At The Gentle Dentist located in Shelby Twp., Michigan we see a lot of our new dental clients who  have a history of  tension headaches and migraine headaches which hit them when they wake up from sleep.  Many people like Dawn in this interview have given up hope and just think they will have to just live with headaches for their entire lives.  Their physicians will put them on medications and tell them that this “pill” will take care of your problem.  The problem is that relieving the pain does not get to the source of the pain. Many times headache pain is brought on by a combination of a poor bite, stress and how the patient handles the stress.

I see many patients in our dental practice who have had previous dental treatment including crowns, fillings and orthodontics who have symptoms and regular headaches.  When the teeth don’t fit together and mesh properly it can create disharmony in the jaw joint and the muscles.  Stress and clenching will often bring on tension headaches especially if their bite is off.

Treatment with the NTI prevents the back teeth from touching and therefore the patient can’t clench down hard.  Try this on yourself- Place your finger tips on your temples.  This will be an indicator of how hard you can bite down.  Now put a pencil between your front teeth and bite down and compare this with the amount of force you can generate when biting down on the back teeth.  When only the front teeth touch this prevents the patient’s ability to bite down hard.  Headaches usually will diminsh over time when the ability to bite down hard is reduced.

If one of the major influences of the headaches are a bad bite then the maximum affect isn’t obtained until the bite can be adjusted.  This equilibration is necessary to eliminate the triggers that bring on the pain.  When the NTI device is removed after using it during the night the teeth should bite uniformly.  If this isn’t taken care of then only limited resolution of the headache can be accomplished.  The teeth adjustment (equilibration) is a separate process that does’t require numbing and is very effective for long term headache resolution.   For more information visit our website at  The Gentle Dentist or go to www.headachehope.com.