TMD - maybe the cause of my IBS & fatigue?

[Iesgobdafydd]

I have been diagnosed with IBS, and have suffered with digestive problems and fatigue for a number of years. I also had some minor health issues - an occasional "stuffy" feeling in my ears when I got tired, usually when standing or walking, like the pressure couldn't escape; I kept waking up with blocked nasal/sinus passages like I was getting a cold all the time; I got oedema in my ankles in hot weather; and for a while I had clicking and pain in my knee joints, which I attributed to sitting on my feet, and which went away after I stopped doing that.

Recently I came across the concept of TMD, and thought it might explain the blocked nose in the morning. Sure enough, practising body awareness and working on stretching/relaxing tight areas has completely cleared up the blocked nose problem within a few weeks. Completely out of the blue, it also totally cleared up the oedema, which I'd have expected to be quite bad this summer with it being so hot. To my frustration however, I became aware that joints are connected in loops, and when one becomes stiff and blocked by tension, all the others connected to it are unable to move freely. I became aware of tense joints all over my body, right through my fingers, arms, neck, head, chest, back, shoulders, legs, feet, toes (and incipient bunion). Also running through my pelvis, and even some going through my gut and near my bowels.

It's often said that IBS is caused by stress. I've found it hard to relate this to myself because my life at the moment is about as low-stress as it gets, and my symptoms never seemed to respond quickly to stress, unlike some people who've written in this forum. But if my body is storing tension, perhaps from stresses in the past, it makes sense to me that that could be the cause of the IBS. My IBS had been somewhat better after trying Atrantil last year, but at the moment it's not causing me any problems at all, and although I haven't been brave enough to try absolutely everything I was eating before IBS, I've gone from a very restricted diet a year ago to eating almost anything I want to now, with no symptoms. I think the intense relaxation/stretching I'm doing is responsible, though it can't be proven.

I've become aware that some sensations I had interpreted as fatigue in the past - my back feeling tired towards the end of the day, when standing cooking supper - are not so much fatigue as back pain, coming through at a low intensity. If I lie down for half an hour and work on releasing tension, I can feel remarkably much better remarkably quickly, and it's not from lying down - I can feel the sensation clear as the joints relax and begin to flow. The back and the gut are neighbours in the body, and they do have some effect on each other. If the gut's inflated with wind, it's going to press on the back, and if the back's out of shape it's going to press on the gut. Some pain I had interpreted as digestive pain, because wind came out, I think now was also back pain.

The TMJ Association (tmj.org/Page/41/23) claims 85% of people with TMD suffer from painful conditions in other parts of the body, and two of those they list are IBS, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

I think there are a lot of different causes of gut problems, and I don't know how many IBS sufferers this is going to be relevant to - perhaps not many. But I doubt I'm the only one for whom TMD is a hidden contributor to their IBS, and I haven't seen a lot of discussion of it in this forum, so I thought I'd share this in case it might help anyone else - I certainly wish I'd come across the idea of TMD earlier. I've had stiff hips ever since I was a kid, and had corrective orthodonture for an overbite then as well, so I think this may have been building a very long time.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? Has anyone gotten useful help with TMD from an NHS doctor or dentist? Or tried Alexander technique, acupuncture or yoga for it?

[casares8]

What is TMD?

[Iesgobdafydd in reply to casares8]

Temporomandibular disorder. It means the jaw joints, and often surrounding ones also, tighten up excessively and cause pain or other problems. This can happen overnight; my experience is it happens both while I sleep (which I suspect leads to relatively unrefreshing sleep) and during the day. There is a lot more information on the website I posted above, also on other websites if you google TMD, the name of the condition, or TMJ, which is the name of the jaw joint that it's named after.

[Iesgobdafydd]

Thank you for sharing your experiences. I'm not following any detox plan, no. But I was going to try magnesium supplements since low magnesium intake might possibly be a factor according to one site I looked at, and am definitely going to try to improve my posture in as far as progress on relaxing permits - sitting up straight is not very sustainable when I can feel bands of tight muscle pulling me back down towards a slump.

I've tried quite a few different diets for the IBS and am happy to be getting back to something more normal, so I'm not keen to play around with diet too much. It's never hurt me to chew though, so I could try chewing each bite longer. Could you elaborate on why you think there's a connection between tension and the lymphatic system? My knowledge of human biology is only very basic. I've been working on the assumption my loosening of things is being done by relaxing muscles, since they respond to conscious control when there's a good level of awareness of them, and in some cases I can actually feel the life flowing back into them and feel them getting warm and soft and flowy. But it seems possible that some of what is blocking the free flow might be something other than muscle, perhaps something to do with the lymphatic system. When I was working on my throat area, I did notice some fluid that tasted a little salty and felt slightly gummier than saliva, a bit like phlegm, was being released in small quantities when I succeeded in relaxing a new area that had been stuck for a long time.