Customer Reviews

Taking Control of TMJ: Your Total Wellness Program for Recovering from Temporomandibular Joint Pain, Whiplash, Fibromyalgia, and Related Disorders

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I came upon this book in a very roundabout way ---- during the process of improving my vision by natural means of all things. What could eyesight and the TMJ possibly have in common? In my case, a great deal I was to discover. When I first started improving my vision naturally, I thought it was only about the eyes and did not appreciate the whole health aspect. I was in for many surprises and some confusion when I eventually began having referred pain and sensations in areas seemingly unconnected to the eyes. It didn't initially dawn on me that there was any relationship between these symptoms and my improving eyesight. Then I began to wonder, could there be a connection? I studied several books on natural vision improvement (Relearning to See --- RTS for short - and Better Eyesight are highly recommended) which made reference to blurred vision causing tight muscles and problems in many other areas of the body. Muscle groups affected can include such areas as the neck, shoulders, jaw, ears, cheeks and forehead. It soon became abundantly obvious that the symptoms I had been experiencing fit the reversal pattern of holistic healing. Suggestions were made in the RTS book to try some holistic healing treatments in conjunction with relearning the proper vision habits. One of several mentioned was TMJ treatment, yet the term had no significance to me at the time. Because of my neck and shoulder stiffness and pains, I opted for massage therapy sessions and obtained significant tension releases which the therapist also noticed. It turned out that the type of massage was myofascial release. I was intrigued to learn more on the Internet when I got home. The many website results that came up in my search about myofascial release were in relation to TMJ disorders. There was that term again. Bingo! It was like a piece of a puzzle falling into place. I chose to buy Dr. Uppgaard's book to find out more. I was amazed to read so many parallels and similar topics in Dr. Uppgaard's book and the RTS book. Both authors discuss such subjects as the impact of mental stress, neck and shoulder problems, the ears and hearing, dizziness, proper breathing, referred pain, the importance of good posture and the benefits of holistic healing treatments. But what really jumped off the pages in Dr. Uppgaard's book were references to certain neck muscles that, if tense, could cause "visual disturbances and blurring of vision". The RTS book states that "the neck is tight for all people who have blurred vision." The sternocleidomastoid muscle described on page 50 of Dr. Uppgaard's book has had such a strong connection with my improving vision. I've gotten to the stage where I can massage areas in this muscle to release tension (trigger points as discussed in his book) and cause spasm-like sensations in and around my eyes, ears, jaw and cheeks. Looking back many years ago, I believe now that my dentist had at one time suspected a TMJ disorder. I recall him checking the TMJ on both sides and asking some questions. Based on my responses, I guess I didn't fit into the slot of standard symptoms for which he was trained to assess, because nothing further was suggested. Yet when I got Dr. Uppgaard's book, I checked off so many symptoms, presumably lesser known to many and unknown to most. What started as a goal of keener eyesight has ultimately led to improved overall health. I applaud Dr. Uppgaard for going "outside the box" of conventional medical views. His book has been a very educational and helpful resource along my journey of natural vision improvement and total wellness.

I was diagnosed with TMJ many years ago. For the past year I have been battling with numb fingers. After many tests, much time, and a lot of money - an accidental visit to my dentist helped to show TMJ was affecting my fingers. I had never heard of that happening. This book not only lists every possible symptom, but exercises that are extremely helpful.

After reading the book for about 15 minutes, I tried the first exercise. My jaw felt immediate relief. I am very grateful for this book. It will certainly help in relieving pain and discomfort.

The other reviewers have said it very well. The exercises provided me immediate relief (Search Inside the book for "exercise," and you can do them while you're waiting for shipment!)

I really like the approach he takes - conservative, and taking all causes into consideration (dental, joint, and muscular.) He rightly points out that dentists, surgeons and doctors all tend to see it through their own filter, and he takes a broader view so you can consider them all.

I cannot stress enough though how the elimination of coffee has helped me. This is extremely difficult, and I can't always stay away -- but every time I drink some, I end up with pain and tension.

I also recommend the "Stop TMJ and Teeth Grinding" CD by Scott Sulak. I woke up in significantly less pain after the first use.

This book offers a simple, non-invasive cure to a miserable problem that is poorly understood or treated. I had chronic jaw pain for over a year when I happened to meet Dr. Uppgaard at a holiday party. During our conversation the topic of TMJ came up and I learned that he had a book out on the subject. Within days of doing the simple exercises, my pain began to diminish, and was completely gone in about two weeks. Now it only returns during times of stress, and by doing these exercises again for a few days, it disappears. After all that time of being in pain, who could imagine that the solution could be so simple! This book is certainly an important "first try" before doing something like surgery which can makes the problem worse. THANK YOU, DR. BOB!

In his book, Dr. Uppgaard gives many suggestions for treating your own TMJ pain. I have been trying several of his suggestions and have experienced a great reduction in TMJ-related jaw, neck, and shoulder pain. I am so grateful that someone wrote a book on this, since my dentist and physician had few helpful suggestions for me. Thanks Dr. Uppgaard!

I have been treating TMD for almost ten years and now have a book that is worth its weight in gold, for both patients and my sometimes uninformed and too busy colleagues in medicine.

I am a chiropractic physician, treating the moving parts of the body and their soft tissue (i.e. muscles, ligaments, cartilage) attachments and connections. Many of my colleagues in chiropractic, osteopathic and allopathic medicine, unfortunately, do not know how to properly diagnose or treat this condition. This book would be useful to fellow professionals as well as laypersons.

TMD is real, and poorly understood by many. Uppgaard does us a favor, too, by discussing TMD and whiplash injuries. Clearly a hot debate in the medical and engineering literature, even the national auto insurance industry admits that TMJ injuries occur at least 4% of the time. My guess, based on ten years experience treating motor vehicle collision (MVC) injuries is that the TMJ is injured closer to 50% of the time.

In any case, arguments such as "the TMJ cannot be injured in MVC" are clearly ridiculous based just on the epidemiological literature. Further, the methods used to investigate injury to the TMJ in human volunteer auto crash testing are still inadequate, still insensitive. An analogy would be to perform an MRI of the cervical spine in a patient after a car crash, getting a positive study showing a mildly herniated disc, only to find out during surgery (I referred the patient due to lack of treatment response after FOUR weeks, the federal and state standard for chiropractic medicine) that the disc is SEVERELY herniated, that two other disc "bulges" are in fact disc ruptures, and that there is severe damage to the posterior longitudinal ligament, facet capsular ligaments and interspinous ligaments. In plain English, the MRI is mostly a very INSENSITIVE test for seeing damage to ligaments other than the discs, even though it is often OVERVALUED by physicians, patients, and researchers studying MVC. And what you really have in this example is a grossly false negative study (see studies in Medline like those by Taylor et al. looking at autopsy studies of the spines of MVC victims who died of natural causes within days after their crashes).

So if your physician isn't looking for TMJ sprain-strain or dysfunction after a MVC, he or she isn't going to find it (and if your physician that day is an insurance company doctor, this could be the case, nudge, nudge, know what I mean?). And just because your doctor doesn't find a TMD or doesn't talk about it with you, or more commonly, doesn't WANT to talk about it with you (is embarrassed to say "I don't know", a common, arrogant, and too often devastating mistake), that doesn't mean your TMJ hasn't been injured.

Bravo for Dr. Uppgaard for bringing this common injury and condition to the masses. It provides a refreshing alternative to misguided books like one by Ferrari ("The Whiplash Encyclopedia") which denies TMD from whiplash, is biased, and which is hardly encyclopedic.

I would encourage both patients and their doctors to read Dr. Uppgaard's very useful book!

I caught my clenching and/or bruxing early. However I'd chipped a rear molar in my sleep. Both of my rear molar were extremely temperature and pressure sensitive to the point that eating, drinking and tooth brushing were pure misery. I suffered from a constant sick headache. Bright lights and moderately loud sounds made it feel much worse. If I happened to accidently graze a rear-upper molar with a lower one, the pain just about sent me through the roof.

I seriously had visions of having both of those teeth pulled as they hurt almost as much as a bona fide toothache. Sadly this book told of desperate people who had done exactly that under similar circumstances. But their tooth remained because they never treated the cause of it. Since I found it highly unlikely that I developed abscesses in both upper-rear molars simultaneously, TMJ seemed a likely culprit. Hence I found this book:

This book explains the causes of your suffering so that it's not so frightening, and it give you options so that you don't additionally feel like a powerless victim at the mercy of the overpriced and cash-crazed American medical system that seems obsessed with drugging you or cutting you. Sadly such approaches have made things far worse for TMJ sufferers, and even more sadly, they may have been entirely unnecessary for many such sufferers.

While there are many alternative. noninvasive and VASTLY less expensive strategies in this book, for me hot compresses provided short-term quick tangible relief when pressed against jaw joint and muscles. In conjunction with these muscle balms such as arnica gel, its attached homeopathic pellets as well as Tiger balm provided partial temporary analgesic relief on my cheek, jaw, temple and forehead muscles so I could at least get to sleep. Just be careful not to get the stuff in your eyes. This was all fine and good for treating the symptoms of my TMJ, but it wasn't enough. I wanted the cure.

For me at least, I didn't discover the REAL cure until several miserable days later which is as follows: In conjunction with the aforementioned hot compresses, it consisted of my best friend telling me about Dr. Oz's suggestion of using a wine cork vertically between the front upper and lower teeth so that the massester muscles can relax into a stretch. It really was that simple. While your masseter (jaw) muscle are stretching you can lie down, sit up, walk, drive, read, watch TV or whatever. And if your significant other ever told you to "put a cork in it," well then...there's that too.

I imagine if you do an advanced Google search such as: "Dr. Oz" and "wine cork" and TMJ, that should find it quick.

Be aware that like during any stretch of a spasmed muscle, masseter muscles with TMJ are particularly stiff and might even be a trifle sore thus requiring more than just a single effort, or a brief one for that matter. Keep in mind that during the first part of the stretch, your referred pain (in my case my upper-rear teeth) hurt more for a few dozen seconds. But being accustomed to that from yoga I stuck with it. You need to let go, relax and breath into the stretch. It hurt like blazes at first, but it let go bit by bit until miraculously it disappeared altogether. What was at least as remarkable though, was that during the stretch the adjacent forehead, temple and scalp muscles muscles (the cause of your peripheral headaches and eye pain, by the way) abruptly let go and relaxed from trying to compensate for the misalignment of the masseters. As a result, the peripheral headaches and eye strain pain vanished immediately. Bonnie Prudden's book explains why this is so. It's really a helpful book so that you have the overall understanding of why your eyes and head hurts too during TMJ.

Since then if I've an occasional twinge due to stress, I nightly resume wearing the brand name mouth guard called "The Doctor's Night Guard" well, ah... nightly, just in case I'm bruxing. And during the day I resume the cork stretching, and that does the trick. The last time I had to do so the tooth sensitivity (minor to moderate that time) was gone in less than 24 hours including time asleep.

In addition, if you're suffering from TMJ, someone I know also swears by her chiropractor's use of an ultrasonic muscle massage. I personally never tried that because I never needed to, but if my suggestions do not work for you, then that might be an option as well. Otherwise do like I did and research your options before you let anyone do anything to you that very well may be irreversible.

When I was going through my Divorce, I started having extreme symptoms of TMJ, but didn't know exactly what it was at first or how to deal with it.

My jaw was like iron, and sometimes I couldn't even open my mouth enough to bite into an apple. My normally thin face was now completely swollen in its lower half, and I physically looked like a different person because of it. My jaw also clicked loudly and VERY painfully....it was truly horrible.

My dentist gave me a bite guard to wear at night which did help, but I still hadn't returned back to 'normal'. Then I bought this book.

This probably sounds made up, as if I'm a relative of the author's, but I'm not exaggerating when I say this book literally changed my life, and brought me back to feeling and looking like the person I was before.

The stretching exercises are very simple and basic, but were EXTREMELY effective for me. I no longer need to wear my bite guard at night, and still do the stretches every night, which only take a few minutes (and are SO worth it!).

I'm a dental student and just finished reading the book. The self-help exercises, accompanied by illustrations, are very beneficial to patients. I'm recommending this book to my family, friends, and patients to better help them understand their joint problems and simple -but often overlooked- ways to have a better lifestyle. I appreciate the author's natural approach in which resorting to splints or surgery is considered only after natural methods have not proven successful.

I started the exercises in this book (very simple to do) and noticed a big improvement in the symptoms I had with TMJ. I highly recommend it.