When Braces Can Be A Headache
Reuben was a very bright 14 year-old “A” student from a very supportive family. He had little social pressure and excelled in most areas. He came to us with constant debilitating headaches.
He was fine until diagnosed with a slight overbite approximately one year before seeing us. The orthodontist recommended braces, which were put on his teeth. Approximately two months later the headaches began and within three months he had to be taken out of school and home schooled because the headaches only increased in intensity and duration. The pediatrician basically attributed the headaches to stress.
When the pain increased, a decision was made to send him to two temporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ) specialists who said he should be splinted and medicated for pain. One made him a night splint because he felt Reuben was clenching his teeth during sleep. None of these things afforded the child any relief.
The pediatrician next wanted to send him to physical therapy but they did not have a basis for doing that. He was tested next by a neurologist, who also diagnosed stress. This doctor prescribed muscle relaxants and heavy pain medication. None of the doctors ever asked what other medications had been prescribed by the other doctors.
Another doctor said it was not TMJ, but did not look elsewhere for the cause of the headaches. He was sent to a massage therapist for relaxation treatment. On a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is pain-free and 10 is emergency room pain; Reuben rated his headaches as 7.
Reuben’s mother began searching for answers on her own. She found a book about alternative methods to treat headaches. It mentioned CranioSacral Therapy (CST) and listed references in the back. She got on the Internet and went to www.alternativemedicine.com where she found our listing. She first looked in her local area of New Mexico for someone who knew something about CST but was not confident in what she found. She went to our website and was very impressed by what she read.
She called our office for information and spoke with me. I asked her a number of questions and I was able to describe the type of pain her son was having just from her answers. Since Reuben had never had neck or jaw pain, and I had accurately described the pain, she set up an intensive at our clinic.
An intensive in our office consists of a two-hour evaluation and a regular schedule of treatment every day for a limited amount of time. In Reuben’s case we saw him for 6 hours of treatment, two hours a day for three days after the initial visit.
Upon initial evaluation I saw a typical 14 year-old boy of slender build, with marked forward head, upper cervical extension, and fascial restrictions throughout his body. His headaches would come and go and were mainly “cranial cap” headaches. Reuben rated the pain levels at 10. He had no neck pain, minimal TMJ pain on the right, with popping at the joint only on opening the jaw.
I did a full assessment of Reuben’s body to determine any additional imbalances. I found increased weight bearing on the left lower extremity. His right iliac crest was higher. His left ASIS was forward and rotated down. The nipple line was asymmetrical with the right side lower by approximately one inch. His right shoulder was lower than his left. The right clavicle at the sternoclavicular joint was more forward. His right ear was higher. The left PSIS was up. The left scapula was up and forward, versus the right, which was lower and retracted. In a supine position both shoulders were significantly up off the mat with the right more so than the left. He had no other pain, besides the headaches.
Upon assessment of the intraoral cavity, I found marked tightening of the pterygoids; the right greater than the left. The vomer was very high up and immobile. It looked like his head had been placed in a vise. It was as though the sides had been compressed and everything was trying to come out the top of his head. His sphenoid was stuck and not moving. He had almost no cranial rhythm because of the immobility.
The fascial restrictions throughout Reuben’s body could have formed at anytime from conception through the birth process and the normal bumps and learning experiences of childhood. But his body adjusted to all of those events without causing him significant or prolonged pain. Not to say that he would not have experienced pain or problems from those restrictions in later life, at the age of 14, he was not experiencing any obvious physical problems from them. However, the addition of the braces was the final thing his body could bear. The rigid braces putting pressure on his teeth and pulling on restrictions that were all ready present created a vice-like situation on his skull.
Reuben did very well with treatment. After the first session, the headache, which had been constant for the previous six months, was gone. The clicking and popping in the right side of his jaw had stopped and he said he felt he could breathe better out of both sides of his nose.
I worked to balance the whole body, release all restrictions in the fascial system and restore the CranioSacral rhythm in order to assure that the other CranioSacral Therapy adjustments would hold.
We achieved our goals. On his last visit, everything was balanced and aligned in a more neutral position. We had restored his CranioSacral rhythm. We gave him some home exercises along with posture and body mechanics training so he could continue to progress. We instructed the parents that a growth spurt might cause some additional symptoms but that I could do more adjustments at that time.
Reuben was entirely pain-free after the second visit and when he left he was standing in a more upright balanced posture with significant improvement in his forward head posturing. He stopped using the night splint after our second visit because he was no longer clenching his teeth during sleep. When he left, he had a great big grin on his face because he was finally pain-free.
Since Reuben lived out of state, we called to follow-up with him two weeks later. He reported that he was still pain free and it was now easier for him to move in space. He returned to school to finish the semester with his friends, like a normal 14 year-old boy. We see him periodically during school breaks for maintenance.
