TMJ help?

I've been told I have mild TMJ but it has never bothered me. Just now, I was eating some soft noodles, had a sharp pain in the joint of my jaw, and now I can't close my jaw. I can move it side to side, I can make my jaw "pop," but still my teeth won't come together. Any suggestions on how to fix it myself? I'm in GZ and don't have a dentist here.

Well after 24 hours my jaw will now close but I still need advice.

Meiguoren:


How's you condition now? Did you see a doctor? is it better? I got TMJ too. Mine is not as bad (i can close my jaw) but it still clicks and it hurts sometime.. It could be from grinding your teeth in your sleep or something like that ...

Hi, Thanks for the helpful replies. It gradually got better, and then after about 24 hours I realized I could close my jaws fully and chew normally. In the meantime, it was quite a scare, and a big surprise since it had not bothered me for years prior to this. I do know that grinding teeth in sleep can cause it or aggravate it. I used to do this unconsciously when I was upset, but I thought I had overcome it. However, we aren't always aware when we may do it in our sleep, so maybe I grind my teeth at night. I don't know! I have a friend who has a special guard she wears at night to keep herself from grinding her teeth. She paid a lot of money for hers and it was made by her dentist, but I wonder if you could get the same advantage by just using a mouth guard like athletes use. Another suggestion I've heard is not to eat hard, chewy foods such as bagels, and to avoid chewing gum. I already do avoid the hard chewy foods, I think I will try the mouth guard route and see if that helps. I did wake up this morning with a suspicious soreness in that area, making me wonder if I had clinched my teeth in my sleep during the night.

Meiguoren:


As for as I know, there's no medication for TMJ ... only surgery to fix it. So I guess people with this condition have to try to control the habit or wear mouth guard. I stopped chewing gum too after I found out about TMJ.

What does TMJ stand for?

LOL sorry I can't rememember what it stands for! It's a medical term in Latin! TMJ basically is a malfunction of the joint located where the jawbone connects to the skull. There is a piece of cartilage that slides between the jawbone and the skull(the M initial stands for mandible, I think the J stands for joint, and I think the T is for something like "teri" but who knows). When the delicate cartilage in that joint is damaged or gets misplaced off to one side, people get symptoms of clicking in their jaw, or the cartilage can actually slide into a position where the jaw won't close (as in my case). One of my friends did have to have surgery to fix it after she went some period of time and nothing else worked to fix the cartilege and get it to go back in place. I'm over here in China with no established dentist connection and really hope I don't have any more flare ups! :-) But I think the osteopath idea is a good one.

meiguoren:


i think my TMJ condition's getting worse than before.. did you see a doctor/dentist? do you still have it? i stll can close my jaws but lately it hurts when the click (from opening and closing my mouth)..


i'm looking for a mouth guard but still don't know where to look in HK..

Hi Rainy, I went to my dentist in the USA this summer. He said my TMJ was not bad enough to have surgery. He even told me a splint wouldn't do me any good if I'm sure I'm not grinding my teeth at night. The usual advice applies: no chewy foods (e.g. no bagels, no chewing gum), no clenching teeth, treat the joint with TLC. He also showed me how to get the jaw back into joint if it pops out again. Basically, you take your hands and pull the lower jaw down (open) and forward. Good luck, maybe someone else on the list can refer you to a local dentist in your city.

Thanks Meiguoren! I'm gonna try that too.. I guess it haven't been grinding my teeth for 2 or 3 nights now 'coz it's feeling a bit better..

I don't usually like to post like this, sounding like an advert but If you are interested I work with TMJ so if you have not found anyone and you still need some help please let me know.


I will be away overseas till Thursday next week but you can leave me a PM if you like.

TMJ stands for Tempo-Mandibular Joint. It's the ball and socket joint where your jaw meets the skull. Here is my TMJ story, perhaps Meiquoren and Rainy can find something of use in it, although my TMJ problem was different, it never used to pop or click out.


I developed pain in the TMJ (one side far worse than the other) from subconsciously clenching my jaw very tight after I'd started in a new job and encountered a lot of unexpected obstacles and a particularly difficult workmate,i.e. due to stress that I carried in my jaw. The pain became excruciating once the clenching caused inflammation where the ball pushed into the socket. It was very painful to eat. Even just speaking was aggravating the problem. The only way I could deal with the pain when it was really bad was to lie down and have my face very gently massaged to calm me, I used to feel like I couldn't cope with it as tere is no escaping from pain in your face. I went to a GP with the problem and he simply prescribed sedatives to take at night. I threw them away when I took them once at 3am beause of pain and then sailed through that day as though there was a thick glass screen between me and everyone else. They weren't solving the problem. My very experienced dentist, on a regular checkup, diagnosed the problem. He took a cast of my mouth to make a mouthguard that I wore at night. This was to separate the joint so the inflammation had a bit of a chance to settle down. He also taught me some techniques for relaxing my jaw. The best one was to drop my jaw open every hour or so and tap it gently under my chin to make sure it was in a relaxed open position. This was really meant to break into any cycle of clenching that was going on. This did help a bit even on its own. Even tho the guard had been made to fit my mouth it was not great wearing it. I would still wake in the early hours sometimes with TMJ pain even though the jaw was separated by the guard.


All this did improve things but in the end I realised I had to simply stop clenching my jaw if I was to get long-term improvement. The way I learned to do this through Feldenkrais method classes. I just saw an ad for it and thought it couldn't hurt. It teaches you to really focus on the movements in your body and how movement in one part has an effect somewhere else that you don't even notice. It helps your posture and there were a lot of people there with bad backs. I think I was the only TMJ person there. We'dlie on the floor and to an observer it probably looked like we weren't even moving, but we were following instructions to make a movement in e.g. our tummies and tune in to how we could feel that in our necks. Anyway, I'd come out of a class so relaxed that my face would feel as though it was really rounded and full on the worse TMJ side, instead of being tight and painful. I only attended a few classes but it was enough to make me able to focus in on what I was doing with my jaw so that I could detect a tightening, or the first very slight twinges of pain, really early and long before I had been tuning into them before. Then I'd immediately apply the dentist's suggested relaxation methods, and go for a little walk away to relax as well. Very soon the pain started lessening until I no longer had a problem and it's never been like that again. Very occaionally i'll notice that I'm clenching my jaw, because I'm still very tuned into it and then I can intervene in the cycle with the jaw relaxation method.


None of this happened in HK and I don't know anythng about Feldenkrais practitioners here (perhaps a physiotherapist might teach it or use it). Perhaps something like this might work for your unconscious teeth grinding, though you can't apply it if you're asleep of course. Good luck to you both.

I clench my teeth at night, have cracked teeth, receding gums and a sore jaw to show for it. I got a mouthguard to wear at night and it changed my life. NO MORE PAIN. The Feldenkrais technique sounds interesting...

TMJ can have multiple causes - stress is the most common reason as people react by clenching their jaws - a mouth card will reduce teeth grinding damage and rest the cartilage, a massage will reduce the tension in the muscle but neither will heal the problem - surgery would be the last option once all else has failed.



Parasites and yeast overgrowth in the gut can also cause an overuse or faulty use the mastication muscles - a yeast and parasite kill, starve and re-colonisation will help here.


When the mastication muscles get chronically tight several chain reactions occur that can lead to migraine type headaches and an escalation of the problem.

1. Malocclusion - when teeth have a double click when closing the upper and lower teeth.

2. The atlas or top vertebrae of the neck will compensate at sublux or rotate of its axis - from here a downward spiral of events will lead to neck, shoulder and even lower back pain.

3. The mastication muscles develop "trigger points" knots of tight muscles - again a further downward spiral of comfort results.


Solutions - deal with the cause - stress, diet

correct the problems - trigger point release in the lateral pteragoid muscles, atlas adjustment. Chew on ignored side to balanc up eating muscles.


A skilled osteopath, physiotherapist chiropractor or a massage therapist skilled in neuromuscular release techniques should be able to help you in very few visits. A trip to the dentist once this has been corrected may be needed to correct any malocclusion still residing.

Thanks for the suggestion. Believe it or not I haven't had a single bit of problem since those two scarey episodes last summer when my jaw wouldn't close! There's even hardly any clicking when I close my jaw. It's as if I don't have TMJ at all.