to see you all again soon!