When eating, drinking, chewing or swallowing, teeth, jaw joints and facial muscles have to work together as precisely as the wheels of a clockwork. A complicated mechanism – and unfortunately prone to failure: With around eight million Germans, this no longer works. You suffer from a so-called craniomandibular dysfunction (CMD), i.e. the upper jaw no longer fits exactly to the lower jaw. The Bremen CMD specialist and dentist Dr. Christian Koneke: “Most of those affected state headache as the main symptom, which goes well beyond the normal range. Patients typically suffer from a tension headache that originates in the back of the head and often involves the neck and shoulder area.” Others grind their teeth so loudly that you can hear them clearly, suffer from ear, face or back pain, dizziness or migraines. And: In a third of tinnitus patients, a disturbed chewing function is responsible for the annoying ringing in the ears.
CMD can even cause sciatica, hip and knee problems because the chewing apparatus is closely linked to the head and spine via muscles and nerves. If the bite is wrong, the statics of the entire body will be damaged. The search for the cause often results in a botched dentist: someone has ground down their molars too much, used crowns or bridges too high, or modeled a filling too lavishly. Even fractions of a millimeter too much or too little can upset the balance between the upper and lower jaw.
Often there is also chronic stress behind it, which is processed at night by grinding your teeth and thus wears them down. The CMD is not easy to recognize. Those affected often make a pilgrimage from doctor to doctor without finding help.
A self-test provides initial clues. Specialized dentists then use a complex functional analysis to determine whether it really is CMD. The first step in therapy is a biodynamic plastic splint that patients wear 24 hours a day. It causes the jaw muscles to be evenly loaded. Because of the strong connection to the neck and back muscles, the dentist also pulls z. B. an orthopaedist, physiotherapist or osteopath added.
Yoga teachers and acupuncturists are also used. Only as a team can they gradually bring the patient’s body statics back into balance and guide them to reduce stress in other ways. However, the patient needs a lot of patience for the treatment, because it lasts on average one to two years – including a functional tooth restoration. But the 80 percent success rate motivates you to persevere.
