TemporoMandibular Joint Dysfunction, often called TMJ or TMD, is known as the “great imposter” because so many symptoms that patient complain of can be related to this disorder. The list of possible TMD symptoms include back pain, dizziness, ear congestion, ear pain, eye pain, facial pain, fatigue, headaches, jaw clicking or popping, jaw locking, migraines, muscle twitching, neck pain, ringing in ears, shoulder pain, sinus congestion, and many others.
Acute trauma to the jaw joint will usually result in pain in and around the joint. Most dentists are able to treat this type of trauma with hot and cold compresses, soft diet, jaw exercises, and anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen. Patients with chronic jaw joint problems, on the other hand, rarely have pain in the joint. Instead, they tend to complain of neckaches, headaches, backaches, ear congestion or pain, and even numbness and tingling in the fingertips. This article will help explain how TMD is related to these seemingly unrelated symptoms.
One fascia myth is that massage can “work out knots” in the fascia and eliminate these structural changes simply by rubbing these areas (think upper back/neck). Unfortunately changing fascial structure is not that simple. Just think about a neck and back rub; they feel great for a short period of time but the irritation will be back sooner or later. Recent research has found that fascia – once thought to simply be passive connective tissue (like a spider web) is actually innervated and has its own smooth muscle tissue (smooth muscle is a type of muscle that can not be voluntarily controlled). This means that the brain and the rest of the central nervous system is actually involuntarily controlling fascia through neural activity.
If that was a bit confusing for you, I will go back to the computer posture analogy to clear it up. After slouching for 8 hours a day at the computer for a period of weeks (or even years), your body creates more and more new fascia to help meet the demands of your new slouching posture. After a period of time, this fascia can become restrictive and make it hard for you to move out of poor posture. Your neck and upper back feel tight all the time because you have adapted to poor postural patterns even when you are not on the computer. To combat this, you might try to stretch your neck but it only provides temporary relief; you might get a massage and it feels great for the next 30 minutes but sooner or later you are back in pain. This is because the brain is telling the fascia to stay put.
By now you might be starting to connect the dots as to why TMD patients have so many seemingly unrelated symptoms such as headaches, neckaches, backaches, and shoulder pain. Holding the head in the forward position to protect the jaw joint requires a lot of tension in the neck and back muscles. This constant tension also compresses the nerves that pass through these muscles, so some TMD patients also suffer from shoulder pain and even numbness or tingling in the fingers. In order to maintain balance and not fall forward, the body may also compensate by rotating the hips, resulting in lower back pain, and flaring the feet out, resulting in foot pain.
Sometimes holding the head forward is not possible or is not enough to change the bite, and the joint remains painful as well. In certain cases the jaw position puts pressure on the ears, causing ear pain and even hearing loss. Sometimes the extra stress on the nervous system causes other unrelated problems to flare up, such as allergies, sinus problems, and eyelid twitching. And in many cases, the chronic pain combined with the stress can lead to depression and mood swings.
1. Lay down on your back and touch one finger to your chin.
2. Try to tuck your chin backwards using the muscles in the front of your neck. Use your finger as a cue; think about “pushing” your chin backwards.
3. Hold the contraction for 1-2 seconds.
4. Do this for 3 sets of 10 reps. Take 30 seconds in between each set.
If you suffer from posture-related neck and upper back pain, try out this drill when you first wake up in the morning before you get out of bed and at night when you are lying down to go to sleep. Within a week, you are likely to see an improvement
Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez H.
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