I have not been updating the blog too much these days, but just wanted to let you know that I (Ryan Nagy) am still here and the TMJ series is still going strong.
I also want to relay to a very strange experience that I had last year but that I am only now writing about. I started to get TMJ symptoms again, though the symptoms were very mild, just a bit of tightness and pain in the jaw. I did my TMJ series and the tightness went away.
But it came back just a few days later.
I was also having some issues with fatigue. I would get drop dead tired around 6 or 7 pm and could hardly work or go out. I decided to go to a nutritionist thinking that my jaw symptoms and fatigue might be related. The nutritionist did not see a connection between my symptoms, but she did make some simple dietary suggestions. She noticed that I was eating lots of carb and few fresh vegetables and recommended that I limit my carbs and also increase my vegetable intake.
That actually made a big difference…but only for a few weeks. I went right back to getting deeply tired in the early evening. At this point, I noticed that it wasn’t that my jaws and muscles were hurting as much as it was my gums were very tender. So I went to a dentist.
Guess what? I had advanced stage gingivitis. For some reason, my gums were not bleeding very much as they normally do during gingivitis and for this reason I did not notice the condition. After a good teeth-cleaning from the dentist and also removing the damaged portions of my gums, I noticed a HUGE improvement in my energy level. Apparently, my body had spent so much energy fighting the gum infection that it made me tired by the end of the day. And the jaw tightness and pain disappeared completely.
I am not exactly sure why the gingivitis made my jaw and muscles hurt. Perhaps I was clenching my teeth or perhaps the stress of fighting off the infection made the muscles tighten…or…I do not know. But I am happy to report that I have had no more TMJ systems. And of course, my health has improved.
I share this with you as a reminder to me and to you that we are complex beings and need to look at TMJ and health and life in general from many different angles.
Be well!
Ryan
