We're thrilled to be a part of Nashville Soccer Club as their OFFICIAL DENTIST: Dr. Clark is a longtime soccer player/fan and we look forward to sharing exciting things with you this season. We see athletes of all ages and abilities to not only treat injuries, but to fully optimize dental health and alignment to maximize performance.

Downtown Dental is passionate about total health, overall wellness, and how a healthy mouth impacts the performance of your entire body. As we work with this stellar team of athletes in the 2019 season, we plan to create meaningful content that will hopefully educate and enhance our athlete patients, of any performance level, as well as their coaches and trainers.

Chronic and acute Migraine Headache relief can be achieved with breakthrough procedure called a SPG BLOCK.
 
So many people suffer from migraines in Nashville – yet there are few options for relief, but Downtown Dental now offers a new breakthrough therapy for migraine treatment. 
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmVATpWgRFk[/embed]
 
SPG is a revolutionary procedure for immediate relief from chronic and acute migraines, cluster headaches, and others. The treatment is performed without needles or pills by properly administering a small amount of anesthetic into each nostril and takes about five minutes. The anesthetic can “turn off” or “reset” the nerve pathways that keep headaches going and can work for people that have not responded to other treatments and medications.
 
The SPG is a collection of nerve cells located just under the tissue lining the back of the nose. By applying a local anesthetic to the area, nerve impulses can be temporarily blocked, providing relief from various types of pain.
 
Most types of facial or head pain can be treated with an SPG block. Temporarily blocking function of the SPG can provide prompt, and sometimes sustained, relief of pain. It is theorized that an SPG block provides sustained relief by disrupting dysfunctional neuronal activity, allowing restoration of normal function.
 
There are very few circumstances in which an SPG Block cannot be used.  There are no incapacitating effects like drowsiness or impaired function which would prevent you from continuing with your normal day.  
 
Are you interested in digging deeper into SPG block therapy for migraine headache relief? Call our office at (615) 254-1393 to schedule a visit with Dr. Clark. 
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[caption id="attachment_1606" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Image via Shutterstock ID 198052919[/caption] Chewing and eating are actions that our body is able to complete almost automatically. When you eat you don’t have to stop and think to open your mouth and then close it, and then to continue to chew, and we certainly don’t usually think about which side of our mouth to chew on. Researchers say that picking a preferred chewing side may have to do with pain. How Chewing Works Eating food doesn’t require much concentration and subconsciously the tongue generally moves the food to one side of the mouth or the other. The jaw joint is made up of a right and left temporomandibular joint that both support and guide the mandible when you chew. Generally the TMJ on the opposite side of the dominant chewing side is the joint that receives the larger amount of stress and tension. For example, food chewed on the left TMJ will put the right TMJ under the most stress and vice versa. According to the NIDCRmore than 10 million Americans suffer from TMJ disorder and have a problem with one of their temporomandibular joints. In many cases the disc is somewhat out of place and, surprisingly, people tend to unconsciously chew food on the same side of the problem TMJ because the stress is actually lower on the chewing side than the other. At the same time, continuous chewing, especially of hard foods, can weaken and further aggravate an already imbalanced or misaligned TMJ. If you suffer from symptoms related to TMJ disorder, the cause may be an imbalanced bite that can be fixed with the help of an experienced Nashville TMJ dentist. Contact Dr. Clark's office online or call Downtown Dental at 615-254-1393  to learn more about TMJ disorder and the treatments available to you.
When teeth and jaw are improperly aligned, it can cause straining of the muscles that support the face, neck and back. It is this muscle imbalance that causes much of the pain associated with TMJ disorders. In most cases, TMJ disorders stem from a condition called malocclusion, which means having a “bad bite”, or from accidents and trauma. Malocclusion means that your upper and lower teeth do not close together in the correct way—they are misaligned. As a qualified neuromuscular dentist, Dr. Clark can follow up on any TMD diagnosis and give you customized TMD treatment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrEeopiE6aQ  
There is a genetic code that determines your eye color, tooth size, and a lot of other information about how your face should look. However, not all faces develop in the same way, and there are key external factors that make a face both structurally sound and aesthetically balanced. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnJjvjgyDfU  
Physiologic dentistry is a comprehensive view of oral health, balance, and beauty:  it's making sure that the shape and position of the teeth and jaw support natural pain-free function.  The teeth, jaw joint, and the muscles that support them must all be balanced or the system will break down over time.  Symptoms of an unbalanced bite show up in many ways:
  • clenching and grinding
  • TMJ/TMD symptoms
  • headaches
  • vertigo/motion sickness
  • tinnitus
  • airway obstructions
  • gum recession
  • chipped and broken teeth
  • many more!
But physiologic dentistry is more than just health and wellness....when the underlying facial structures of the teeth and jaw are balanced, the result is a beautiful natural smile and more youthful facial features! Being able to offer our patients their healthiest and most beautiful smiles requires having a thorough understanding of what is necessary to create symmetry and balance. It’s basically Anatomy 101: the lower half of your head is a complicated, condensed network of bone, ears, brain stem, nerves, arteries, lymph vessels, palate, airway, acupuncture meridians, teeth, muscles, gums and joints. It’s by far the most complex area in the human body. As such, it’s got potential for diverse problems. Only with a specialized dentist who is passionate about discovering and FIXING facial and dental formation can these problems be revealed and fixed. By fixing the underlying imbalances we are able to provide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C7KlUSvLUM