Chronic Headaches Now Reaching Epidemic Proportion

By Duke H. Kim, DDS, MAGD

Having chronic headaches can severely disable an otherwise healthy individual. They can lower your activity level, drain your energy, and even make you irritable and depressed. As a result, both personal and professional relationships can be negatively affected.

Chronic headache pain is one of the United States' most prevalent health problems, and according to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, 157 million days of work/school were lost last year due to chronic headache pain. What's more, when asked, nearly everyone recently surveyed reported at least occasional recurring headache pain, with the number of chronic sufferers reaching over 45 million annually.

Regardless of what type of pain is experienced in the head, neck, or face, it is all referred to by the broad term headache. The web of connected nerves in your face, head and neck all experience sensation through a “nerve root” called the trigeminal nucleus. It is often an underlying condition somewhere within these areas that cause chronic, severe headaches.

It's not uncommon for chronic headaches sufferers to lose hope and feel that they'll never experience life without headaches, especially after undergoing extensive testing by different specialists and not finding a lasting, pain-relieving solution. Although changes in stress management and diet can be beneficial to overall health, doing so may not target the cause of their painful symptoms. Chronic headache pain sufferers are often left taking a cocktail of over-the-counter or prescription drugs or worse, told their pain isn't real or “all in their head's.”

Now there is finally a solution for chronic headaches that offers lasting pain relief actually addresses and treats the sources of the problem instead of temporarily masking the pain. Using a combination of techniques that have been proven effective in sports medicine to speed an athlete's recovery, the TruDenta system targets the improper muscle forces in the head, neck, and jaw area that cause painful conditions.

Evaluations include objective, computer-assisted imaging to pin-point a patient's issues. Then, based on the findings, in-office treatment involves a personalized program of gentle (laser) light therapy, electrical stimulation, muscle manipulation, and a customized orthotic device worn inside the mouth. Patients also follow a specific at-home continuing care program which includes information and exercises to be done between treatments. These combined therapies are proven to relieve severe and chronic headache pain by re-training the muscles and nerves connected by the trigeminal nucleus to function properly, thus restoring comfort.

The TruDenta pathway to care presents several benefits that people suffering with chronic headache and migraine pain might not encounter with some traditional solutions. The TruDenta approach relieves pain without pills or dangerous, costly injections. It corrects the nerve and muscle function without invasive procedures. And, whereas most other common treatments stop at the doctor's office or pharmacy, the TruDenta program provides patients with an at-home care kit that puts them in control.

Best of all, the TruDenta treatment from dentists has provided real, lasting pain relief to people who truly believed there was no such thing as a life without headaches.