Your bite, or occlusion, is simply the position of your jaw when your teeth are together. Seems like a fairly basic idea, but your occlusion is very important and can affect your health in many ways.

Until recently most dentistry has been based on the assumption that wherever your bite naturally was (habitual occlusion), that was the correct position. Today most dental treatments are still planned from the patient’s existing or habitual occlusion. Because sometimes the habitual jaw position is a reasonably good position and because our body systems are often adaptable to less than ideal circumstances, many of these procedures have an acceptable result. However, there are also many times that treatment procedures carried out with “textbook” accuracy do not produce a result that is fully functional and comfortable.

The growing field of neuromuscular dentistry goes beyond using your habitual bite as the basis for planning treatment. Neuromuscular dentistry considers the entire system that controls the positioning and function of your jaw. The neuromuscular dentist seeks to establish a jaw position based on a harmonious relationship of the three main factors affecting occlusion — the teeth, muscles and joints. The resulting jaw position is called the neuromuscular occlusion.

This site will give you an understanding of why your occlusion is so important in virtually every major dental procedure and the importance of your bite in the treatment you may be considering or are undergoing. It will further explain why occlusion is often involved in pain and/or dysfunction of varous areas of the body and the neuromuscular dentist’s role in treating them. You will also learn how the neuromuscular dentist goes about determining the optimum jaw position for you.