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Cavitation of the jawbone in ME /CFS

Banana94

Senior Member
Messages
160
Location
Denmark
Hi all :)

Sorry for my english mistakes im actually swiss.

I've read some stories of cavitation of the jawbone, but can't come clear with the answers and what you think about it.

Does anybody has experience with cavitation of the jawbone especially in wisdom teeth area (where wisdom teeth are removed)??
What i've read is that it should disturb the immunsystem by high levels of the cytokine RANTES and that in this area bacterias which produce toxins.
Does anybody had success with surgeries in those areas?

Thank you all for answers :)
Best ragards Banana
 

Deltrus

Senior Member
Messages
271
I'm currently applying for a passport currently so I can get tested for cavitations in the U.S. Luckily they are fairly close to where I live in British Columbia, 3 hours away.

My main symptoms that makes me think it might be a cavitation is I have constant muscle tension that is centered around my right jaw and radiates down to my neck and shoulder.

Should be 2 months until I can get my passport/appointment.

I'l update if there's success.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
My main symptoms that makes me think it might be a cavitation is I have constant muscle tension that is centered around my right jaw and radiates down to my neck and shoulder.

That might just be temporomandibular disorder (TMD).

A simple test for a jaw bone infection is applying pressure with a finger on the gums to the jaw bone beneath; if any area feels painful, this indicates a possible bone infection.
 

Banana94

Senior Member
Messages
160
Location
Denmark
Thank you for your posts ;) Im also interested if anybody had success with the surgeries? My dentist told me that I have in all 4 wisdom teeth areas cavitations of the jawbone. So they should all be removed but Im not sure when I will do the surgeries...

@Deltrus this sounds for me also more as a TMD
@Hip jaw bone cavitation are known that they are silent inflammations, no pain, not swollen so it doesnt have have to be painful
 

lafarfelue

Senior Member
Messages
433
Location
Australia
The link that @JES posted above is about someone who had success with his jaw infection surgery, and subsequently had no more CFS symptoms. I'm unsure who else has had success to that extent.

It's good they've picked up this issue. I hope that treating these will help your health a lot.

With your surgery/surgeries, perhaps be informed about the risks that some anaesthetics might have for people with ME/CFS. I'm too brainfoggy to seem to be able to find any links in the forums right now, but there is information here about it. (I'm sure someone else will raise it, but I wanted to mention it just in case.)
 

Banana94

Senior Member
Messages
160
Location
Denmark
Thank you for your repoy lafarfelue ;)
I' ve already had other local anasthetics in my mouth so this may not be a problem for me ;)
I'm just asking myself I should do the surgerie because I've had CFS symptoms long time before my wisdom teeth got extracted... so it want be the one and only trigger.. but it may block me to respond or respind better on other treatments. All my doctors here in Switzerland/Germany told me that this should be done, but they are not really well known cfs doctors...
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
@Hip jaw bone cavitation are known that they are silent inflammations, no pain, not swollen so it doesnt have have to be painful

Yes, from what I have read, pain on finger pressure is not always present, but it can provide some initial indication of a jaw bone cavitation infection (osteomyelitis):
How to tell whether you have a cavitation infection

Try applying increasing pressure with your fingers on both sides of the jaw-bone above a suspicious tooth. A painful sensation as you press harder (likely) indicates the presence of a cavitation.

Source: here


Also of interest:
Some of the more common symptoms of cavitations are:

Deep bone pain and pressure, which may be constant but vary in intensity
A sour, bitter taste, which often causes gagging and bad breath
Sharp, shooting pain from the jaws, which eludes doctor’s diagnostic attempts
Chronic maxillary sinusitis, congestion and pain
A history of large dental fillings followed by pain, root canal therapy, and ultimately, removal of the tooth
Multiple root canals
Endodontic surgery (apicoectomy)
Difficult tooth extraction, including wisdom teeth, several years earlier
Post-operative complications, especially the development of a dry socket
Failed attempts to treat trigeminal neuralgia

Source: here
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
What i've read is that it should disturb the immunsystem by high levels of the cytokine RANTES and that in this area bacterias which produce toxins.

This connection of the jaw bone cavitation infection (osteomyelitis) and the chemokine RANTES (also called CCL5) looks very interesting.

This study found RANTES was 30 times higher in the jawbones of patients with fatty degenerative osteonecrosis in jawbone (FDOJ), compared to healthy jawbones.



And this study looks very interesting (although I can't find the full paper):
Impact of Rantes from jawbone on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

We hypothesize that FDOJ in areas of improper and incomplete wound healing in the jawbone may hyperactivate signaling pathways. Constituting a hidden source of “silent inflammation” FDOJ may represent a hitherto unknown cause for the development of CFS
 

Banana94

Senior Member
Messages
160
Location
Denmark
I've also seen this study which really sounds interesting! It depends on if RANTES is measured in the blood or in the death bone tissue, which is not clear in this study.. My RANTES is about 3 times higher as it should be. But i still don't know how big its influence is on me.. I think in Germany some dentists are really experienced with this issue of cavitation in the jawbone
 

Deltrus

Senior Member
Messages
271
That might just be temporomandibular disorder (TMD).

A simple test for a jaw bone infection is applying pressure with a finger on the gums to the jaw bone beneath; if any area feels painful, this indicates a possible bone infection.

I don't think it is TMD because I also have inflammatory symptoms on my right side, for example occasional stuffy nose and sore throat only on the right side near my upper jaw area.

The area constantly feels like it is an itch I have to scratch badly but can't.

I have thought about it a lot and I think there's still a good possibilityI have a cavitation even though pressing on the area doesn't give pain. I'm extremely pain immune anyways.
 

Banana94

Senior Member
Messages
160
Location
Denmark
It sounds that you really have to check it. How is your dentist going to diagnose it? Does he has the cavitation ultrasonic? Its important to have an experienced dentist with the cavitation issue! Because you cant see the cavitation on normal xrays! But I think the Cavitation ultrasonic is more common in the U.S than in Europe. In Europe i think only few dentists have the ultrasonic because its not accepted for the diagnostic by the healthcare insurance. Hope you get good diagnostics!
 
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Banana94

Senior Member
Messages
160
Location
Denmark
I just visited the website and it looks good.. dont have anything to compare, just with homepages of europe dentists.. The two dentists ( in two different cities) which are both really experienced with jawbone cavitation also work with homeopathy which i think is not really helpfull for me, but doesnt damages me so i just did it. It doesnt mean that they are unsuccessfull with their surgeries or quacks. Important is that the bone is properly cleaned and it can heal out after one surgery. My dentists recommend to do all of the 4 surgeries with a break of 6 weeks that the body can properly heal it! lots of succes to you!
 

Dainty

Senior Member
Messages
1,751
Location
Seattle
So, according to my best guess based on symptoms and history, I probably have some sort of infection or cavitation in my jawbone.

I'm not considering surgery anytime soon, but am trying more holostic approaches. I think it's possible the body can heal this itself. We'll see if I can be successful.

History: two teeth in the upper right side of my mouth got super deep cavities in them due to years of being too sick to brush my teeth and unable to see dentists. The teeth were mildly abscessed on an x-ray. The dentist said normally they'd do root canals, but we could try to save them if I wished. So we tried. He did large fillings on them, directly against the nerve. The dentist did not include any barrier between the tooth nerve and the filling, as is usually done, because Clifford Reactivity Testing showed my body reacted to that material.

What we now know is that these fillings, particularly with no barrier, allowed bacteria to enter those two teeth over the course of the next two years. The jawbone above the teeth, all the way up to beside my nose, was painful if I pressed on it. Unwilling to return to the bad dentist, I spent a year trying to find a dentist that takes medicaid that would also accommodate my sever MCS. All dentists I could find either refused to treat me our of concern for the increased risk, or insisted on treating me without any accommodations.

Then what looked like a chronic pimple over the tooth got HUGE, at least from my perspective. It freaked me out! I was given antibiotics, and it would go down, but resurfaced whenever antibiotics stopped. After over a decade of no antibiotics (they contributed to me becoming severe in the first place), I was given 3 rounds of it. By this time my gums were oozing pus. Still, emergency dental care eluded me. I was genuinely on the verge of attempting to pull the teeth myself at home. Eventually I went into massive credit card debt to save my own life, and got the teeth pulled by paying out of pocket at a place capable of accommodating my MCS.

That happened in I think April of this year. I got a very nice bump in my functionality as soon as my body recovered from the procedure, which I blogged about here. This improvement has held. And it made it possible for me to hold down a part-time job for the first time in my life.

Now, I was mostly bedridden LONG before these cavities even started, let alone got severe enough to create an abscess. I know for a fact they aren't what made me sick. But, they were a factor in *keeping* me sick, or at least as sick as I was.

Why do I suspect I now have some sort of infection or cavitation in the jawbone? Because I have hard, growing, whitish pimple-like bumps in the gumline above where those two teeth were extracted. I feel immense pressure in the area, not just in the gum but on that entire side of my face, sometimes all the way up to my eye. It often gives me headaches. That side of my sinuses is constantly stuffy, and whenever I focus on sending energy to my jaw I get a lot of sinus drainage on that side. One of the pimple-like bumps is exactly where the pus was coming out before the teeth were extracted. A third one appeared last week in the same area.

The dentist insists it's nothing to worry about because my teeth are okay. She doesn't have an explanation for the symptoms. And I'm here thinking, if I got such a significant bump in functionality from removing the abscessed teeth, what improvement is possible if I get this taken care of??

Like I said, I'm starting with more holistic approaches to find out what's possible. So far I'm doing:
  • Meditation techniques to send healing to the area.
  • Work on correcting the habit of tensing my face inwards (weird, but it's the only way I can describe it). If I relax my face, it feels like I'm emotionally falling apart. This is a lifelong habit that I suspect interferes with my body's self-healing mechanisms there.
  • Heat on the area. Increase bloodflow and ease fluid drainage and all that.
  • Osteopathic treatment (coming up!) to ensure the primary respiratory mechanism is able to reach that area and also that lymph drainage is not impeded
I know "conventional cavitation wisdom" says that the only solution is surgery. Maybe that's true, but I'm not fully convinced. The DO who got me out of a bedridden state says bones aren't actually solid structure, and they can do a lot more than we think they can. There's a more to it than that but it's the best I can summarize.

Just adding more anecdotal experience to the pile. :)
 
Messages
71
Location
France
I've also seen this study which really sounds interesting! It depends on if RANTES is measured in the blood or in the death bone tissue, which is not clear in this study.. My RANTES is about 3 times higher as it should be.
Hi Banana,
Which test did you get to measure your RANTES level? Is it a blood test ? Was it prescribed by your GP?

Also, did you get cavitation surgery? There is a well rated clinic in Switzerland, "Swiss BioHealth Clinic".