TMJ 'dysfunction' - Health implications

Post by metamorphickeith » Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:07 pm
WIKIPEDIA DESCRIBES: "Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds. The term stuttering is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by people who stutter as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels or semivowels. According to Watkins et al., stuttering is a disorder of "selection, initiation, and execution of motor sequences necessary for fluent speech production". For many people who stutter, repetition is the main concern. The term "stuttering" covers a wide range of severity, from barely perceptible impediments that are largely cosmetic to severe symptoms that effectively prevent oral communication. Almost 70 million people worldwide stutter, about 1% of the world's population.
You can read further about the complexity of the medical reasoning on Wikipedia. It actually may only be a simple breathing problem brought about tooth and jaw asymmetries.

Recovery from Stuttering/Stammering
I met Dr Amir by chance at another mutual friends’ medical office. I was treating a patient and Dr Amir noticed my intense difficulty in forming a sentence due to my stammer. He offered point-blank to fix it for me for no fees!

When Dr Amir told me he could help me with my stammering, I was sceptical. For more than forty years, I have tried very many approaches to overcoming stammering, from one-to-one speech therapy, hypnosis, meditation, ‘prolonged speech’ in the 1970s to the ‘Starfish’ programme a decade ago. I know that these approaches have worked for some, but not for me. I had become resigned to life as a stammerer.

It is almost a year since I first met Dr Amir and was fitted with my first brace. From the beginning, I remember a sense of spaciousness in my mouth, which felt remarkably liberating. 3 or 4 months into the treatment, as my teeth continued to move, I noticed a marked increase in my energy levels and friends began to comment on my improved fluency of speech. It felt too good to be true!

Part of my work is as a teacher, and the amount of energy expended to maintain any level of fluency during a workshop was such that I would be drained after a day of teaching and exhausted after an intensive weekend . I began to believe in the reality of my improvement when I came through a weekend workshop I was teaching having barely stammered at all and feeling exhilarated. Family, friends and colleagues have all commented on my fluency without any prompting from me.

There is an increase in confidence around my ability to speak fluently: I recently became aware of a willingness on my part to initiate small talk, a pastime so excruciatingly frustrating and difficult for me in the past that I have avoided it for most of my life. I now pass the time of day with strangers with barely a hint of a stammer, and I am sufficiently confident to be able to spice up the interaction with some humour. I have workshops scheduled throughout 2012, and I am planning to give public talks about the work I do. Not only that, but I feel liberated! I will keep you posted as to how I am getting on.

Alongside an improvement in speech fluency, there have been other benefits which, I believe, have occurred as a result of Dr Amir’s treatment. In 2007, a tumour on my spine paralysed my legs and in 2008, further tumours paralysed my pelvic area. Before starting Dr Amir’s treatment, I had, to a great extent, regained the ability to walk but still had minimal sensation in my pelvic region which profoundly affected my quality of life. Over the last few months' sensation has returned to a great extent in that area and, as previously reported, my energy levels are far greater than they were a year ago.

Keith Moore, January 2012

Comment updated December 2023: Keith is doing really well, now many years free from stammering. He was my first patient with a very severe stammer. While observing him at the office of a German doctor, Siegfried Trefzer, where I met Keith by chance, I noticed that he could barely breathe, hence [u]my offer of free treatment. I have seen several more patients since, who also recovered quickly. So the medical and other explanations are mostly outdated for a large majority of such patients.
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