What can cause your TMJ to stop moving smoothly?

• An injury or trauma that causes the joint to dislocate.
• Overuse of the powerful jaw muscles in certain positions.
• Sleeping always on the same side which may cause your jaw to “drop” to one side.
• Having a “forward head” posture which puts a lot of strain on your neck and jaw muscles.
• Dental work which mis-aligns your jaw by not lining up your teeth correctly.
• Scoliosis or curvature of the spine.

And, of course, there can be other causes but very often the cause turns out to be muscular.  Everything on the list, above, except for the dental work, involves your muscles.

So, if the powerful chewing muscles become tighter on one side than the other, they can “pull” your jaw out of alignment.

But how can you get your smooth movement back?

That’s the good news!  Muscles do get tight but they can be relaxed (released.)  If you can help those jaw muscles relax, your TMJ can usually move back into its neutral position where it moved smoothly.

According to my training, an interesting thing about the disk in the TMJ is that it can regenerate itself.  No other disk in the body can do that.  How cool!

If you have a jaw that “clicks” being able to relax the muscles around the joint can help it realign itself and may get rid of your click.  Sometimes you might need someone to help you correct your posture in order to eliminate the click.

In fact, your body is really smart and wants to be well.  Sometimes it just needs you to learn a little more so you can help it get out of pain.  But you can’t just learn–you also have to take action.

One way to take action is do-it-yourself.  I like the program my friend, Christian, put together to help you get rid of your TMJ pain.  You can learn more at Jaw Pain Natural Relief.com He understands how the whole body is involved when your jaw hurts.  (Why?  Because it’s all attached!)

Christian also developed very simple movements that you can do to help the muscles around your head, face, throat and neck relax.   When an area of your body lets go of tension, you will feel more relaxed all over.

The really good thing is that when all of those muscles are more in alignment and balanced, you will have fewer headaches, less neck pain–you’ll feel better in lots of ways.

Another way to take action is to find and go to a skilled massage therapist who can help you get rid of your TMJ pain.  Since muscles are usually the culprit, someone who can help those muscles release or relax can give you a lot of relief.  If your muscles are really, really tight, there may be some discomfort but if your therapist is well trained, you will benefit.

There are two actions you can take today.

• Make an appointment with a well-trained massage therapist or neuromuscular massage therapist.  Check out the “Massage” Category here at Simple Pain Relief for an article on how to find a massage therapist who can help you.
• Learn more about a do-it-yourself program at home.  For this I invite you to discover more at Jaw Pain Natural Relief.

You can learn how to stop suffering with TMJ pain and that’s a very good thing because you deserve to feel better!

1. It relaxes the muscles around your chest, ribs, shoulders and neck.  These are the same muscles that get tight and cause headache symptoms.
2. Yoga helps reduce your stress.  When you’re feeling all stressed, your muscles “clamp down” on nerves that go to your head.
3. It helps strengthen the muscles of your backside, and makes you long and strong; it creates muscular balance.  A strong back and a long, strong body helps you have good posture.  Good posture, with your head over your body instead of out in front, reduces headaches.
4. Yoga gets your circulation moving and that helps move the metabolic (body) wastes out of your body.  It reduces swelling which can also be a cause for head pain.
5. It helps you become more “in tune” with your body.  When your muscles start to complain or your head starts to hurt, you will be able to figure out the cause and correct it.
6. Yoga can help reduce your blood pressure, but if you are having high blood pressure headaches, you’d better get to a doctor immediately!

Yoga is a full-body stretching and strengthening movement program with a lot of benefits.

If you take a class, always remember:  It’s your body.  If a move doesn’t feel appropriate to you, or feels like it will make your head hurt or your headache feel worse, DON’T DO IT.  Instead, practice a different movement (pose) or breathing.

So, yoga helps take the pressure off the muscles around your head and neck, and helps you relax, and reduces stress, and improves your breathing (shallow breathing could also be a cause of your headaches by not giving you enough oxygen.)

That’s how yoga can help you get rid of your headaches.

1. It relaxes the muscles around your chest, ribs, shoulders and neck.  These are the same muscles that get tight and cause headache symptoms.
2. Yoga helps reduce your stress.  When you’re feeling all stressed, your muscles “clamp down” on nerves that go to your head.
3. It helps strengthen the muscles of your backside, and makes you long and strong; it creates muscular balance.  A strong back and a long, strong body helps you have good posture.  Good posture, with your head over your body instead of out in front, reduces headaches.
4. Yoga gets your circulation moving and that helps move the metabolic (body) wastes out of your body.  It reduces swelling which can also be a cause for head pain.
5. It helps you become more “in tune” with your body.  When your muscles start to complain or your head starts to hurt, you will be able to figure out the cause and correct it.
6. Yoga can help reduce your blood pressure, but if you are having high blood pressure headaches, you’d better get to a doctor immediately!

Yoga is a full-body stretching and strengthening movement program with a lot of benefits.

If you take a class, always remember:  It’s your body.  If a move doesn’t feel appropriate to you, or feels like it will make your head hurt or your headache feel worse, DON’T DO IT.  Instead, practice a different movement (pose) or breathing.

So, yoga helps take the pressure off the muscles around your head and neck, and helps you relax, and reduces stress, and improves your breathing (shallow breathing could also be a cause of your headaches by not giving you enough oxygen.)

That’s how yoga can help you get rid of your headaches.

Why?  Because muscles are responsible for most of our pain.

Tight muscles pull on bones.  Tight muscles cause bone spurs (arthritis.)  Tight muscles press on nerves and blood vessels.  Overstretched muscles get trigger points which “fire” pain into other parts of your body, sometimes quite far away.

To be fair, there are a few doctors who do look at posture.  When they don’t, it’s because they haven’t been trained in “muscular medicine” or because they simply don’t have time.

But, poor posture is responsible for most pain and dysfunction, including headaches.

You can see that there are a lot of ways for your muscles to cause head pain because muscles have many roles.  Bones act as our structure: they are our framework and support.  The role of muscles is to help us move.  Muscles move bones.  Muscles move us.

Sometimes we start using our muscles as bones.  We expect our poor muscles to hold us upright, because our posture is failing, but that’s not their job.  When our posture fails, it puts a lot of strain on our muscles.  Our muscles become unhappy.  They cause symptoms like headaches.  They cause pain in our heads and elsewhere.

How can you correct your posture?

It took a while for you to get into poor posture, and it’ll take a while for your body to remember how to be tall again.  But, you can do it!

The muscles in the front of your body have shortened.  Maybe your shoulders are rolled forward.  Those muscles need to be relaxed, or lengthened.

The muscles in your back–and the whole backside of your body, except your calves–need to be strengthened.

When you start letting your muscles do their job again, instead of trying to act like bones and support you,  you will be on the road to getting rid of your headaches.

It always amazes me that we can hurt ourselves even in our sleep, but we do.

Sometimes it’s a matter of sleeping with your head tilted (Your chin is tilted toward or away from the bed. Your neck is not in line with your spine.)

Check your neck position before you fall asleep. You may need a different pillow, or even a pile of small, flat pillows stacked to fit you better.

If you’re a back sleeper, just use a small roll behind your neck to fill in the natural curve of your neck. Use as little as possible behind your head.

If you sleep on your tummy, that can cause a lot of strain for your neck muscles.

Some people tell me that they just cannot change their sleeping habits, or cannot fall asleep in a different position.

Perhaps practicing relaxation techniques laying flat on the floor would help their muscles get used to being in a different position. It’s worth a try.

Perhaps deep breathing using their whole torso, chest and belly, would allow them to slip into sleep in a different position.

Perhaps a stretching or yoga class, to wake up all of their muscles and help get muscular balance, would be their ticket.

Sometimes we wake up feeling fine, but by the time we get out of bed, we have a headache or migraine. What’s happening?

Here’s one possibility.

I would wake up feeling well. Then I would twist my neck and stretch my head around to see the alarm clock. That twist and stretch aggravated my neck enough that I would get instant migraine!

It actually took me quite a long time to figure that out. It happened several times before I realized the cause of those migraines. When I quit doing that twist and stretch, of course the head pain quit also.

Could that be your possibility? Or, perhaps you can think of something else you may be doing to cause your headache to start when you woke up feeling fine.

If it feels like you’re straining your neck by sitting straight up, try rolling to your side and push yourself up with your arms while keeping your neck in a straight, neutral position.

One of my clients always awoke feeling fine, but by the time she was in the kitchen with her coffee, her head pain started. Right after she took the first deep drags on her cigarette, her headache started. Every morning.

What do you suppose was the cause of her headache?

Because she was a smoker, and because she inhaled strongly, using the muscles in her jaw and temples (the temple muscles are related to the jaw muscles) she caused those muscles to become tight and restricted. That caused her morning headaches. Like many morning headaches, once they started, they tended to stay all day.

So the plan is to avoid your headache in the first place.

Pay attention to what’s going on that may be creating head pain for you. Change the position, posture or movement you suspect and see if that makes a difference.

A simple change could make all the difference in the world. Awareness is the first step in the right direction.

“Because You Deserve To Feel Better”