BACK PAIN CAUSED BY DENTAL MALPOSITION.

— According to Meersseman, 30-40 percent of back pain can be caused or aggravated by dental malocclusion.
— The human body stands upright because of the balance between all the structures that make up the body. A disturbance, at any level, will influence the rest of the body.
— The jaw articulates with the skull through the temporomandibular joint. It is a guide joint and cannot be overloaded. It also articulates through the contact between the teeth, which is a strong joint, but for this mechanism to work, it is necessary that each tooth supports the load that corresponds to it.
— All the teeth must be in perfect balance to prevent the temporomandibular joint from being overloaded. When the balance is broken by extractions or dental malposition, a malocclusion syndrome is created, which causes some facial muscles to contract more than others, or to contract differently, or the patient to chew more on one side than the other, causing muscular atrophy on the side that is less used and compensatory muscular hypertrophy on the other side, causing facial asymmetry.
— When the jaw becomes unbalanced, depending on the muscular chains that are activated, the skull will also take on an anomalous spatial position, which will overload the cervical spine, and in an attempt to adapt, will cause malpositions at the level of the spine, which will give rise to the aforementioned back pain.
— If it is treated with analgesics or spasmolytics, it will disappear, but as the cause has not been treated, after some time, it will reappear and the patient will join the group of chronic sufferers of fictitious arthrosis and recurrent arthritis, and all this because they do not usually think of dental occlusion as the cause of back pain.
— According to Agrippa of Nettesheim, man is represented in equilibrium, so that if only one of the lengths is changed, all the other lengths are changed (structural imbalance). From this structural interrelationship it follows that the organism is a whole and that any diseased part can influence other parts from a distance. But the importance of the influence of dental occlusion on back pain lies in its high frequency.
— From the point of view of dental posturology we are interested in observing whether the patient has a balanced face. All of us are, to a greater or lesser extent, close to the golden proportions, but it is extremely difficult for these to be exact.
— Facial asymmetry is accompanied by a limitation in the rotational movement of the spine to one side and also a tilt to that side of the axis as well as an anomaly at the level of the sixth cervical vertebra.
— The “cranio-mandibular dysfunction syndrome” (CMD), caused by missing or deviated teeth, or by alterations in the temporomandibular joint, can usually have its own symptoms and can also be accompanied by symptoms at other levels such as ear, neurological symptoms, etc.
— There are three types of postural imbalance:
a) Ascending malpositional syndrome: alterations caused by other organic structures cause alterations at the level of the stomatognathic system;
b) Descending malpositional syndrome: disorders originating in the stomatognathic system will cause distant disturbances in the rest of the organism;
c) Mixed malpositional syndrome: there are components of the two previous ones.
— Whenever there is a malpositional syndrome, the cause must be sought, the diagnosis is essential, as the treatment will depend on the cause, so if it is ascending, it will have to be treated by the appropriate specialist, traumatologist, orthopaedic surgeon, etc. If it is descending, the treatment will be carried out by the odontologist, who will have to look for the cause with precision, by means of occlusal analysis, radiopanoramics, teleradiography, etc.
— The treatments can be varied: sculpting of dental fillings that have not been carried out (fillings in which the original shape of the tooth or molar has not been preserved), orthodontics (malpositioned teeth or molars), prostheses (when teeth are missing), inoculation, relaxation or repositioning splints (acute pain at the joint level).
— Back pain caused by malpositioned teeth (dental kinesiology, posturology and sports dentistry).
sports dentistry).
— An imbalance in the dental arches, either due to missing teeth or dental malposition, can be the cause of back pain.
GENERAL postural balances.

– Sacro-mandibulo-cranial balance. The action of the agonist and antagonist muscles, with the help of the neck muscles, keep the jaw and head in balance.
— Equal action of the spine (dorso-lumbo-sacral). Podiatrists have observed that if there are modifications of the dento-dental relationship, this will have repercussions on the general postural balance of the body (measure the pressures on the soles of the feet) (Figures 45 and 46).
— Podiatrists have observed that if there are changes in the relationship between the dental arches (the dento-dentary), this will have repercussions on the general postural balance of the body which can be noticed by measuring the pressures on the soles of the feet.
— The jaw moves continuously in the three dimensions of space to make the fine regulation in all body movements or closing energetically if necessary.
— At the Orthodontic Congress held in Monaco in 1997, Genone. B. said: “Experience in sports medicine shows that after a correct reintegration of the cranio-mandibular function, a very important improvement in the performance of athletes is observed… An orthopaedic/orthodontic correction of the adult is also a postural treatment…”.