pipdog

I'm being treated by a neuromuscular dentist for what has been diagnosed as TMD. This is dentist number three.

Before Christmas he said that in spite of 45 minutes of using the tens machine on my neck, the muscles were still in spasm so he mentioned the word 'ascending' and told me that he suspected that I have spinal alignment issues. He said something like 75% of his patients are in this category. He mentioned NUCCA as a adjunct treatment.

NUCCA chiropractors just look at the atlas veterbrae and they call it the fuse box of the body as its where all the 'wiring' coming out of the brain enters the spinal column. It has to sit squarely between the skull base and the C2 - if not blood vessels and nerves will be compromised causing all sorts of disparate and extremely unpleasant effects throughout the body

So I was gradually getting my head around it all but in a kind of disinterested way because I still though my primary problem was TMD. New Year's day for some reason I got out my MRIs from last March, they mainly show the TMJ in open and closed views but there was a sheet showing 15 horizontal slices through my head and neck. I looked at the lowest one and figured it was through my atlas. What I saw I couldn't believe. It was markedly rotated up to the left. I had to sit down and I felt waves of relief washing through my body because I felt as if I had finally found out what was wrong with me.

I saw the NUCCA lady last week. I showed her the MRI and she confirmed that my atlas was rotated. In addition she pointed out to me how my whole posture had been affected. My head was tilted to the left, my left shoulder was way higher than the right, my pelvis was rotated causing one leg to be 1/2 inch shorter that the other. So it was a total mess. She took 3 precise x-rays which confirmed that my atlas was rotated 8 degrees.

I returned after lunch and had the adjustment. It was very gentle and I don't understand how it works, she used the words 'Newtonian mechanics'. What I do know is that I suddenly felt something very deep and powerful had happened. I know this sounds weird and I would have been a sceptic but when I stood up I realised she had given me a new body.

I looked in the mirror, my shoulders were even and my head wasn't tilting. Then she asked me to walk around the room and I could hardly believe how different it felt. I was making much more even contact on the ground and everything felt massively more balanced.

She did more x-rays post the adjustment and showed me how the rotation had been reduced.

I know this is a long post but I wanted to share this news with everybody on this board because my message is TMJ specialists are great but you have to remember that is just what they are, specialists and they are looking only for one thing.

Sometimes you need to step back and look at the bigger picture. Thankfully dentist number three was able to do this but its taken a long time to get to this point and although I am incredibly relieved I am also angry in some way. I know I did have some TMD issues as well which is hardly surprising when you see how close the atlas is to the jaw joint but I believe that they were secondary and based on my experience I would encourage people on here to get their spinal alignment checked because its all interconnected.