Patient Handouts

TMJ Care

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders can cause jaw pain, headaches, and difficulty chewing. The tips and guides below may help you manage and improve your TMJ health day to day. As always, these resources are intended as supportive tools — please seek the advice of a qualified medical or dental professional before making any changes to your care routine, and use these guidelines only under appropriate clinical supervision.

Dry Mouth

If your mouth feels like the Bonneville Salt Flats by mid-afternoon, you're not alone. Dry mouth — or xerostomia if you want to impress people at dinner parties — is one of the most common complaints we hear from patients, and it's more than just an annoyance. Saliva does a lot of heavy lifting in your mouth: it rinses away bacteria, neutralizes acids, helps you chew and swallow, and protects your enamel around the clock. When saliva production drops, your teeth and gums pay the price. Understanding why it's happening is the first step toward feeling better and protecting your smile.

The Most Common Culprit: Your Medications

Here's something a lot of people don't realize — dry mouth is listed as a side effect in over 400 commonly prescribed and over-the-counter medications. If you've started a new medication and noticed your mouth feels drier than it used to, that's almost certainly not a coincidence. The biggest offenders include:

• Antihistamines and decongestants (allergy medications, cold and sinus products)
• Antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications
• Blood pressure medications, including diuretics, beta blockers, and ACE inhibitors
• Bladder and incontinence medications
• Pain medications, including opioids
• Antacids and certain heartburn medications
• Chemotherapy and radiation therapy, particularly radiation to the head and neck region

This does not mean you should stop taking your medications — please don't do that. What it does mean is that if you're on a long-term medication regimen and struggling with dry mouth, it's worth having a conversation with your prescribing physician about whether the dosage, timing, or a comparable alternative might help. We're always happy to note this in a referral or help you start that conversation.

Other Common Causes Worth Knowing

Medications aside, there are several other reasons your salivary glands might be underperforming:

Mouth breathing is a big one. Whether it's due to a deviated septum, nasal congestion, sleep apnea, or just a longtime habit, breathing through your mouth — especially at night — is like running a fan over your gums for eight hours straight. Many patients have no idea they're mouth breathing while they sleep until they start waking up with a dry, sticky mouth or a sore throat every morning.

Acid reflux and GERD can contribute to dry mouth in a roundabout way — chronic acid exposure affects the oral environment, and many of the medications used to treat reflux are on the dry mouth offender list.

Dehydration is simpler than it sounds. Most adults are mildly dehydrated by default. If your fluid intake is mostly coffee, soda, or energy drinks rather than water, your body — including your salivary glands — is running a little dry before you even walk in the door.

Sjögren's Syndrome is an autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks the moisture-producing glands throughout the body. It disproportionately affects women and is frequently underdiagnosed. If dry mouth is accompanied by chronically dry eyes, joint pain, or fatigue, this is something worth bringing up with your physician.

Diabetes, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, commonly causes dry mouth as an early symptom. If you have dry mouth alongside increased thirst, frequent urination, or unexplained fatigue, please see your doctor.

Aging plays a role too, though perhaps not in the way you'd expect. Salivary glands don't inherently produce less saliva just because you're older — but the older we get, the more medications we tend to take, and the more likely we are to have one of the systemic conditions above.

Why This Matters for Your Teeth: This Is Urgent

Let's be completely direct with you: chronic dry mouth will destroy your teeth, and it will happen faster than you think.

We regularly see patients who have been cavity-free for twenty or thirty years walk in with eight, ten, or twelve new cavities in a single exam. The pattern is almost always the same: something changed — a new medication, a new diagnosis, a health event — saliva flow dropped, and the teeth paid for it at a speed that felt impossible. Decay in a dry mouth doesn't follow the normal timeline. It can undermine enamel, reach the nerve, and compromise teeth that looked perfectly healthy at your last visit — all within months.

If you have dry mouth, this is a red alert for your dental health. It requires significantly more frequent checkups, more aggressive preventive treatment, and a home care routine that is dialed in and consistent. The good news is that with the right strategy, we can protect your teeth effectively — but we have to be proactive, and that starts with you telling us what's going on.

Practical Things You Can Do Starting Tonight

Sip water consistently throughout the day. Small, frequent sips all day long — not gulping a big glass and then forgetting about it. Keeping a water bottle nearby and sipping every 15–20 minutes makes a noticeable difference for most people within a few days.

Run a humidifier in your bedroom at night. Aim for 40–50% relative humidity. A basic humidifier with a built-in hygrometer is all you need. Patients who do this consistently report significant improvement in morning dry mouth and sore throat symptoms.

Breathe through your nose. If nasal breathing is difficult, it's worth addressing the root cause. Nasal strips, saline rinses, and treating underlying allergies can all help. If you snore heavily or suspect sleep apnea, please bring that up with your doctor — there are dental appliances that can help.

Avoid sugary beverages, energy drinks, and highly acidic drinks. Without the buffering action of healthy saliva, these beverages do more damage than they would in someone with normal salivary flow. Lemon water, while popular, is surprisingly acidic — rinse with plain water afterward.

Chew sugar-free gum or suck on sugar-free mints, particularly those containing xylitol. Chewing stimulates saliva production, and xylitol is actively antimicrobial against the bacteria most responsible for tooth decay.

Avoid tobacco in all forms. Smoking and smokeless tobacco both significantly worsen dry mouth and compound damage to oral tissues.

Saliva Substitutes, Prescription Fluoride, and Other Options

Over-the-counter saliva substitutes, oral rinses, moisturizing gels, and specialty toothpastes can provide meaningful symptom relief. See our Product Recommendations page for specific products our team trusts.

For dry mouth sufferers, prescription-strength fluoride toothpaste is one of the most important tools in your arsenal. The product we recommend most often is PreviDent 5000+ for Dry Mouth (5,000 ppm sodium fluoride) — more than three times the concentration of standard toothpaste, giving your teeth the remineralization support that your saliva can no longer fully provide on its own.

How to use it: Brush thoroughly twice daily. The critical step: spit, but do not rinse. Do not eat or drink for at least 30 minutes after brushing. The bedtime application is the most important one — saliva flow drops even further during sleep, leaving your teeth most vulnerable overnight.

Ask us about a prescription at your next visit. For more significant cases, there are also prescription medications that can stimulate saliva production — your physician or our team can help determine whether that's appropriate for your situation.

When to Bring It Up at Your Next Visit

The short answer is: always. Tell us what medications you're on, how long you've been experiencing symptoms, and what you've already tried. We'll look for early signs of damage during your exam, make personalized recommendations, and loop in your physician when appropriate. You don't have to manage this alone, and the sooner we're in the loop, the better we can protect your teeth.

The information on this page is intended for general educational purposes only and does not constitute medical or dental advice. Dry mouth can be a symptom of underlying medical conditions that require proper diagnosis and treatment by a qualified healthcare provider. Please consult your physician or a licensed medical professional if you have concerns about any of the conditions mentioned above, or before making any changes to your medications or treatment plan.

Sleep / Airway

The connection between your airway, breathing habits, and sleep quality is well established in the dental and medical literature. Mouth breathing, low tongue posture, and obstructed airways are directly linked to snoring, sleep-disordered breathing, and — importantly for dental patients — nighttime teeth grinding (bruxism). Research published in peer-reviewed journals consistently shows that oropharyngeal exercises performed for 10–30 minutes per day over a minimum of three months produce measurable reductions in snoring severity, daytime fatigue, and apnea events. Similarly, nasal breathing training using techniques such as Buteyko breathing has been clinically shown to improve CO₂ tolerance, reduce airway reactivity, and support deeper, more restorative sleep. These approaches are widely accepted by airway-focused dentists and sleep medicine physicians as evidence-based adjuncts to treatment.

The handouts below offer practical, daily tips based on these principles. These resources should complement — not replace — professional evaluation. If you experience significant snoring, gasping during sleep, morning headaches, or persistent daytime fatigue, please speak with our team or your primary care physician. Monitoring and guidance from a dentist or physician is important when working on airway health.

Product Recommendations

We have put together a list of products that our team believes may be helpful for dry mouth, airway health, and overall oral wellness. Visit our Product Recommendations page to browse items available on Amazon.