Trigeminal Neuralgia
A very painful condition, which is often times missed diagnosed and it is just really sensitisation of the trigeminal and or facial nerves from inflammation along the nerve pathway. There is lots of information on the internet as to why this condition occurs - Trigeminal Neuralgia Association Australia
Other lines of thought apart from the current thinking that TN is due to blood vessels pushing on the trigeminal nerve:
tension along the fascia of the head and neck, thus pulling onto the structures as they pass up into the head;
does prolonged poor neck posture create reduced blood flow and or tension to the structures travelling up into the head;
or, meningeal tension / whiplash type tension that creates inflammation and sensitisation to the head structures
We have many clients who complain of this condition or have similar symptoms and it easily resolves with gentle specialised physio techniques designed at Jaw Physio to ease your symptoms. We are very honest and you will know by the 2nd or 3rd session whether it is working for you.
There is no cracking of your neck joints, but we do work on the upper portion of your neck, the upper cervical spine, as these joints have nerves that feed forward into the cervical - trigeminal nucleus for us to dampen down this nerve centre and ease your pain.
Many clients with this issue also have inflamed jaw joints, or increased inflammation around their ear compartment and sinus's. This may be due to other health problems.
Bruxism (night clenching) alone, is only responsible for 17% of TMD (jaw dysfunction) type cases. More often it is due to Obstructive sleep disorders and thus a reduction of oxygen. It is really important to get your airways checked out with a sleep study or see an ENT to make sure your night clenching is not also aggravating your TN, as clenching feeds into this loop.
Other health conditions are;
poor gut health;
hormonal changes (teenage hood, menopause, endometriosis, polycystitis, etc);
medication changes, often these great neurogenic drugs that reduce TN pain, greatly effect the gut health and wipe out a lot of good gut bacteria. This in turn increases your night clenching and aggravates/sensitises the trigeminal nerve. And another vicious circle continues!
Come and see the experts who only treat this area of the body all day long. We are gentle and very quick.