| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| cfhunter |
Posted - 10/21/2007 : 19:33:36
Okay so the thing is this. I have gotten rid of: neuroma pain, back pain, arm pain, knee pain, neck pain with TMS approaches. The problem I am having is the darn teeth. The REASON it is a problem for me is that the tooth problems are nearly impossible to diagnose until something drastic nad expensive is done to "fix" it or it gets beyond worse.
So for example: I had a fracture in one tooth. OBVIOUSLY it had to be fixed and obviously IT was causing pain. They saw it, showed it to me nad I believed.
Problem solved (after $2500.00 and I lost the tooth). Now I have pain in several others BUT the docs say they look fine with no infections or anything BUT that the fillings were deep nad could eventually aggravate the nerves. SO the issue: IS it my head or are the nerves really aggravated? there is no test to tell except to grit through it and see what happens and unless I just get a VERY expensive and painful root canal! TWO very bad choices to pick from.
One lady here had tooth problems and I read her posts but wasn't sure what to think of how things resolved as she had hours and hours of work done and felt like it was TMS all along.
Help.
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| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Littlebird |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 15:58:40
quote:
Originally posted by cfhunter
Now I have pain in several others BUT the docs say they look fine with no infections or anything BUT that the fillings were deep and could eventually aggravate the nerves. SO the issue: IS it my head or are the nerves really aggravated?
It's the paranoia about NOT knowing until it is too late that drives me nuts.
How did you tolerate the pain while working on it?
From the start of all my various symptoms, I have always believed there was an emotional connection, but just didn't understand how it might work. While I thought that some of my symptoms were due to some sort of physical damage from the stress, other symptoms didn't fit that idea, so I believed even before I learned about Dr. Sarno's theory that I could control those symptoms by managing my emotions. The tooth and jaw pain was in that category--I never believed it was caused by any sort of damage, except in a few teeth that did have visible physical problems. The challenge was figuring out what to do about the emotions to alleviate the pain.
There have been times when tooth pain has flattened me for a few days at a time--I couldn't function at all. But some of my other symptoms (Fibro/CFS type stuff, bodywide muscle aches and crushing fatigue, as well as other symptoms) were also preventing me from functioning at normal levels, so the tooth pain was just an added misery, but it wasn't like I could expect to be able to function normally if I just overcame the tooth pain. So my focus on getting rid of the pain was more to stop having mouth misery than to increase my activity level by much. I don't know if that may have reduced the feeling of time pressure that we can get when trying to overcome our TMS symptoms, so we can get back to living normally.
Before learning about TMS, I could often overcome the pain, by just paying attention to what emotions I was having throughout the day and asking myself, "What am I currently upset about and why?" But the rinse and toothpaste also helped sometimes, whether it was a placebo effect or not. I particularly associated the jaw pain with emotions, so I never really wondered, "Could this be a true physical problem?" Part of the reason I felt that way was because of the come-and-go nature of the pain. It seemed to me that a physical problem wouldn't just come and go without some sort of treatment.
As I said, I have one capped tooth with no nerve, so dentists always tell me the intense pain I sometimes feel in it can't be real. They imply that I'm imagining the pain or that I'm just not correctly sensing the location of the pain, although there is nothing going on in any of the other teeth that could be causing referred pain when I feel it. That's another part of the reason that I came to the conclusion a lot of my mouth pain has a psychological cause.
Your docs have given you a nocebo by telling you that deep fillings can eventually irritate the nerves. How do they know that's what happens? Maybe in people who have teeth with deep fillings removed the mouth pain is alleviated, but I'm sure they don't ask the patient if they got a new pain elsewhere in their body. Dentists probably don't know or don't think about symptom imperative. So I question whether it is a fact or just a theory that deep fillings can eventually aggravate nerves and result in tooth pain. It may just be the dental version of doctors assuming that something physical has to be causing the pain, and that seems like a reasonable theory to them.
Since you are being told that your teeth look fine, what is the reason that you fear that things will get worse if you don't get a definite answer? Have you had any painful teeth that initially looked normal on exam later change to looking abnormal and needing treatment? If not, maybe the fear that tooth pain always indicates a physical problem is just overwhelming you, creating that vicious doubt cycle we sometimes get caught up in when dealing with TMS. Perhaps you can try to focus on what emotions might be leading to this pain and focus on the fact that mouth pain can have a psychological cause (one of the things I appreciate about this forum is that the experiences of others can confirm that pain in a particular location can be psychological) and break through that doubt enough to overcome this pain the way you have in other areas. Did you have to be 100% convinced that your other pains were psychological before you were able to overcome them?
The "test" is to convince yourself that it's at least possible that this pain has a psychological cause, convince yourself that things won't necessarily get terribly worse if you can't get a definite answer about the cause right away, and then do the work that helped you with your other pains and see how it goes. I'm hoping for the best for you. Keep us posted on how things go.
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| mk6283 |
Posted - 10/22/2007 : 21:13:12
I have recently realized that many of the more trivial issues I had growing up were likely TMS too. In retrospect, I noticed that all my dental problems (multiple root canals and cavities) came at the point in my life when I had finally gotten past high school acne as a distraction once my skin had cleared up. I would have never thought that dental issues could be related to stress until I noticed that the gingivitis/bloody gums that I had been suffering from for years disappeared with my back pain following my TMS work. I then thought back and realized that my gums were in the worst condition during the more stressful times in my life. It has been shown that the actual chemical constitution of our saliva changes with our mental state/stress level. It may have been this alteration in the properties of my saliva that predisposed my teeth to infection and the subsequent damage at that particular time in my life. Interestingly, a number of recent studies have linked poor gingival health to cardiovascular complications -- I wonder if a relationship is being established between the wrong variables i.e. perhaps they are both end results of an underlying emotional/stress problem that, as usual, is being ignored by the medical community at large.
Best,
MK |
| cfhunter |
Posted - 10/22/2007 : 20:02:39
Wow finally someone who talks the "dental" talk!
Yes I use Sensodyne and a flourise rinse and wear a night guard (I DO clench) and the guard has helped.
It's the paranoia about NOT knowing until it is too late that drives me nuts.
How did you tolerate the pain while working on it?
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| Littlebird |
Posted - 10/22/2007 : 00:29:22
I've had off and on tooth pain that started shortly after my other symptoms started, including pain in a tooth that has no nerve. Every dentist I've spoken with about that tooth tells me it's impossible for me to really feel pain in it, but I do. I haven't been in a position to afford root canals on any other teeth for several years, and I had one that was definitely infected pulled a few years ago. But the other teeth that have always hurt off and on have not been bothering me since I learned of TMS. I do sometimes get jaw pain, the TMD/TMJ type of pain, which involves one tooth at the back, but I can chase it away quickly by focusing on whatever is really bothering me psychologically.
My local dentist is very conservative with his patients' money, and he told me that much pain can be caused by microscopic holes in the tooth enamel and he said the holes can be repaired if you rinse with flouride for several days. He sold me a flouride rinse called PerioMed for ten bucks, and before I learned of TMS I would use it when a tooth was hurting, and other than the one that had a real infection in the root, the other teeth always stopped hurting within a few days. He also recommended temporarily brushing with Sensodyne. Now that I don't really get tooth pain anymore, I kind of think it may have been a placebo effect and that his other patients who also get good results from the rinse may have TMS issues too.
I can appreciate your frustration, because tooth pain is so debilitating. But I can tell you that I believe most of the tooth pain I've had in the past 20 years has been TMS. Since your painful teeth look fine to the dentists, I'd be suspicious that it could be TMS. |
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