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These websites will be taken down on **April 30, 2025** and no further updates will be provided.
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Thank you for your trust in the past. Ray Schilling, MD
**Closure of my websites askdrray.com and nethealthbook.com**

These websites will be taken down on **April 30, 2025** and no further updates will be provided.
I hope you enjoyed the content of these websites. You can continue to read Dr. Schilling’s blogs which I publish daily on Quora

My home page there is: ** https://www.quora.com/profile/Ray-Schilling**

Click on this: Under my image there is a heading “Profile”. Right underneath this you find a search box entitled “search content”. Type in any term you are interested in. You will get several answers I have written (I have written more than 15,000 answers).

On Quora you can also write comments that I will answer.

Thank you for your trust in the past. Ray Schilling, MD
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TMJ

A TMJ   problem is medically termed temporomandibular disorder or TMJ disorder.  The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is a joint between the jaw and the temporal bone of the skull. As this image shows the mandibular condyle does not articulate directly with the glenoid fossa of the temporal bone, but there is a donut like disc or meniscus in between, which separates the TMJ into an upper and lower joint component.

Several conditions can cause jaw pain (TMJ pain) such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, infectious arthritis and several other medical conditions. Usually TMJ pain or dysfunction is associated with pain centered around the TM joint and in the teeth. But this image shows that it tends to radiate into the adjacent areas of the head and neck. It tends to be multifactorial. There are dentists who specialize in this very complicated field. The patient would be advised to see one of these specialists, if the dentist has no readily available answers. A myofascial pain syndrome can develop out of TMJ dysfunction, if it is not treated.

Symptoms

There is tenderness just below the external ear canal on the affected side. In pronounced cases the jaw may move to the affected side when the mouth is opened. There may be clicking and sometimes catching in the affected jaw joint. The patient may get muscle spasm in the night from nocturnal bruxism. Myofascial pain syndrome can occur in patients with normal temporomandibular joints. This syndrome is more common in women that in men and has a peak in women ion their early 20s and again around the time of menopause.

 TMJ

TMJ

More info: Temporomandibular joint pain (thanks to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books for this link)

 

References:

1. Suzanne Somers: “Breakthrough” Eight Steps to Wellness – Life-altering Secrets from Today’s Cutting-edge Doctors”, Crown Publishers, 2008

2. http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/dental-root-canals

3. http://www.aacd.com/whitening

4. http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Gum-disease/Pages/Introduction.aspx

5. http://www.aae.org/patients/treatments-and-procedures/root-canals/root-canals.aspx

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_trauma

7. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-25286/The-complete-guide-cosmetic-dentistry.html

Last modified: September 24, 2014

Disclaimer
This outline is only a teaching aid to patients and should stimulate you to ask the right questions when seeing your doctor. However, the responsibility of treatment stays in the hands of your doctor and you.