In order for the human body to remain in good health, it must be in balance. When a tooth is lost, a person walks incorrectly, suffers stress or adopts incorrect postures. This balance is broken and a muscular pseudo-adaptation is produced that can also influence from and towards mastication.
When the balance is broken by extractions or bad dental positions, a malocclusion syndrome is created, which causes some muscles of the face to contract more than others, to do so in a different way or for the patient to chew more on one side than on the other. This causes muscular atrophy on the side that is used less and compensatory muscular hypertrophy on the other side, which ends up leading to facial asymmetry.
This syndrome should be treated by a team of dental specialists, osteopaths and traumatologists.
How can jaw imbalance lead to back pain?
When the jaw becomes unbalanced, depending on the muscle chains that are activated, the skull will also take on an anomalous spatial position.
This will act by overloading the cervical spine, and in an attempt to adapt, will cause malpositions at the level of the spine that will give rise to the aforementioned back pain.
If it is treated with analgesics or spasmolytics, it will disappear, but since the cause has not been treated, after some time, it will reappear and the patient will join the group of chronically ill patients with fictitious arthrosis and recurrent arthritis.
All this is due to the fact that health professionals do not usually think of dental occlusion as a cause of back pain. This syndrome should be treated by a team of dental specialists, osteopaths and traumatologists.
How can we know the cause of the imbalance?
Whenever there is a malpositional syndrome, the cause must be sought. The diagnosis is essential, since the treatment will depend on the cause; thus if it is ascending, it will have to be treated by the appropriate specialist such as a traumatologist, orthopedist, etc.
If it is descending, the treatment will be carried out by the dentist who will have to look for the cause with precision, by means of occlusal analysis, panoramic radiographs, teleradiography, etc.
The treatments can be varied:
- Dental fillings that are not performed (fillings in which the original shape of the tooth or molar has not been preserved),
- Orthodontics (poorly positioned teeth or molars), prostheses (when teeth are missing).
- Occlusion splints
- Relaxation
- Repositioning (acute joint pain).
For all of this, a complete study must be performed and the cause determined.