Is my neck pain coming from my jaw?
Temporomandibular dysfunction (TMD) is a musculoskeletal disorder that affects the muscles around the jaw and the joint. Research articles are trying to determine if there is correlation between cervical spine joints (neck) and the nerve that innervates the muscles around the jaw. Could your jaw be causing you to have neck pain or even headaches?
TMD can present as pain when opening or closing the mouth, chewing, clicking, or popping joints, and headache. There are 4 muscles that are associated with the jaw: Masseter, Temporalis, Medial & Lateral Pterygoid. These muscles are the muscles of mastication, which means they are responsible for chewing and opening/closing our mouth. Clenching teeth or an increase in stress can result in increased tension in these muscles which can play a role in jaw and/or neck pain.
If you find yourself clenching your jaw often throughout the day, there are a couple things you can do to relieve the tension. One is by relaxing your jaw. The easiest way to do this is to keep your top teeth and your bottom teeth apart, making sure they are not touching each other . You might also find that if you bring your tongue to the roof of your mouth it might alleviate tension. Trying to do both at the same time to see how it feels.
Another way to relieve tension in your jaw is to work on the muscles around it. There are 2 muscles you can work on yourself to alleviate the tension. The first is the Temporalis, it is located on the side of her head. Where your “temple” is, is where your Temporalis is going to be located. The fibers run down towards your ear, one way to change the tissue tension is to go across the fibers. Move your finger forward and backward over this muscle, start out gently then add more pressure as you can tolerate. You might feel the start of a headache when working in this area, relieve your pressure if this occurs.
The next muscle to work on is the Masseter. This muscle goes from the end of your cheek bones (located right in front of your ear) to the bottom of your jaw line. This muscle will run up and down between those two sites. The same concept is to move your fingers forward and backward to alleviate the tension. This may be a very tender location if you have lots of tension, if so work gently. Another way to work on this would be to apply light pressure against muscle down and open your jaw. You should feel a stretch under your finger. Hopefully you notice that your jaw feels less tense after working on these muscles.
Although the research is not 100% backing the correlation between jaw and neck pain. The best thing is to get your pain assessed by a clinician near you to determine the cause. Treatment strategies may include exercises, manual therapy of tight muscles & education to improve the muscles tension, decreasing stress as well as reducing jaw or neck pain. In my experience, there is no 1 cause of jaw pain. It is best to think of it like layers of an onion, you need to peel back the layers to get to the core. You need to start removing symptoms to start feeling better and get to the cause of the pain.
