Your chewing muscles have been protecting and supporting your injured jaw joints and these muscles have gone into spasm by being overworked. The soft guard protects your joints so that your muscles no longer need to continually tighten to hold your joints in place. Your muscles should begin to relax within a week. Remove the soft guard only when you are eating and place it in the plastic box provided to you
At the end of your first week you will return to see Dr. Padolsky to monitor your progress and determine if you need to wear the soft guard full time for an additional week.
Muscles have a lot of water in them. If you are not drinking enough water or you're drinking things that dehydrate you, your muscles will dry out and hurt. Drinking lots and lots of water will also cause you to start going to the bathroom more often to get rid of body wastes. This is normal.
A glass of herbal tea, or fruit juice, each can count as one glass of water. Do not drink distilled water because it lacks vital minerals and can cause serious problems.
Caffeine makes you jittery and makes muscles twitch and get tight. Your muscles will not relax if you are drinking lots of Coke or coffee. The coffee will also remove water from your body
Nicotine acts very much like caffeine. Do not smoke cigarettes, pipes or cigars
Alcohol dries out your muscles. Have you ever noticed how thirsty you are the day after getting drunk? Dry muscles hurt.
Buy tablets that have calcium, magnesium, and zinc all in one tablet.and take one tablet with each meal for the next 6 weeks. It must be taken with a meal because these minerals will not be absorbed well unless your stomach is acidy. A chronic lack of calcium causes muscle cramps and osteoporosis.
Vitamin C probably prevents cancer. It is also necessary to make collagen which supports muscles and is a big part of your jaw joints. Start with 1000 mg with each meal and if you get diarrhea then call the office and we will explain what to do. Increase the amount of Vitamin C you take each day until you get to a minimum of 4000 mg daily. Ester C is expensive but can be taken in large doses with less problems than traditional Vitamin C. Calcium Ascorbate is another Vitamin C alternative.
Vitamin E makes up a good part of the lubricant that is in your jaw joints. In order to heal completely it will be needed. Take only one Vitamin E capsule each day in the morning, not one with every meal. .
Never skip meals because fasting starves muscles that already have problems.
It's much better to slowly feed your body rather than asking your major organs to give up their stores.
When you exercise your face turns red because there's a lot of blood pumped to it. Your chewing muscles also get a lot of blood which cleans out and nourishes your hurting muscles.Check with your physician before begining your exercise.
Only aerobic exercise helps. This means walking, jogging, aerobics and swimming. The workouts can be done a half hour in the morning and a half hour in the evening but you must total one hour of exercise every day.
Your body needs time to rejuvenate, heal and recover, especially during the time that you are wearing the guard. Keep a regular bedtime and even consider a warm soaking bath before going to bed.
Please report any problems that you might have by calling 404-874-7428 and asking for our TMJ assistant or you can make a postoperative appointment and come in. It is not unusual to have more headaches and problems when you start this program because of withdrawal and detoxification symptoms. Keep wearing your guard because this is the only way to get through the difficulty. For the first several hours to a day of constant wearing of the guard, your brain may think that you have food in your mouth and make saliva. Do not swallow the saliva because it will fool your stomach into believing that you are about to eat food and cause nausea.
Dr. Padolsky has been treating TMJ Dysfunction since 1982. At the time of his graduation from Emory Dental School there was no course on the curriculum in TMD care. However, because he has this problem himself and because he has seen many patients with this dysfunction, he has studied extensively and developed an expertise in this area of Dentistry.
Patients are each treated individually since TMD can have many different types of presentations. Allergies, nasal obstructions, swollen adenoids, neck problems, ear problems, and many more things can contribute to TMD problems. Each patient is different. There is no cure for TMD but good results can often be obtained. Our primary objective is to get patients out of pain. However, because of the many contributing factors associated with TMD, you may relapse and have both good and bad times. Regardless, we will do our very best to help you.
For most patients this program alone will do the trick. In some cases, treatment must progress to a hard three dimensional positioning guard and for others,orthodontic care. You must wear your guard for one week full time and afterwards, at night for the rest of your life. There are times when the guard must be worn 24/7 for two weeks. The nutritional program lasts for 6 weeks and nothing can be changed. Afterwards you may add items back to your diet while you closely monitor how you feel. This helps you create an awareness of what is harming you.