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.

Jaw Pain Part 2: How do we approach TMD?

If you or someone you know has jaw issues or TMD, then this post is definitely for you. In the video below, Martin outlines how we typically approach assessing and managing TMD when someone presents to our practice with it.

As you can see, due to how frequently we deal with clients with TMD, we had to develop an assessment protocol to determine first of all, are we the right people to address your issue? If so, what exactly is wrong and what is the most efficient way to get this person on track?

If you’re still unclear exactly what TMD is, please feel free to watch the first video in this series where Martin answers “What is TMD?”

As always, the video has been transcribed below for those of you who like blogs in a more old school format.

Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic what I wanted to talk to you about today was our approach in dealing with people who have TMD or temporomandibular disfunction. 

TMD is a really common condition, very commonly, in fact it's four times more likely and women and it's typically more common in people who are in that age group about 20 to 40, It is often painful, the jaw is often clicking and it can affect overall ability to open or even close the jaw properly.

When you have TMD, it often has wide-ranging effects because it effects eating, speaking, sleeping and exercising, so basically, lots of things that affect all aspects of our life; Our social life, our work life, our hobbies and really any activities that we love to do. 

So it’s something that you really want to get handled! 

Our approach is to take quite a comprehensive view. We certainly have a look at the jaw itself and we'll be measuring your ability to open your jaw, and you should be able to open your jaw around about 40 millimetres. 

We also assess a thing called lateral glide which is essentially your ability to move your jaw one way and then the other, and that should be equal left and right. We're also measuring it with special callipers to just see that it should be about 10 millimetres. 

The jaw doesn’t work in isolation though, so we'll also be looking at your overall posture. There's a really common association with forward movement of the head increasing the likelihood or has a strong association with jaw issues. Also the way that the neck joints work can have an interplay with the way the jaw works and so we also make sure that we do an assessment of the way that your jaw is working. 

As well, we’ll do some palpation, some hands on feeling of the muscles around your jaw which actually extend all the way up into the temporal area and extend down into the upper neck of the front. 

Then if we feel like we can help you, we will formulate a plan to get you back on track in terms of how your jaw is working and get you back to doing the things that you love to do, or that you have to do that the jaw is making it harder for you to do.  

Now, typically in terms of that hands-on care like all problems it's a 50/50 process there's certainly some hands-on things that we'll be doing to gently encourage more movement and less tension in the jaw, but we'll also be having exercises and home care that you can do to make sure that you get the best results as quickly as possible.

So if you're having trouble with jaw issues, whether it's popping clicking pain or just feeling out of balance, then please give us a call and let's get you back on track as quickly as possible.

Jaw pain part 1: What is 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) but we find a lot of people don’t really know what it is, whether it can be helped and most importantly, haven’t thought about the far reaching impact TMD can actually have on their lives. 

We hope you enjoy our 3 part series on TMD. In this first video, Martin explores exactly what TMD is, as well as discusses the day to day implications that a dtysfunctioning jaw can have on your life. 

As always, the video has been transcribed below. 

Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic and today I wanted to talk to you about an issue that we see very commonly in our practice which is TMD or temporomandibular disfunction, a really long difficult name essentially saying that your jaw isn't working right.

Now when we talk about it you’re jaw not working right or TMD, there's a bunch of different symptoms or signs that somebody could have that they have TMD, the one that brings people most commonly to us is that they've jaws painful. 

It's difficult chewing, it's difficult biting, it can also be that it's difficult to open your mouth fully or in some people it can't even be that it's difficult to fully close you mouth and bring your teeth together and even that the teeth feel like they're a little bit off center or even that the whole system's a bit out of whack. 

Some people will have clicking, either in combination with the other symptoms or just by themselves their jaw clicks the whole time and that can be really annoying, while some people will have it not really causing pain but part of the reason that they're actually getting headaches as TMDs are a really common contributor to people who get in particular tension type headaches. 

So it's something that we see very very commonly in our practice and we've done a lot of post graduate training in specific approaches in terms of how to address it, but when you have TMD a lot of people think of it before they have it as just being about the pain but for most people it makes them super aware of how much impact your jaw has on life overall. 

When you have jaw pain it effects eating, it can affect talking, it can affect sleeping it can affect your ability to exercise and so when it's affecting all of those things it then affects lots of different aspects of our life. 

Some people will find that it's much harder to work or they can't really work at all, they'll find that it impacts their roles in their family, as I said before it makes exercise a lot harder, a lot of people find that it impacts their social life because if you can't eat or you can only eat certain foods and it’s difficult to talk, you don’t really feel like getting out connecting with your friends and family. 

So TMD is a serious issue that can have wide-ranging effects on people who experience it and it’s something that we would highly recommend that if it’s troubling you, you make an appointment to do a comprehensive assessment so we can develop a plan to really get things back on track for you.

So, if you'd like help with that, please give us a call today so that we can get you started on having your life back, not being impacted by ongoing issues with your jaw.