I find the fact that jaw bone cavitation infections may cause ME/CFS or ME/CFS symptoms fascinating. Thanks for all your efforts,
@Ian, in writing up this material. There seems to be several threads on this forum about ME/CFS and jaw bone infections; see here:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7.
Do you know of any other ME/CFS patients who, like yourself, had major improvements in their ME/CFS symptoms after surgery to clear out a jaw bone cavitation infection? Are you still in more-or-less in full remission from ME/CFS after your jaw bone cavitation surgery? I understand from
your thread that you were completely housebound with ME/CFS prior to your surgery, and experienced full remission from ME/CFS after the surgery.
I think if jaw bone infections were investigated further, by ME/CFS researchers as well as dentists and maxillofacial surgeons, it may well throw some light on the causes and nature of ME/CFS.
The idea of a local infection causing systemic symptoms is not new; this concept goes under the name of
focal infection theory.
My own idea as to why jaw bone infection may cause ME/CFS centers of the trigeminal nerve, which runs deep into the jaw bone, and into the teeth.
One of the function of the trigeminal nerve (and also the vagus nerve) is to trigger the
sickness response in the brain when the nerve detects the presence of an infection somewhere in the body. The sickness response creates all the symptoms you feel when you come down with the flu. It's not the influenza infection itself that creates your sickness symptoms; these symptoms are purposely caused by the built-in sickness response of your brain. In other words it's your brain that deliberately makes you feel ill.
In his
theory of ME/CFS, Michael VanElzakker point out that sickness response symptoms are very similar to those of ME/CFS, and he thinks ME/CFS may just simply be the chronic activation of the sickness behavior response, due to a chronic infection. His theory could then nicely explain why chronic infections in the jaw bone, which constantly activate the trigeminal nerve, can cause ME/CFS symptoms.
This trigeminal nerve sickness response theory could also explain why bone cavitations from osteonecrosis (avascular necrosis) in bones other than the jaw bone and facial bones do not lead to ME/CFS symptoms — because only the facial bones are innervated by the trigeminal nerve, and so only these can trigger the sickness response symptoms.
According the Wikipedia article on
osteonecrosis / avascular necrosis, bone cavitations from osteonecrosis are especially common in the hip joint, and this usually requires hip replacement. But I am not aware of any fatigue symptoms arising from these hip bone cavitations. So this suggests that you may only get ME/CFS symptoms from bone cavitation infections when they are located in bones innervated by the trigeminal nerve, such as the jaw bone.
The Trigeminal Nerve (Yellow) Running Deep Into The Jaw Bone And Teeth
I understand from
this article that there are at least three separate mechanisms by which jaw bone cavitations, and their associated infections and inflammation (osteomyelitis), can be created:
•
The cavitation arises after a tooth extraction, typically a wisdom tooth extraction, where the periodontal ligament from the tooth was not fully removed, preventing the bone from growing and filling in the hole in the bone left by the extracted tooth.
It says
here that: "
if the periodontal ligament is not carefully removed from the socket after the extraction, the surrounding bone receives no notification that the tooth is gone. The continued presence of any portion of the ligament gives the biological message to the surrounding jawbone that all is well and no new bone growth is needed."
•
The cavitation arises from the process of osteonecrosis — osteonecrosis is the death of bone tissue due to poor blood flow to the bone. If my understanding is correct, I believe cavitations caused by osteonecrosis can occur anywhere in the bone, not just at tooth extraction sites.
•
The cavitation arises from traumatic bone cyst. The cause of traumatic bone cysts is not known, though they are sometimes associated with physical trauma. It is interesting to note that ME/CFS is observed to sometimes arise after physical trauma, such as a car accident.
But most people are walking around with chronic infections in their jaws.
It would be interesting to know if ME/CFS patients have higher number of jaw bone cavitations than the general healthy population.
Do you have any references that provide some figures or estimates for the percentage prevalence of chronic jaw bone infections in general population?
A lot of cavitations will show up on x-ray. If you can still see the outline of where a tooth was extracted, and it was done years previously, its a cavitation.
Very interesting.
I never actually had facial pain.
According to
this article, common symptoms of jaw bone 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
Did you have any of these, like say the sour, bitter taste in the mouth?