Charlote Upper Cervical Spine Center - TMJ - Dr Ray Drury
Channel: The Upper Cervical Spine Center
Date: 2019-02-25

Hi, I'm Dr. Ray Drury with the Upper Cervical Spine Center. I'd like to talk to you a little bit today about TMJ, temporal mandibular joint, more specifically temporal mandibular joint dysfunction or syndrome. Basically, it's just excruciating jaw pain. Sometimes the jaw will actually get a little bit locked. It can be locked, where it doesn't open all the way. I've even seen it where it won't close all the way. And, it drive you crazy. Actually, I had the same problem when I was younger. Mine would pop constantly every time I would chew. Everybody at the table would be looking at me because I'd go pop, pop, pop. And then, I would have just like somebody stabbed me in the face sometimes. The severe, severe pain within the joint. The thing that drove me absolutely crazy is I'd go through these stages where I couldn't open it all the way. I'd be like ... trying to get the stupid thing to open. Well, I actually went to an upper cervical chiropractor and after he started to adjust me, within a few weeks I started to realize that my jaw didn't pop anymore. As time went on, I realized that it never got hung up anymore. After that, it pretty much disappeared. I no longer had the pain anymore.
 That upper cervical doctor, I went to him, because I certainly didn't go to him for my TMJ problem, I actually went to him for a lot of other things, sleep and energy and stuff like that, that totally changed. Anyway, I started asking him could this thing in my neck have anything to do with my jaw? He started to explain to me that yeah, this jaw is a free hanging bone. This bone, basically you could take the jaw bone off of your face. It's only connected right here with these ligaments that connect to the jaw joint. It's like a ball and socket joint on both sides. Both sides, it has these balls that fit up inside this little socket. That allows it to pivot and move so you can open, close, move your jaw. What happens is the ligaments that support this area, they hold the ball up into the socket and allow it to move in a normal fashion. But, if the nerves that go to the ligaments aren't a 100%, if somehow those nerve messages that keep those ligaments tight get interfered with, then the ligaments start to get a little lax. When that happens, the ball starts to shift inside the joint because the ligaments aren't holding it tightly, so it'll start to shift.
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