Jaw Pain Part 3: What you can do to help yourself when you have tmd

Do you or someone you know suffer from jaw pain? 

Jaw pain is more than just a pain in the face, it can affect nearly every moment of your life, from talking, eating, exercise and even sleeping! 

Not to mention how annoying the noises it makes and headaches it causes can be. 

We see a lot of people with temporomandibilar dysfunction (or TMD) and often people can get a lot of relief from some very simple things they can do at home. 

Watch our video below and hear Martin explain how you can start to take the pressure off ASAP. If you have more questions or need more help than what Martin describes below, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us. 

As always, the video has been transcribed below.

Hi I'm Martin Harvey from Align Chiropractic here and what I'm going to go through today is some of the things that you can do in terms of looking after yourself

If you've got TMD or temporomandibular disfunction. 

With people that we're taking care of who have TMD, we go through a whole in office approach, but it's always a fifty-fifty process where there’s certain things that we need to do and you can do to support the changes through home care. 

So what I want to do is run through with you some of the most important things that would be home care if you were seeing us in the office, but you can also use them at home to see if they can help you manage your TMD better. 

TMD is where you're getting pain or clicking or discomfort in the jaw, sometimes it will trigger headaches, it can also cause clicking and even ear pain, so what you're really wanting to do initially is reduce the amount of stress on the jaw; how much pressure goes to the jaw from the big strong chewing muscles and so what we get you to do is avoid certain things. 

The number-one thing for you to avoid is chewing too much, which means that this isn't a good time to be using chewing gum. 

You also don't want super chewy foods like steak, and you also want to avoid hard food, so foods like hard lollies or candy where you really have to crush your teeth together to get through them.

The reverse of that is if you're having a lot of issues with TMD, then you're going to be better eating soft foods, for example soup works really well, or foods that have been cooked for longer so there's less chewing involved, that can really help. 

You also want to avoid foods that force you to open your jaw too wide because they constrain the irritated jaw joint so the classic examples are eating corn off the cob, you’re better if you're eating corn to cut the corn off, as well, when eating apples where you’re opening your mouth wide to take a big bite of the Apple, again better than break it down into little bits if you're having an apple. 

Other things that you can do that rather than just that reducing the pressure on the joint but to suit the joint, moist heat tends to be really helpful. 

So getting a heat pack and applying it on the part of the jaw where the problem is for 10 to 15 minutes can often give people a lot of relief. 

There is a very strong association between stress and tension and tmd, so making sure that you actively relax your jaw, being aware of when you're clenching and grinding and making sure that your bite is even, through touching your jaw either side or just moving your jaw from side to side you make sure that you’re actively relaxing the muscles there. 

Taking that relaxation a step further, a lot of people find doing some sort of meditation or guided relaxation exercises can help. 

So, an easy way to get into meditation if you don't know how to do that is through apps. Meditation apps such as Calm or Headspace or Smiling mind or Oak are all apps that can take you through a simple process where in 10, 15 or 20 minutes it can guide you through a process of making sure that you're relaxing things, including in this case the wound up super tight jaw muscles that are a part of TMD. 

I hope there are some useful tips in in there for you in managing your tmd. 

If you're continuing to have issues or you want more information about approaches to manage your TMD please give us a call and we'll let you know what your options are.