What is Dental Botox?

Dental Botox is for more than just aesthetics. Treatments can also help alleviate pain and help correct disorders.

Botox is primarily known as a cosmetic treatment that removes the appearance of wrinkles from the face. By injecting botulinum toxin into the muscles under facial wrinkles, the muscles relax and produce a smoothing effect on the skin. For people looking for anti-aging treatments, it offers a minimally invasive, quick, and painless treatment. However, Botox use is not limited to cosmetic applications: dental Botox can provide relief from certain maxillofacial conditions that cause pain.

Who Can Benefit From Dental Botox?

Dental Botox can help many chronic ailments such as TMJ disorders, bruxism, and masseter hypertrophy. It can also help correct high lip lines.

Unlike cosmetic Botox injections, dental Botox helps treat a number of conditions affecting the face and mouth area. In particular, dental Botox can treat a number of muscle-generated dental disorders such as:

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders

Temporomandibular disorders affect the jaw muscles, temporomandibular joints, and the nerves surrounding the area. Anything that hampers the harmonic function of the muscles, bones, and joints can lead to temporomandibular disorder. It often results in chronic facial pain, including migraines, jaw clicking or popping, shoulder and neck pain, and earaches.

Bruxism

Bruxism is the condition where a patient grinds teeth or clenches the jaws due to stress or anxiety. TMJ can also produce this symptom. Prolonged bruxism can damage the teeth through grinding, and can lead to more extensive discomfort including headaches or facial pain. Interestingly, most people with bruxism are often unaware whenever they grind their teeth and clench their jaw.

Masseter Hypertrophy

The condition known as Masseter Hypertrophy is characterized by the enlargement of the masseter muscles. Masseter muscles are what the mouth uses when it masticates or chews food and are some of the strongest muscles in the body by weight. While idiopathic hypertrophy is a rare occurrence that has no known causes, many experts believe it can be caused by defective/misaligned teeth, over chewing (such as gum or tobacco), TMJ disorders, congenital origins, or even stress and anxiety.

Benefits of Dental Botox

Dentists are certified experts in matters involving facial muscles and bones making them the perfect candidate for administering dental Botox treatments.

Dental Botox doesn’t just provide a cosmetic solution to aesthetic problems. In fact, they provide benefits that go beyond appearance. Some of these benefits include:

Provides Pain Relief

Dental Botox injections can provide relief from pain caused by dental disorders, like the ones noted above. The toxin relaxes the muscles of the jaw and face. A relaxed state reduces the symptoms of TMJ disorders such as tooth pain, headaches, and jaw soreness. In the case of bruxism, Botox reduces the mouth muscle contractions that control clenching and grinding.

Aesthetic Family Dental wants to help you with all your dental needs. For more information, please schedule an appointment with your dentist, and we will be in touch with you shortly.