For those looking for Chicago vertigo treatment, your Chicago dentist Dr. Kelly offers jaw alignment therapy that can eliminate dizziness from your daily life.
Dizziness (or vertigo), the sensation where your surroundings seem to be moving, may seem completely unrelated to your bite. But when we look into the mechanism of balance, we can see the connection between poor jaw alignment, airway, and vertigo. In fact, vertigo can be caused by Temporomandibular Dysfunction (TMD) of the jaw; therefore, for those living in Chicago vertigo treatment may begin with a visit to your Chicago dentist.
How the Body Maintains Balance
The brain integrates information from three sources when calculating your body’s balance. Most of the information (60%) comes from your inner ears. The other 40% comes from what you see, your visual information, and the information from stretch receptors of muscles and joints, or what you feel. There is a structure in each of our inner ears called a labyrinth. This structure contains inner sacs filled with fluid, where sensation is generated by the movement of this fluid against minute hair-like organs. Each canal is oriented in such a way that the fluid moves when we bob the head up and down, turn the head side to side or tilt head side to side over the shoulders. The information from these highly sensitive organs in our inner ears has to integrate with the stimuli from what we see and what we sense in our muscles and joints. This gives us balance. This explains why you feel slightly off-kilter when you get off an amusement park ride that moves quickly in many directions. The fluid within the canals of your inner ear is still moving, which gives you the feeling of movement, but your visual cues and muscle senses tell you that you are standing still. This discrepancy of messages into your brain is the reason for the dizziness and occasional nausea one might experience.
Vertigo Treatment Chicago
The delicate balance organs of the inner ear are housed in a portion of the temporal bone. The “socket” of the jaw joint is also part of the temporal bone. Many people do not realize how close this bone is to the inner ear. When the jaw bone is poorly aligned to the upper jaw, excessive pressure to the joint results. The pressure is transmitted to the most flexible part of the structure, the socket. This pressure can disrupt the natural movement of the temporal bone just enough to force the balance organs housed inside the bone to be moved out of position as well. Vertigo results when one of these balance organs is knocked out of alignment even slightly.
Vertigo Treatment with Your Chicago Dentist
Returning the jaw alignment to the proper position often leads to a correction of this misalignment of the balance organs, relieving the vertigo. Our staff at our Edgebrook dental office utilizes expertise along with the latest technology to provide comprehensive dizziness treatment in Chicago.
Call today to make an appointment with your Chicago dentist Dr. John Kelly.