It’s called TMJ an acronym for Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome.
https://tmj-relief.com/tmj-signs-and-symptoms/
Having worked for a Chiropractor I have seen several cases of TMJ and it ranges from irritation to debilitating pain, in short if You never have it consider yourself lucky.
Chiropractic involves treatment of the entire skeleton and muscles.
People that consider Chiropractic to be a scam and Chiropractors to be “quacks” have never been to a real Chiropractor. There are some “quacks” out there for sure but most DC’s (Doctor of Chiropractic) are not “quacks”.
A Chiropractor will start with questions about your pain, a full body exam including ROM Testing (Range of Motion), basic strength testing, Vital Signs followed by X-Rays that could be a set of Cervical (head and neck) pics or a Full on AP and LAT (front to rear and side pics of the entire spine) before making any Adjustments. Some DC’s also do Acupressure/Acupuncture, Laser Therapy.
A real quack will just start making adjustments without doing a PT (patient) exam first.
I rented my house to a chiropractor. When he moved out, I kept receiving his mail for a week. A professional chiropractic journal arrived with the headline:
“How to keep your waiting room filled”.
:-/
The overarching point is: there are good Chiropractics and bad ones. Not every condition is amenable to treatment with chiropractic methods, the same way a surgeon's scalpel isn't the appropriate treatment for everything. Some surgeons and medical personnel don't know this, in the same way some chiropractors may not know it. It is unfair in most cases to paint an entire field with a broad brush.
Chiropractic saved my quality of life. Not kidding. This is my Chiropractic story.
I hurt my back playing football in high school. I was 160 lbs as a defensive back, and found myself running at top speed towards a running back who weighed at least 30 lbs more than I did, and who was running at top speed towards me.
I was big into the concept of leverage, and thought I could stop anyone, no matter the size. The running back had the same idea of leverage in the act of plowing over someone.
When we collided, we were both traveling fast, and practicing optimal leverage, and it became a simple equation of mass, and I lost...the guy completely wrecked me.
In my mind, my back must have compressed an inch or two. I could barely walk, but as practice ended, we were all ordered to run five laps. I was gritting my teeth and sweating, but I wasn't going to stop, even though everyone had finished five minutes earlier and was completely back in the clubhouse getting changed, I still had several laps to go.
The coach came over and told me I didn't have to finish the laps.
Eventually the pain dulled, but I couldn't play anymore. I joined the Navy, and even though I did have back pain, it wasn't debilitating.
However, after I got out, within a year, I began to have serious problems, to the point I was playing on a company softball team and collapsed after the game, unable to walk. I had a bunch of guys pick me up and put me bodily in my car. My best friend thought I had polio or something. I couldn't get out of bed for three or four days, went to a doctor, got pain pills and physical therapy, but...nothing worked. That first time, I couldn't get out of bed, and had to use a bed pan.
For the next ten years or so, each year my back would "go out on me" two or three times a year. It would be so acute that I would be laid up for two or three days, then improves slowly for about a month, and I would have a couple of months of diminished pain and workable movement until the next onset. In college, I could miss a few days, but when I graduated and began working, I had to go in due to the nature of my job. Missing work was not an option.
So I would drive in, park the car, and do the "Tim Conway Shuffle" through the front door and hospital lobby all the way into my department. I literally was able to only put one foot about six inches in front of the other, gritting my teeth in pain and sweating the entire time.
One day, I went in to see one of my patients, and she looked at me with horror when I walked in and exclaimed "Oh, my God. I saw you walk in the front entrance to the hospital, and I thought you were a patient!"
This went on for years. I also played hockey and softball, but was in pretty much constant pain with forays into episodes of debilitating and incapacitating pain.
When I got married, my wife watched this cycle of pain with concern, and one day as lay on my back, unable to get up, she knew I had run the gamut of what traditional medicine could offer and it didn't work, so she suggested I try acupuncture or chiropractic.
Out of sheer desperation, I tried chiropractic. It worked. It actually worked.
I began going three times a week, sometimes even four or five, using stimulation with electrodes, machines that stretch your back, ice, and mechanical adjustment. But the amazing thing was...over time, I had short periods, beginning as I left the appointment after adjustment, where my pain level was low or even gone, and I could stand up straight. I dropped down to twice a week (timing my visits for the day after I had a hockey game) and then...once a week.
The periods of incapacitation where I couldn't walk went away, and though I got acute pain that restricted my life and made sleep difficult, it was nothing like those acute episodes I suffered for years.
About four years ago, I began to experience real, serious back pain again. It got to the point where for several weeks I was in constant severe pain, I was gritting my teeth all the time, and had sweat running down my head. When I went in this time, they did an MRI, and found that I had a protruding disk that two vertebrae were squeezing a piece of the the disk to the point a large chunk was getting chopped off by the two vertebrae squeezing together. They said they preferred not to operate, but did get me set for an injection in the back to kill the pain.
Unbelievable. For the first in forty five years, my back felt-normal! Pain free. It was like walking on a cloud. It lasted for three months, but I understand you can't get those shots all the time. Eventually, that piece of a disk did break off and was re-absorbed over time by my body.
Point is-Chiropractic saved me. Those 30 years, if I had not had chiropractic, I would have lost so much. Chiropractic enabled me to lead a normal life. I now go about once a month, though I am mostly sedentary now. No sports of any kind for me.
But in those years, I had all kinds of appointments with specialists, pain clinics, back clinics, physical therapy, with pain killers added in, to no avail. Nothing helped.
Nothing but Chiropractic. It isn't for all conditions. It isn't for everything. There are some things that I have no doubt it is completely ineffective against. And I have no doubt there are bad chiropractors out there who have hurt people.
But there are doctors, teachers, lawyers, and dentists who, through incompetence, have done the same. It isn't fair to paint them all with the same brush.
Yes. My chiropractor was a respiratory therapist before he went back to school for Chiropractic, so he (like I) understands the nexus between traditional medical care and chiropractic.
He takes X-rays when warranted, and always does a thorough examination when I have a new symptom.