Monday, March 4, 2013

The peels continue to come off the onion...

The visit with the orthodontist was a very interesting one.

I arrived at his office and was seated while he finished up with another patient.  Before he even said hi or how are you, he immediately went into a line of defense.  "Give me a little history here...and I don't want to hear that the PT is claiming that Invisalign causes TMJ...you call the contact at Invisalign and they'll tell you the complete opposite.  It compresses the joint...it's in the literature.  It doesn't cause it!!!  It improves it!!!  You're the first patient who told me the TMJ got worse."

He tried to convince me to keep the invisalign as a retainer...which is what he asked me to do weeks ago.  I went through many minutes of trying to convince him to make a new retainer.

As we continued the discussion over several minutes, he started saying the problem was with my veneers (on the top teeth).  With the Invisalign, the veneers are forcing my jaw back.  And that is casing the TMJ.  OK, so in a sense, he is saying the Invisalign is causing the TMJ, right?  The veneers were already there when he ordered the Invisalign for me.  The interesting fact is that the Invisalign website claims that someone with veneers is a great candidate for Invisalign!!  So...who is at fault here?  Invisalign for advertising something that is not true, or the orthodontist who gave me the Invisalign and not noticing that it was pushing my jaw back. The other interesting fact is that my pain started immediately after I started wearing a retainer (after braces and before Invisalign).  That retainer is similar to Invisalign in design.  So this must be the culprit!!

So in the end, we agreed he will make me a different kind of retainer which will not push my jaw back.  He will also make me a night guard in case I am grinding.

But the bottom line is that I was given an appliance that harmed me.  And I don't know if the orthodontist should have realized this was going to happen.  Would love to get some insight from someone in the field.

The good news is that I feel like I finally know what is causing the pain...now I can eliminate the cause and finally start to heel.  Thank the Lord!!

2 comments:

  1. Wow, well interesting that I find your blog. I've been using Invisalign now about 15 months (still have 2.5 to go) and ALL I have had since essentially the beginning is NECK PAIN and TMJ has developed. I NEVER had any problem like this before, and it hasn't gone away since starting the treatment. Of course, like you, my Dentist (maybe I should have use and ortho) says, "I have never heard of anything like this" etc., etc., but I'm pretty certain that the additional GAP created by wearing the aligners and artificially spreading the jaws appart somehow creates this. My feeling is it pushes the lower jaw BACKWARDS. The other strange thing is my NECK MUSCLES have atrophied during the treatment period-which probably only makes the whole thing worse!

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    1. Wow, Anon, I am surprised you made it this far. My neck is also very stiff, but I have been working it in PT. can you find yourself a good PT who specializes in tmj to evaluate you? Or maybe make an appt with an orthodontist to get a second opinion. There are lots of bad docs out there unfortunately.

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