Wondering how to treat chronic jaw pain (TMJ pain)?

What Causes Chronic Jaw Pain?

Have you been wondering what causes and how to treat chronic jaw pain?

Stress is a natural physical and mental reaction to life’s challenges.

Everyone deals with stress in different ways. From juggling work and family, to life-changing events like an illness or a death, stress weakens our bodies and impacts your mental health.

To deal with stress, our body releases hormones that trigger our “fight or flight” response. When the stressful event occurs, our brain messages our adrenal glands to release adrenalin and cortisol.

These two hormones cause your heartbeat to rise, and sends blood to your muscles, heart, and other important organs. The reason for this, is so you can be equipped to respond and deal with the stress. When the fear subsides, your brain then messages the various systems of your body to safely return to normal.

When muscles have to deal with stress, they tense up.

And if your stress is constant, your muscles never get the chance to relax and regroup. Tension in the muscle builds and causes pain and inflammation to that muscle joint. This is often the case when we deal with chronic jaw pain.

Chronic jaw pain can result from the tightening of your jaw muscles. 

Bruxism’, the grinding or clenching your teeth by day, or while sleeping at night, increases pressure on your jaw joint.

This then leads to secondary pain in your jaw muscles and other parts of your body. It can even travel out to your head, ears, teeth, face, and neck.

As a result, you can experience pain, lock jaw, clicking or popping or a limited range of motion.

Levels of pain range in scale from simple aches, to severe pain. If not treated, bruxism can also lead to teeth fractures. Before you turn to pain medication for quick relief, let’s look at the different ways we can treat jaw/TMJ pain, to improve your quality of life.

How To Treat Jaw Pain?

There are several options:

• do nothing
• treat yourself st home
• see a dentist or have medical treatments
• try alternative therapies.

Chronic jaw pain is referred to as Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder. This can affect your quality of life, mentally, socially and physically.

Due to mis-aligned or damaged joints in the jaw, it may cause your face to appear asymmetrical and affect your speech. Your teeth may also become damaged, affecting your smile.

If it’s severe, you may experience the inability to chew food, causing unhealthy weight loss, or conversely, weight gain, by eating soft and processed sugary foods like fast food or ice cream.

Here are some DIY exercises that you can do for yourself to treat your chronic jaw pain:

• applying hot or cold compress to the jaw muscles
• avoiding excess chewing by eating soft foods
• avoiding sticky foods like taffy, chewing gum and caramel
• yoga and deep breathing meditative exercises, calming activities
• head and neck stretches
• low- impact aerobic activity – like dancing, walking or swimming.

You can also try these exercises:

• Chin Tucks: Take a breath in, and as you breath out, push your head back over your shoulders. Let it relax, take another big breath, push back again. As you push back, tuck the chin, relax and repeat 6 times.
• Thumb Resistance: Place your thumb underneath your jaw. Then open your mouth for 4 seconds, and close your mouth for 4 seconds, with resistance. Make sure the resistance is coming both ways, on the way open, and when you are closing. Repeat up to 10 times.
• Occipital Lifts: Place your thumb knuckle behind the bone behind your ear, with your fingers pointing up on either side of your head. Lift the suboccipital and pull down on the opposite side. Do the other side and lift. This stretch lifts your range of motion, and also relieves headaches. Repeat up to 10 times.
• Self-massage: Massaging your jaw may help you deal with stress by increasing blood flow and reducing muscle tightness.

Check out our video below for some self-massage tips. You can do this several times a day, including when you wake up, or right before bed.

How I Can Help:

In most cases of TMJ/jaw pain, the pain is made worse by stress (mental or emotional). 

Once the TMJ is imbalanced, it could derail the balance of energy and functionality throughout your entire body. 

Metaphorically speaking, when we suffer from fear, guilt, or shame, it can prevent us from speaking up.

Grinding your teeth, can also be a sign of ‘biting down on words, feelings, or emotions’ that you were pre-conditioned to never express.

Whether it be from past trauma or abuse, addressing your emotional state, along with treating the symptoms, can help you regain your body’s energetic flow.

By using RESET for TMJ and kinesiology you can alleviate and pain and discover the underlying reasons why the stress is occurring, and release it from your body.

Having worked with many clients who suffer from jaw pain, I have developed a 6-week program to help my clients treat their TMJ pain specifically.

In this program, I utilise the F.A.S.T. Method of Jaw Release. 

The F.A.S.T. Method for TMJ-Jaw Release works because we

• FIND – the underlying reason why this pain is occuring
• ALLOW – the body to heal itself by processing the mental or emotional stress related to the pain
• STABILISE – your internal and external environments
• TRACK – your pain as well as your Five Fundamentals of Health.

Once we are able to find out how and why your body has created the pain (and the underlying issues that create the pain), we are then able to ascertain the fastest way your body can process and release the stress. 

By identifying and managing your specific internal and external triggers and responses, we can start then bring more balance into your life. 

Client Feedback:

“The F.A.S.T. Method for TMJ-Jaw Release is extremely effective in treating problems with the jaw and I wish I had done it sooner. 

I had a locked jaw for 2 months and had been seeing a specialist who ended up recommending surgery.

With limited movement in my jaw, I was in a lot of pain and was unable to eat as normal. I also had unmanaged stress and anxiety contributing to the problem.

After seeing Mel, I saw huge improvements in my jaw after the first session and it continued to improve. By the end, I had no pain and full range of movement in my jaw.

I would highly recommend kinesiology and RESET for TMJ to anyone who is looking to treat chronic jaw pain, as well as manage their emotions and stress.”

– Jemma Clarke, Sydney 

“I was suffering from pain in my jaw, neck and shoulders as well as headaches associated with grinding my teeth in my sleep.

My dentist had prescribed a splint to wear at night to protect my teeth but this did not address the pain and I was resorting to over-the-counter painkillers to give me relief.

As a result of seeing Melanie, my jaw began to relax more and more. I began sleeping better and the headaches have become infrequent.

I would recommended the treatment to anyone who suffers pain associated with grinding their teeth.”

 – Niamh M, Sydney