Dental TENSing: A Treatment for TMJ Disorder

Now, what exactly is Dental TENSing, anyway? Fundamentally, it’s a type of treatment based around using small amounts of electricity to relax muscles, ease pain, and help with the inflammation of muscles. It’s being used now to treat (among other things) issues stemming from Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMD), and is in the realm of something called “Neuromuscular Dentistry” (dentistry surrounding the treatment to correct misalignment of the jaw at the TMJ - temporomandibular joint, using very low frequency electrical stimulation on the muscles).

The use of electricity for pain relief and other things has been around for quite some time, and that’s an understatement. Originally referenced by a text from Scribonius Largus, who was the court physician for the emperor Claudius of Rome, in 47 AD, wherein he wrote of relieving pain by standing on electrical fish on the seashore - it has come a long way since. TENS (or transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) therapy has evolved over it’s long history, and now uses quite modern equipment; leads, electrodes, and electrically conductive pads to provide a low-voltage charge to an area. In today’s modern dentistry, these TENS devices are being used to relax the lower jaw and facial muscles, by sending small electrical impulses through the nerves that are used for facial expressions and for chewing.

The benefits of Dental TENSing are many. It can help with fitting on new dentures, it can help to relieve someone of the tension headaches, neck pain, and jaw pain associated with improper jaw alignment, and by getting the muscles to relax, TENSing can help dentists determine a good jaw and skull position - a position of the jaw which is in its natural resting position that couldn’t be seen with tense, and tight muscles.

The actual electrical stimulation is painless, but can be uncomfortable at first because the stimulation makes your face and jaw muscles twitch. It commonly takes about 1 hour to get the muscles needed to truly relax. After the process is complete, and the stimulation is stopped, you will very likely feel calmer, unknotted, and may even feel tired from the jaw massaging done by the electricity.

The names of the muscles that get tense, and could be causing the jaw misalignment are the temporal bone, the masseter muscle, the condyle and the mandible.