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Article explanation: I have to have surgery for TMJ. (And indeed, I do have mind-numbing pain/headaches, but I usually try to shutup about it because people think I'm making excuses for being a bitch.) Okay. Then I read this. Fear for me.

The August 31 Wall Street Journal carried an article that says a lot about the medical establishment.

The article dealt with 25,000 victims of a very stupid type of surgery. They had their jaw joints replaces with an artificial jaw that doesn't work. The manufacturer has now gone out of busines and the FDA has seized all of its products.

Medical experts now expect all or most of those articial joints to break up into tiny fragments. That causes what's left of the natural jawbones to erode.

"This isn't my face," says one of the victims. "I used to be real pretty." She's now had eight operations that have left her disfigured, without jaw joints, her mouth permanently hanging open.

Alone at night, says the Wall Street Journal, she can hardly bear the muscle spasms and the pain. "It never goes away; it's God-awful pain," says the woman.

The 25,000 people who submitted to this surgery suffered from something called TMJ syndrome. TMJ stands for your lower jaw joint, called the temporo-mandibular joint.

It is an incredibly delicate, complicated living thing. It lets you move your lower jaw up and down and side to side as you speak, bite, chew, swallow, smile, laugh, or frown.

For many people something goes terribly wrong with their TMJ. The muscle goes into spasm, the bones grind against one another. The victim can suffer from unbelievable headaches, earaches, jaw and facial pain.

If you've never suffered from TMJ sydnrome, it's hard to imagine the pain. It's as intense as a migraine headache. So it's no wonder those 25,000 people were willing to try surgery.

There's just one problem: TMJ syndrome is caused by stress. It happens to people who are so anxious, worried and unhappy they grind their teeth in their sleep. There's nothing wrong with their jaws. There's something wrong with their lives.

It's often called the "yuppie disease" because it usually happens to overworked, stressed-out young professionals.

Twenty years ago, nobody had even heard of TMJ syndrome. It's caused by the way we live.

The Wall Street Journal says, "Compounding the [surgical] tragedy, new research in the Netherlands suggests that the best treatment for TMJ may be none at all, because most TMJ disorders abate in a few years."
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Have you ever gone to a doctor with headaches, backache, TMJ syndrome? Did he tell you about massage therapy? Or something called "biofeedback?" If not, shame on him.

More likely, your doctor will prescribe "muscle relaxants" or some other drugs. You might feel better for a few weeks, but don't count on even that much. And for sure it won't work long-term. Your body will continue to deteriorate. The drugs will actually speed up the overall deterioration of your health. Next thing you know he'll be talking about surgery.

You might wonder how 25,000 people could be implanted with an artificial joint that doesn't work.

Aren't those things carefully tested? Hasn't the FDA or some other government agency approved these things?

When it comes to surgical procedures, the answer is often no. It's likely that no government agency has approved the surgical technique the doctor wants to use on you. No studies prove that procedures like prostate surgery, coronary bypass, balloon angioplasty, or radical mastectomy (breast removal) actually work.

There are studies that show they don't work.

The company that made the jaw implants did no human or animal trials.
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