TMJ pain has a particular quality to it. It shows up as jaw soreness, ear pain that isn't actually your ear, headaches that radiate from your temple, a jaw that clicks or locks. Sometimes all of the above on the same morning. It's distracting, it's persistent, and it has a habit of being misdiagnosed as something else for months before anyone connects the dots. If you've been told you have...
Read MoreIf you'd told most people five years ago that sticking tape over their mouth before bed was good for their health, they'd have looked at you sideways. Then a Stanford study on nasal breathing got attention, a few prominent podcasters started talking about it, and suddenly everyone's searching for sleep mouth tape. The concept isn't actually new. Breathing specialists and sleep researchers have discussed the downsides of chronic mouth breathing...
Read MoreHere's the frustrating thing about teeth grinding: most people have no idea they're doing it. You fall asleep, grind your teeth for hours, and wake up with a dull headache and a jaw that aches, with no memory of any of it. Your partner, though, has a very vivid memory. Bruxism, the clinical term for teeth grinding and jaw clenching, affects around 10% of adults and up to 15% of...
Read MoreIf you have a Health Savings Account or Flexible Spending Account, you already know the general idea: pre-tax dollars, qualifying medical expenses. What a lot of people don't realize is that custom night guards for bruxism fall squarely into that category. That's not a loophole. The IRS classifies dental night guards as a qualified medical expense when used to treat a medical condition like bruxism or TMJ. If you're paying...
Read MoreIf you've ever sat in the dentist's chair and been told you need a night guard, you already know what comes next. The quote. The pause. The mental calculation of whether this goes in the HSA or on the credit card and sort of lives there for a while. Night guards have a reputation for being expensive, and dentist-made ones genuinely are. But that's not the only option, and the...
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