People who suffer from chronic pain endure days and nights filled with unending discomfort that makes them desperate for help. Unfortunately, a recent study suggests that modern pain treatments fail to hit their mark, because they’re often too focused on one specific area of the body.
Game-changing Research?
A recent study suggests that most modern pain treatments aren’t as effective as they could be, because they only target the apparent cause of the discomfort instead of the actual source. Published in The Journal of Neuroscience, the research used an animal model to demonstrate that a body’s central nervous system can fool the brain into misjudging the source of chronic pain. Mysterious and complex, the body’s nervous system is also capable of spreading the sensation of pain throughout the body, away from a source cause; a point the researchers proved by using painkillers to block nervous system communication between a subject’s brain and the site of its injury. Despite doing so, the test subject’s central nervous system continued to spread the sensation of pain, which the subject experienced in other parts of its body.
According to the study’s lead researcher, his team’s findings may end up changing the way experts think about conventional pain management by putting a greater emphasis on how central nervous system receptors alter the brain’s perception of pain origins.
How it Applies to TMD
Temporomandibular joint disorder is an excellent example of a condition that results in vague pain which people often confuse for other things. Although TMD originates in the jaw, it can cause all sorts of other symptoms, such as headaches, neck soreness, facial tenderness and fatigue. As the TMD sufferers try to compensate for their misaligned bites, they unconsciously put stress on other areas, resulting in a confusing array of unpleasant symptoms that seem independent of one another.
An All-in-one Treatment
If you’re experiencing jaw pain, headaches, neck soreness, facial tenderness and/or fatigue, you may have temporomandibular joint disorder. Fortunately, Dr. Berry can offer an all-in-one remedy for these symptoms by providing a TMD treatment which corrects the root cause of the problem: a bad bite. To learn more please call (303) 691-0267 at the TMJ Therapy & Sleep Center of Colorado in Denver today.
