I think I would refrain from anything beyond passive stretching. The dentist performed spray-and-stretch on my wife on Thursday and she felt much better for hours. I'm trying to do it, but without the luxury of ethyl chloride I have to use ice cubes in a plastic bag. My first two efforts were abysmal, but the third time may have been the charm, as the pain abated for a couple hours.
The same dentist uses a neuromuscular approach (without calling himself a neuromuscular dentist), using all the machines everyone has been gushing about. He's been using this stuff since the early 80's. He took an old splint (soft rubber made for my wife by our family dentist, fits over lower teeth) and cut it, reshaped it and polished it to provide a pivot point so her condyles would come forward and stop impinging on the nerves and blood vessels. He took tomograms pre- and post-splint, and the difference was amazing. It is a variation of what he calls, and normally makes for his patients, a pain-release splint. Next visit she gets the jaw-tracker, TENS and possibly some trigger-point work. May order a hard acrylic splint at that time, if she has stabilized enough. She's doing better in the mornings--pain's been rolling in around noon. Then it's time for my (not-so) magic fingers to do their walkin'.
Take care, all.
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