How Appliance Therapy Can Relieve Tension Headaches

Chronic headache is a devastating condition that can negatively affect your energy and overall quality of life. Besides causing severe pain, chronic headaches are often accompanied by various symptoms like nausea, light and sound sensitivity, and more.

When medications don’t relieve your pain, it may be possible that your headaches are caused by underlying conditions like TMJ disorders. In this article, let’s learn how appliance therapy in Raynham, MA, can help alleviate chronic headaches and restore the quality of your life.

What is Appliance Therapy?

Alliance therapy is a type of treatment that uses customized oral appliances for headache management. The devices are worn in the mouth like retainers or sports guards and work by aligning the position of the jaw. This reduces tension in the jaw and jaw muscles, which is closely associated with chronic headaches and migraines.

Besides preventing and alleviating headaches, appliance therapy can treat a wide range of oral conditions like sleep apnea, TMJ disorders, and teeth bruxism. Since most of these conditions happen when sleeping, appliance therapy is commonly used at night.

Appliance therapy treatment might be right for you if you can’t tolerate medications and other therapies or are looking for a more natural solution to your condition.

How Does Appliance Therapy Work?

Improper jaw alignment and other conditions can cause increased muscle tension in the jaw, face, and neck, leading to pain in the jaw and nearby structures like the teeth, ears, and head.

Appliance therapy uses custom oral devices to properly align the jaw and surrounding muscles, reducing tension and improving blood flow. Relaxing these tissues alleviates pain, inflammation, and other symptoms associated with poor jaw alignment and disorders.

While oral devices for tension headaches can be obtained over the counter, it’s highly crucial that you get a custom appliance from your dentist. Unlike generic oral devices, the one from your dentist is made according to your specific oral structures, ensuring maximum comfort and protection.

Is Appliance Therapy Right for You?

Since numerous problems can cause chronic headaches, it might be challenging to know whether or not appliance therapy may be suitable or effective for you. It’s best to consult our dentist near you for chronic headache treatment with dental devices.

Before treatment, the dentist will review your medical history and examine your condition to determine whether oral appliances suit you. They might take x-rays and perform other tests to understand your situation better.

In most cases, the dentist might look for other signs of dental problems like teeth misalignments, impacted wisdom teeth, teeth grinding, jaw clenching, TMJ disorders, dental abscesses, and overcrowding, closely associated with chronic headaches. All these issues can cause significant tension and imbalance in the jaw, resulting in mild to severe pain that radiates throughout the head.

Benefits of Using Appliance Therapy for Tension Headaches

There are numerous benefits of using an oral appliance to manage chronic headaches. These include:

• It’s drug-free: Oral appliances may be ideal if you have regular tension headaches that won’t respond to medications or you’re looking for a natural remedy.
• Non-invasive: Oral appliances don’t require any needles, injections, or surgery. This makes it safer and more comfortable than other procedures.
• Convenient and easy to use: Oral appliances are easy to use as needed. In most cases, you put them in when sleeping and remove them in the morning. Most people find them more comfortable than alternate therapies like CPAP machines.
• Long-term: Unlike medication that commonly offers short-term relief to chronic headaches, appliance therapy can address the root cause of your headaches by properly aligning your jaw and facial muscles, providing long-term relief. Research shows that many people who have used appliance therapy experienced a significant reduction in the severity and frequency of their headaches.

Learn More about Migraine Relief with Appliance Therapy

Are you interested in appliance therapy near you? Or perhaps you’d like more information about headache prevention with dental therapy? Contact and book a dentist appointment at Raynham Dental Group, the Office of Dr Michael Scanlon, to book your dentist appointment today.