My best friend is a dentist... not just any dentist, he is a Diplomate of the American Board of Oral Implantologists. His business partner in their medical building is a Chiropractor. My dentist buddy used to do the regular dentist thing for TMJ... grind down the teeth, etc., until his partner suggested he send the next TMJ patient to him to see if he could help. Since then ALL TMJ patients are sent to the Chiropractor first. 90% get relief from the TMJ pain in two to four visits!
My particular story is that I have a severe scoliosis. I wore a Milwaukee Brace all the way through High School. For those of you who are unfamiliar with such a brace, think in terms of a permanent rack... torture device... that goes from a hard leather or fibreglass girdle around the hips, extends upward with thick aluminum struts both in back and in front to a cage surrounding the head/neck with horsehide leather pads.
I wore a mostrosity like this 23 hours a day for years. I was at the point where they were recommending spinal fusion of six vertebrae and the installation of two rods merely to relieve my pain but could only offer a 50-50 prognosis that it would help the pain. I rebelled and tossed the damn thing. I lived with the pain. Several years later a friend recommended a Chiropractor... and that Chiropractor helped me more in relieving my pain in ONE VISIT than fifteen years of orthopedic surgeons and specialists.
He got me to the point that I could last a month between adjustments. Then I was involved in a hit-and-run automobile accident. My car was totalled. They used the jaws to pry the car from around me to get me out. Although the car was demolished (it was hit by TWO cars on opposites sides and then rolled foreward and hit a telephone pole) I thought my only injury was a small cut on my right hand from flying glass. I was wrong. After the accident, my chiropractor could not get a complete adjustment... and I wound up having to go two and three times a week just for pain relief.
Surgeons still want to operate... but they still only give me a 50/50 chance it will get better... or worse. I am now down to once a week at my chiropractor with the blessing of my primary care physician who was a Chiropractor who went back to school and extended his ability to treat his patients by becoming a "medical" doctor. He prescribes pain medication... which helps, but the chiropractic adjustments help a lot more... while they last.