If you find yourself waking up from jaw pain, you aren’t the only one and is something our physiotherapy team see commonly within the practice and can help you with.
The most likely culprit is bruxism; a condition in which you grind or clench your teeth and may be doing this unconsciously while you are awake or asleep. People normally report tightness, soreness and pain through their jaw or ear and sometimes experience associated headaches, tooth pain or dental problems from grinding away their teeth. If you have been grinding or clenching your jaw for a while you may have developed temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMD) and therefore may have one or a combination of the following symptoms:
- difficulty with opening your mouth
- jaw pain while eating hard foods
- clicking and locking of the Jaw
- headaches
What is TMD?
Temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMD) is an umbrella term for when the joint that connects the skull and jawbone doesn’t work normally. The temporomandibular joint enables us to open our mouth for functional activities like talking, yawning and eating. There is not one single cause for TMD but the most common reason is bruxism.
Why does this happen to me?
Most commonly bruxism presents in people who have:
- heightened stressors with work or personal life
- undertaken major dental work
- been clenching their teeth
- chewing gum chewers
- eating hard foods
These specific factors in isolation or combination generally lead to increased tightness through the muscles of mastication (chewing muscles) due to being over-activate and over worked. This then leads to the common symptoms explained above such as pain with opening the mouth. If this sounds like you physiotherapy can help.
What can physio do to help?
A physiotherapist will conduct a full jaw assessment to identify the type of TMD occurring and set you up with a comprehensive treatment plan to help you get your jaw moving well again enabling you to perform the things you enjoy such as eating larger and dense foods.
If you have developed TMD a physiotherapist may:
- Educate you on the pathology, the contributing factors and strategies to assist in reducing your immediate symptoms
- Provide physical therapy to the chewing muscles that have been identified to be contributing to bruxism and assist in restoring your jaw movement
- Prescribe the use of an ice pack and anti-inflammatory cream to help reduce the pain and inflammation surrounding the temporomandibular joint
- Provide deactivation jaw exercises to assist with reducing the activation of the mastication muscles to ensure they are only working during the action of chewing and further preventing them from being overactive and sore
- Recommend to see your dentist to have a splint/guard prescribed to help care for your teeth