Hi.. I've been wearing this jaw splint on my lower teeth.
I take it out to eat, then brush my teeth, and back in it goes. It's been 9 months now. My jaw would be out by 5-7 days and my chirop. would put it back in. I can now go up to 12 days. I had braces at an older age (51??) and wonder if this partly contributed to the problem.

hi twald,

I have had TMD for years, and done a lot of damage to my TMJoints and had disabling related pains. If I wasn't writhing with blinding headaches, I was concussed, and the muscle spasms alone were out of control. I did know to use a mouthguard, which helped me protect my teeth and dental work. My TMJoint topos, scans, 360's, deviation studies, wrecked dislocated discs and structures are super ugly, but I can eat (carefully) without dislocating and locking, so I've skipped the titanium joint replacement therapy, since the Mayo Clinic is honest enough to say it often doesn't help pain.

I tried pretty much every product, injection, physical therapy, nutritional therapy, accupuncture, even surgeries like oroplasties, turbinade reduction, deviated septum and arthroscopic TMJoint surgery. But nothing worked more than temporarily, like muscle relaxants with anti-inflammatories. Sacral cranial massage gave me such great relief I'd practically fall asleep immediately, no matter how much sleep I'd gotten the night before! But even that would wear off in mere hours. Most doctors would assume my pain was caused by whatever they had become expert at doing, but didn't help my TMD related pain. Some doctors even treated me like my diagnosis might be malingerer.

I was disabled and desperate, but I saw a study that said TMJoint related pain might be most often caused bt TMD (chronic subconscious bruxism during sleep). Then I got an EMG (electromylography) machine to do my own sleep studies, and sure enough, I was clenching with all my force hundreds of times a night. I used CES biofeedback (contingent electrical stimulation) to interrupt and stop the TMD. Since it's non-invasive, it's not scary to use.

Of course, if you don't have TMD, EMG will tell you that's not your problem. But at least it gives you the most effective diagnosis, one way or the other. Nowadays you can rent an FDA approved, ipod sized unit, from a dentist.

I don't know what kind of diagnostics you have used to diagnose your TMD. But if I'd been able to use EMG and CES, before I paid for all the surgeries, progressives, nti's, and other various dental appliances and therapies, etc. etc., I'd be rich now. For short term relief, muscle relaxants with anti-inflammatories worked, but you develop such a tolerance to muscle relaxants, that it's no cure. Opiods barely touched the referred pain from nerves inflammed and strangled by all the local inflammation around my worst TMjoint.

So rent to get TMD diagnosed (or ruled out). The ipod sized EMG that I used (with optional CES biofeedback) is from http://www.grindcare/us
They are always linking to new studies and adding links to more dentists who rent Grindcare units out. EMG monitors effectiveness of whatever you're trying out, to stop TMD, and spits out line charts intuitively readable by my doctors, dentists, and neurologists, who all made me come back to demo EMG/CES.

I don't know how I hung in long enough, but if you do, and keep studying up, there are better, non-invasive diagnostics and treatments coming out, and double blind studies, now that EMG is idiot-proof, so don't give up and keep studying up.

To summarize: EMG and CES diagnose and stop TMD, and there are FDA approved units you can rent from a dentist to do proper sleep studies at home. An NIH study on EMG and bruxism is at pubmed/21564315 . An IADR on CES and bruxism is at 2010barce/webprogramcd/Paper13­­8697.html
Good luck, and tell us how it goes for you.