Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ)

Many of our Montreal patients come in after months of discomfort, because they assumed the problem came from their teeth or their sinuses. Here is what we see most often:

1. Jaw pain on waking or at the end of the day
2. Clicking, popping or grating when opening the mouth
3. Limited mouth opening, difficulty biting into an apple or a sandwich
4. Tension headaches, especially at the temples
5. Tinnitus, a blocked ear sensation or mild dizziness
6. Clenching and night-time bruxism
7. A jaw that locks, either open or closed

An isolated, painless click is not always a problem. It is the combination of pain, restriction and muscle fatigue that deserves an assessment.

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We work with manual therapy for the jaw, applied outside the mouth and, when it is indicated and with your agreement, inside the mouth. Intra-oral techniques, done with gloves, let us reach the lateral pterygoid muscle, a muscle often responsible for pain that no amount of pressure on the cheek will relieve.

Depending on your condition, we add:

1. Motor control and jaw repositioning exercises, simple enough to repeat at home
2. Work on the upper neck, almost always involved in TMD
3. Dry needling to release trigger points in the masseter and temporalis
4. Postural education and strategies for managing clenching
5. A progressive program to get back to a comfortable mouth opening

Because we bring eight disciplines together under one roof, we can also point you toward a colleague when it speeds up your recovery. Massage therapy helps a great deal for patients whose jaw reacts mostly to stress, and acupuncture gives good results on persistent facial pain.

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We see patients from Côte-des-Neiges, NDG, Westmount, Ahuntsic and Bois-Franc, and our team speaks more than ten languages, including French, English, Spanish and Arabic. Describing jaw pain takes nuance, and being able to do it in your own language changes the quality of the assessment.

We treat patients from 2 to 80 years old. We provide receipts recognized by private insurers, and we handle CNESST and SAAQ files, which matters when jaw pain follows a workplace accident or whiplash from a car collision. For people who have trouble getting around, home visits are possible in the Montreal area.

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If your jaw clicks, locks or wakes you up at night, we can assess you quickly at our Montreal clinic. Call us at 514 488 3131 or write to us to book an appointment. You are in good hands.

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