Help for TMJ – What to Do

You are sitting at a restaurant having a wonderful steak dinner and you notice that while you are chewing, you hear there are clicking noises right behind your ear.

It feels like the hinges of your jaw are rickety and with every movement of your jaw in talking, there is a painful feeling from the jaw that radiates to your ears that make them ring making it hard for you to hear.

This pain even travels to your head and as the night progresses; you feel it becoming a full headache. All these symptoms point to temporomandibular joint disorder, TMJ for short.  Clicking or popping noises while chewing, tinnitus, pain in the jaw, neck or even shoulders, and headaches are just some of the indications that there is something wrong with the “hinges” of your jaw.

When pain starts in the area behind the ears, stop chewing or talking for a minute and relax your jaw.  This can be done by just putting your lips together without clenching the teeth.  The teeth should be apart although your mouth is closed.  This way, the jaw is relaxed and there is no tension on the muscles of the TMJ.  Massage the jaw area to increase blood flow to the area so that the pain will go away.

If pain is still experienced, you can opt for putting a warm compress on the location of pain for about 20 minutes.  Start to evaluate your eating habits.  It may be that the TMJ is overextended with eating big portions of food or overused in chewing hard and chewy food like nuts and gum.  Put yourself on a soft diet for the time being to lessen the use of the jaw and reduce the tension on the muscles.

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Also, evaluate the way you sleep.  It might be that you sleep on your stomach throughout the night and that position puts strain on the jaw as the jaw supports a lot of the body’s weight.  Teeth grinding might also be a regular event while sleeping and this action springs from overall stress during the day which in turn, puts stress on the TMJ.  Visit your dentist for TMJ treatment options and maybe even a mouth guard to stop the teeth grinding at night and make teeth clenching during the day a bit harder.

There are a number of jaw exercises that can be performed that can give more power to the jaw as well.   The simplest exercise will be to open and close the jaw, move the lower jaw from side to side for about five minutes.  With more strength in the jaw, it can take eating of crunchy foods longer and will be less prone to muscle spasms when eating foods that need extra chewing.

Since TMJ is also rooted to life’s day to day pressures, exercises that reduce stress like yoga and meditation can also help prevent and alleviate pain in TMJ as there is less teeth clenching that also leads to temporomandibular joint disorders.