Dr. Jergensen practiced as a general dentist until a personal family experience led him to specialize in TMJ disorders and orofacial pain. After discovering that TMJ dysfunction was going unrecognized and untreated in patients presenting with headaches, sleep issues, trigeminal neuralgia, and burning mouth syndrome, he closed his general dental practice to focus exclusively on identifying and treating these “zebra” cases — patients whose real underlying problem gets missed because it doesn’t look like the common, expected diagnosis.
Most dental and medical training prepares you to spot the horse — the common, expected diagnosis. But some patients are zebras — their headaches, jaw pain, sleep issues, or facial pain are actually signs of an underlying TMJ or airway disorder that’s easy to miss. In this session, Dr. Nathan Jergensen walks through real patient cases — including a patient whose seizures were tied to jaw position, and a patient with trigeminal neuralgia successfully treated without surgery — to help you recognize when you’re looking at stripes, not a solid brown horse.
