NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — People who suffer from chronic jaw pain may be able to help themselves by learning how to manage the body’s response to pain and stress, new research suggests.Disorders of the temporomandibular joint, commonly called TMJ, involve pain and dysfunction in the jaw, joint and surrounding facial muscles. Treatment may include pain medication, physical therapy and, in some advanced cases, surgery.

The new study found that a form of treatment called biopsychosocial therapy helped patients with TMJ disorder manage their pain. What’s more, it saved them money, researchers report in the Journal of the American Dental Association.

TMJ sufferers often have to pay for doctor visits and treatment themselves because many insurers try to pass off the expense <\m> with medical plans claiming that dental plans should cover TMJ therapy, and vice-versa.

For the study, researchers at the University of Texas tested the cost-effectiveness of biopsychosocial therapy for TMJ.

The treatment is a combination of cognitive-behavioural therapy and biofeedback; the behavioral therapy aims to help patients cope with their pain, while biofeedback can help them learn how to recognise and control any bodily sensations that arise with stress <\m> such as muscle tension and jaw clenching.

Of the 96 study patients, 57 were assigned to biopsychosocial therapy for six weeks, while the rest were free to seek standard dental treatment and any other therapy they wanted to try. All were in the earlier stages of TMJ, having suffered symptoms for less than six months.

Over the next year, the study found, biopsychosocial therapy not only proved more effective, but also cut patients’ medical costs compared with the standard-therapy group.

In the year after entering the study, patients who received the behavioural therapy spent $132, on average, on their TMJ care, versus $768 in the months before the study.

In contrast, healthcare costs stayed nearly the same for patients in the standard-therapy group, who spent their money on dentists, massage therapists, physical therapists and medical doctors. “The intervention really helps people become more capable of managing pain,” lead study author Dr. Anna Stowell, a pain-management specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said in a statement.

In earlier research, she and her colleagues found that the therapy not only reduced patients’ jaw pain, but also improved their emotional distress.

These latest findings, the researchers conclude, show that behavioral approaches to TMJ are also money-saving, particularly when started in the early stages of the disorder.