Here is my story which may or may not be of assistance to you. I am currently experiencing loud tinnitus, fullness in my ears, sensitivity to loud noises, sensitivity to bright light (mainly daylight), constant soreness in my jaw muscles, jaw popping, sore throat, pressure behind my eyes, sore teeth, and slight vertigo. The most disconcerting symptom that I am currently experiencing is a constant feeling of “being out of it” or disconnected from reality, almost like being drunk only not quite that bad. It’s almost as though I am watching my life go by from the outside. I’ve really lost a lot of my motivation to do much other than things I have to do like going to work and I think that this “out of it” feeling is the root cause.
My TMJ story begins way back in late 1990 when the first of many symptoms appeared. I started hearing a high pitched ringing in my ears which I noticed one morning when I woke up. I had been drinking beer the night before and chocked this up to too much booze. A few days went by and I noticed that the ringing was not going away so something besides my beer consumption a few nights earlier must have been to blame. I made an appointment with my doctor who referred me to an ENT specialist. The ENT doctor checked my hearing and told me that mine was better than average and that he didn’t see anything wrong. He referred me for a CT scan to make sure there wasn’t a tumor or something like that causing my ears to ring and that came back okay as well. I went back to the ENT doctor several more times and each time he told me that everything looked okay and that some people just get tinnitus and have to live with it.
Sometime in late 1991, a coworker found an article in an Orange County newspaper that profiled a local dentist and TMJ specialist by the name of James F. Garry D.D.S. Knowing of my ongoing tinnitus problem, he made a copy of the article along with the ad that Dr. Garry had placed in the same newspaper and gave them to me. I read the list of possible TMJ symptoms noticed that a couple more of them could apply to me. At this point I was experiencing tinnitus, sore teeth, slight fullness in my left ear, and soreness in my jaw muscles (more so on my left side than my right). I went back to my ENT doctor and told him of my discovery and he flat out told me I didn’t have a TMJ problem. I also mentioned TMJ to my dentist at the time and he made me a night guard. I wore that night guard for several months and it didn’t seem to help in the least bit. At this point I was unsure of how to proceed so I didn’t do anything for a few years.
I discovered in 1995 that Loma Linda’s School of Dentistry had a TMJ clinic so I made an appointment. By this time the pain in my jaw had increased, the ringing was louder, and fullness was now in both ears. I was a patient there for about a year or so and was subjected to various treatments. They injected trigger points with an anesthetic which provided temporary relief but never for more than a day or so. They also performed an equilibration on my teeth on more than one occasion in an attempt to make my teeth fit together better. None of what they did to me helped much so I stopped going since I felt this was really a waste of my time and money. Sometime in 1998 or 1999 I did return to the Loma Linda’s TMJ clinic after hearing that they had a new doctor running the place0. It didn’t appear that much had changed there so I once again stopped going.
In 1999 I ran across the original TMJ article and newspaper ad that my coworker had given to me years earlier and decided that I should probably just give him a call. I credit my experiences with Dr. Garry with finally allowing me to figure out what is causing my TMJ related symptoms. On my first visit I was hooked up to some sort of machine that measured muscle tension in the muscles in my head. Apparently most of the readings were off the scale so there was obviously some sort of problem. I was quite impressed by Dr. Garry and his assistant’s knowledge of muscle tension and referred pain. They decided to make a bite splint for me as they were under the assumption that TMJ symptoms were caused by malocclusion or a bad bite. I wore that bite splint just about 24/7 for nearly a year and it did seem to help at first. After the first few days, the pain started to subside, the ear ringing was a bit quieter, the ear fullness was going away, and best of all, the fog of my disconnected feeling was going away as well! Unfortunately this only lasted for a few days (maybe a week) and then things started going back to where they had been. I noticed that on several occasions that I would wake up in the morning with my teeth firmly clenched into the bite splint (I eventually broke it with my back teeth one night).
While I was still going to Dr. Garry’s office, I was continually trolling the internet for any and all TMJ related information. I stumbled upon the web site of Dr. Jim Boyd, the inventor of the NTI Tension Suppression System. This device works by keeping your teeth apart at night and only allowing a small point at the front of your teeth to make contact with each other. It sounded like something worth trying so Dr. Boyd was kind enough to travel to Dr. Garry’s office and set me up with an NTI device. Once I had an NTI device, my symptoms started subsiding once again as they had when I first received my bite splint (best of all the foggy, disconnected feeling). Unfortunately once again the relief only lasted about a week or so and then the symptoms returned. I noticed that instead of waking up with my teeth clenched together, I was now waking up with my tongue pressed against the back of the NTI device and my front teeth with a great amount of force.
The bottom line is that I am 99.9% positive that nocturnal bruxism is the cause of most if not all of my TMJ related symptoms. With both the bite splint and the NTI device I was able to experience temporary relief from my TMJ related symptoms. I think that what happened was that both devices confused my bruxism reflexes for a few nights and that I had to relearn how to create bruxing forces some other way in my sleep. If I could figure out how to permanently stop clenching my teeth in my sleep, my symptoms would start to subside and I assume eventually go away completely. If there is some magical way to stop nocturnal bruxism, please let me know!
Please feel free to share any comments or suggestions that you might have.
Todd
it ruins my day almost everyday. i grind my teeth nonstop all night... i really don't know how to stop either. mine came on suddenly, one day i was fine and.. the next... well u know all the symptoms im experiencing im sure.... im starting to realize that stress is really affecting the amount i grind my teeth at night and whether or not i wake up with a headache. for the past 2 nights i've been trying to reduce my stress before bed and also trying to sleep on my back. this seems to be helping because i have woken up without a headache for the past 2 days. o and about that foggy out of it feeling i still have that. im so relieved to know someone else knows how this feels. its awful. its the worst symptom for me too.. i truly believe that when i get something to stop grinding my teeth so viciously at night this problem will start to be solved right now i have braces and rubberbands... it seems to be helping a bit by pulling my left side down. but grinding my teeth has majorly affected my bite. anyways....if i ever come across a great tmj doctor ill tell u because i live in southern california too ( isaw it said rancho cucomonga on yours) 
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