What If Your Bite Is the Reason for Chronic Neck and Shoulder Pain?

After 60 years of chronic back and neck pain, Maureen Pethurst, 81 finally found a solution to her agonising condition. Here, she explains how changing the way she bites resolved a lifetime of chronic, unresolved neck and shoulder pain so bad she couldn’t work or walk, and even affected the way she parented.

I want to tell you why I had DTR treatment, and why it has changed my life so profoundly. For most of my life I suffered in ways that affected every part of my existence, and for years I never realised that what I was feeling could be connected with my teeth.

Disclusion Time Reduction (DTR) is a dental treatment used to help people with chronic bite (occlusion) problems, where the teeth don’t come together in a balanced way and cause significant strain on the jaw muscles. Specially trained dentists use computerised sensors to measure how the teeth touch and the pressure applied by the jaws. The readings guide small adjustments to the bite by reshaping tiny areas of certain teeth so that when you move your jaw side to side or forward, your back teeth separate quickly instead of rubbing or grinding against each other. This reduces the time the teeth stay in contact during those movements, which helps relax overworked jaw muscles and relieve symptoms including chronic face, neck and shoulder pain, headaches or tinnitus.

When I was 15 years old, I had one tooth that stuck out and I was very self-conscious about it. I wanted it corrected and I trusted my dentist completely. I was far too young to understand the decisions being made. A brace was fitted even though there was no room for that tooth to move into. No space was created by extracting teeth, which was commonly done at the time. Instead, all of my upper teeth were pushed backwards to accommodate that one tooth. My lower teeth were then forced into a smaller space and became squashed and overlapped, and before long they were cutting into my lower gums. What none of us understood then was that all of this orthodontic movement had been done without any consideration for how my teeth would meet together in function. That was where the damage began.

By the age of 20 I had developed severe neck and shoulder problems. The pain was so intense that I was unable to work for a year. I needed hospital appointments and constant physiotherapy just to get through each day. From that point on, and for decades of my life, I lived with permanent shoulder pain and very restricted neck movement. I was attending osteopaths continuously, spending huge amounts of money simply to survive from one appointment to the next, and yet the relief never lasted. I could not live a normal life. I declined holidays, avoided family outings, and felt I was constantly letting my children down because my body would not allow me to do the things I so desperately wanted to do with them. All the time I was searching for answers. I told dentists again and again that I believed my teeth were connected to the pain in my neck and shoulders. I had an extremely heavy bite and eventually three of my back teeth cracked and had to be extracted. I lost my teeth at a young age and had to wear dentures, and still no one balanced my bite or questioned why this was happening.

At the age of 61, in desperation and in pain from extreme soreness in my lower gums, I again explained to a dentist that I was certain my bite was the cause. By then my upper teeth had formed a deep bite and were digging into my lower gums. I was so desperate for relief that when I was offered braces again I agreed. Between the ages of 61 and 71 my teeth were moved, and during that time I noticed something extraordinary – whenever the teeth were being adjusted and space was created, I would feel temporary movement and release in my neck and back. That was when I knew without any doubt that my teeth were connected to the pain throughout my body. Unfortunately, the dentist retired before my treatment was completed and I was left once again with teeth that did not fit together properly. My chiropractor, who had been liaising with the dentist, told me very clearly that until my bite was corrected I would never gain full benefit from chiropractic treatment. By then the problems had spread from my neck and shoulders into my back and hips. My body was becoming more and more rigid. There were times when my husband had to learn how to crack my back just to give me some relief.

At the age of 71 I was told by another dentist that my case was too severe and that I would need to go to a hospital and face a very long waiting list. I then had a Michigan splint and a denture made in an attempt to balance my bite, but even with these the chiropractor could still feel that something was very wrong. The tension in my muscles – in my face, my head, my neck, my back and my hips – was still overwhelming. My osteopath told me that the muscles in my face were the worst he had ever seen. I felt as if I was going in endless circles, believing each professional who told me they could help, only to find myself still in pain and still searching.

At one point I was even told that the pain was psychological, but deep inside I knew this was not true. When I changed chiropractors, the new practitioner examined me and said immediately that I had very real physical problems. He told me my muscles were permanently locked in a fight-or-flight state and producing large amounts of lactic acid. That explained why I could only walk a few steps on an incline before my legs seized and I had to stop and wait for them to release.

It was my husband, through his own research, who found Dr Tasleem Ahmed -a dentist with a special interest in the occlusion, who had undertaken extensive postgraduate training in the way the bite affects the whole body. When she began making careful, precise changes in my mouth, the impact on my muscles was immediate and extraordinary. I would sometimes arrive at the practice with a walking stick, barely able to walk and unable to rise from a chair, and after treatment I would walk out normally. It felt as if the muscles in my body had been unlocked. Now aged 80, after a lifetime of suffering, it was overwhelming to experience such a change.