Strategies For Eliminating Jaw Pain

Clenching your jaw can cause headaches, tooth damage, and other problems. The habit may occur during daytime or nighttime hours, but correcting it usually requires mindful retraining of the jaw and reduction of any underlying stress responsible for the problem. Home treatment works in most cases, but professional medical care might be necessary in others.

(Don't worry, you can do this)

Part 1

Correcting the Habit

1. Apply a warm compress. Soak a clean washcloth in hot water. Wring out the excess, then hold the moist cloth over the tensed or pained portion of your jaw for 10 minutes.[1]

   • Perform this procedure as soon as you notice tension or pain in your jaw. You can also repeat the procedure immediately before known times of high stress to help prevent tension before it builds.
   • The warmth should relax the muscles in your jaw and help them loosen up. A relaxed jaw is less likely to tense up and begin clenching again.
      

2. Massage the jaw. Use your fingers to gently massage the affected muscles. Apply firm yet gentle pressure to the tensed portion of your jaw, then work around the entire jaw and mouth area with small, circular motions.

   • It's best to perform this exercise before you have the opportunity to clench your jaw, but you can also repeat it after you notice jaw tension or pain.
   • Massaging the affected area can release tension in the muscles of your jaw. Once the muscles have relaxed and loosened up, you'll naturally be less inclined to clench them.
      

3. Practice proper jaw placement. If jaw clenching has become a chronic problem, you've likely trained yourself to hold your jaw improperly at a subconscious level. Practicing proper jaw placement every few hours throughout the day can re-train your brain and muscles.

   • When you close your lips, a slight gap between your upper and lower teeth should still remain.
   • Place the tip of your tongue in between your front teeth. Hold it there for at least five minutes. During this time, your jaw muscles should relax and reset to a more natural position.
   • If this simple correction doesn't feel comfortable or helpful, you may need to ask your dentist to show you the best position for your jaw. Memorize the way it feels and take pictures of the way it looks. Consult those pictures later while practicing the same placement in front of a mirror.
      

4. Take the right dietary supplements. In particular, you should increase your intake of calcium, magnesium, and vitamin C. Having adequate amounts of these nutrients can help regulate muscle activity, including muscle activity in the jaw.

   • You can increase your intake of these nutrients through diet or by taking daily nutritional supplements.
   • If you choose to take nutritional supplements, know that you should take one part magnesium for every two parts calcium. For instance, you might take 600 mg of calcium and 300 mg of magnesium. The amount of vitamin C should be determined independently; an adequate daily dose is 90 mg daily.
   • Repeat your nutrient ritual daily for at least two months before determining if it has or hasn't been helpful.

Part 2

Dealing with Stress (truly the most helpful consideration)

1. Identify stress triggers. Stress can cause you to clench your jaw during daytime and nighttime hours. While stress is unavoidable, you can figure out ways of dealing with causes of stress once you identify them.

   • Consider keeping a journal to help track your causes of stress. Make a note of any incident that causes anxiety, even if it seems mild, and pay special attention to causes of stress that occur immediately before or during daytime incidents of jaw clenching.
   • Avoid any stress triggers that can be eliminated. For triggers that cannot be eliminated, balance them out with behaviors that help relax your mind. For instance, you might listen to soothing music, indulge in a warm bubble bath, meditate, or ease your mind with aromatherapy.
      

2. Regulate your sleep cycle. Following a regular sleep pattern should improve your quality of sleep, which may reduce jaw clenching at night. Getting eight hours of good, quality sleep each night can also reduce your overall stress, and that may make it easier to quit clenching your jaw during the day, too.

   • Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day, regardless of your schedule. Try to schedule a full eight hours of sleep in between.
   • In addition to increasing the amount of sleep you get, you should also try to improve the quality of sleep. Try to completely relax your body and mind before going to bed. Avoid caffeine and alcohol, since both can alter the body's sleep cycle. Sleep at comfortable, slightly cool temperatures, and turn off all bright lights and sources of irregular noise.
      

3. Exercise. Regular exercise can relieve stress while regulating your mood and immune system. As a result, the tension causing your jaw clenching should lessen, and the muscles in your jaw should become stronger and more elastic.

   • You don't need to perform strenuous exercise to gain these benefits. Try walking at a slow to moderate pace for 30 minutes a day, three to five times a week. Make this a regular part of your routine for at least two months, if not permanently.

Part 3

Seeking Professional Medical Help

1. Schedule appointments with your dentist and your doctor. Jaw clenching is often a multifaceted problem that involves both physical and mental factors. A qualified dentist should be able to treat the oral components of the problem, but you'll need to talk with a general physician to determine a treatment plan for any other factors.
    

2. Invest in dental splints. Both mouth guards and dental splits can keep teeth separated and protect them against the sort of damage caused by jaw clenching. While more expensive, dental splits are better than over-the-counter mouth guards.[2]

   • Mouth guards are generally made of hard plastic. You'll still feel pain caused by clenching the jaw, and that pain may worsen the underlying tension.
   • Dental splints are made from soft acrylic and fitted to the shape of your mouth. They won't stop your jaw from clenching, but they should reduce the associated pain and may prevent the tension in your jaw from worsening.
   • Note that both mouth guards and splints are generally reserved for nighttime treatment, but in extreme cases when daytime clenching is an issue, you can wear the equipment during daytime hours.
      

3. Correct misaligned teeth. If your teeth are damaged or otherwise misaligned, they may contribute to your jaw clenching problem. Consult with your dentist to determine the best way to fix the underlying issue.

   • Braces may help correct severely misaligned teeth. In some cases, however, your dentist may recommend strategically placed crowns to fix the problem.
   • If you have a damaged tooth, rebuilding that tooth can help restore the proper alignment of your teeth.
      

4. Seek professional therapy. There are different types of therapy that may help correct jaw clenching, but the most common are biofeedback and cognitive behavioral therapy.

   • Biofeedback is a type of physical therapy. During the procedure, the doctor will examine the way you hold and control your jaw through specialized monitoring equipment. The doctor can use the same equipment to help train and regulate muscle activity in your jaw.
   • Cognitive behavioral therapy treats the psychological component behind jaw clenching. By talking with a trained psychologist or counselor, you can change the way you approach stress and react to it, which may lead to decreased anxiety.
      

5. Try acupuncture. Talk with a professional acupuncturist about regular treatments that can reduce jaw pain and tension. While there's very little scientific evidence to suggest the effectiveness of acupuncture, it stands as a popular form of alternative medicine.[3]

   • Similarly, you could also learn about professional acupressure treatments. Acupuncture uses strategically placed needles to control pain in the body, but acupressure applies firm pressure to strategic points, instead.

6. Learn about muscle relaxants. Muscle relaxants can relax the muscles in your jaw, which should help prevent your jaw from clenching. You can ask your doctor about both oral relaxants and injected relaxants.[4]

   • Oral muscle relaxants must be prescribed by a doctor, and you should only take them for short periods to avoid dependency. These medications relax your entire body's immune response. They may make you drowsy, so you should take them before bedtime.
   • OnabotulinumtoxinA (Botox) treatments are injected directly into the affected area and only relax the surrounding the jaw muscles. These treatments last for prolonged periods but are usually prescribed only as a last resort.
      

7. Examine your medications. If you're currently taking long-term prescription medications and you didn't clench your jaw before you began treatment, ask your doctor if your jaw clenching habits could be a side effect of the medication.

   • If medications are causing the problem, your doctor may prescribe a different medication to help eliminate the jaw clenching.
   • While there are different types of medications that can cause jaw clenching, some of the most common culprits include antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).[5]
   • Note that alcohol, smoking, and recreational drugs can also cause jaw clenching and should be eliminated.
     
     This article originally appeared on wikihow.com
     
     BOOK YOUR APPOINTMENT with Miranda Horvath for Intra-Oral Massage Therapy or Mu Chun Chen or Céline Sandberg for TMJD (Temporomandibular joint dysfunction) Acupuncture to help you release stress and muscle tension around your head, neck and jaw 

Acupuncture Improves Head Injury Recovery

New research finds acupuncture effective for regenerating brain tissue and restoring motor and cognitive function after a severe head trauma. An investigative team at the Rehabilitation Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xian Jiaotong University (Shaanxi) compared acupuncture combined with standard care with a control group receiving only standard medical interventions. The addition of acupuncture therapy to the conventional regime of care significantly reduced complications and improved the survival rate. The acupuncture group significantly outperformed the control group in all scales and indices. Notably, the acupuncture group demonstrated superior clinical outcomes including better mobility, cognitive function and improved functions of daily activities and living.

Severe head traumas cause diffuse axonal injury (DAI) in approximately half of all cases. This investigation focused on patients having had severe head traumas causing DAI. This type of injury is different than a blow to one area of the brain. It occurs throughout a wider area and is caused by the brain moving in the skull. This type of shaking of the brain occurs in sports injuries, automobile accidents, falls and shaken baby syndrome. The latter is a form of child abuse. As a result of the trauma, inflammation and damage to the brain ensues and many patients slip into a coma and do not revive.

This study compared 60 diffuse axonal injury patients that were divided into two groups. The control group received standard biomedical interventions including hydration & bleeding controls, anti-inflammatory medications, resuscitation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Other treatments provided to the control group were standard protocols for the treatment of respiratory and urinary disorders including infections and the treatment of ulcers. The acupuncture group received standard biomedical care plus acupuncture. The Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) principles of treatment included tonifying the kidneys, unblocking the yang and regulating qi. The researchers note that the success of the acupuncture therapy improved significantly when applied early as an intervention measure. In addition, acupuncture performed especially well for patients for resuscitation and in the recovery phase. 

The researchers applied acupuncture to the Chong, Ren and Du acupuncture channels as the primary areas. Long courses of treatment were required and individual indications were treated on a case by case basis. Treatments focused on resuscitation, restoring movement after paralysis, relieving muscle tension, improving language skills, regulating salivation, relieving urinary and fecal incontinence, promoting eating, etc….

The researchers compared the data between the acupuncture and control groups 4 hours before the treatment began and upon the completion of six courses of care. There was no significant difference in Fugl-Meyer Assessment, LOTCA Assessment, and Barthel Index prior to treatments. After six courses of treatment, the control group showed some improvements according to above scales. Patients in the acupuncture group significantly outperformed those in the control group in all scales and indices mentioned above. Based on the clinical outcome, the researchers conclude that acupuncture combined with rehabilitation can significantly improve DAI patients’ mobility, cognitive competence and other functions in everyday life.

Prior research was the impetus for this investigation. Other studies demonstrated the ability of acupuncture to regulate cerebral blood flow and cell apoptosis, improve electrophysiological brain activity, improve cognitive function and protect tissues from free radical damage. Prior research demonstrated that acupuncture helped reduce edema of the brain (cephaledema) and promoted expression of GAP43 and PCNA in the brain. Also, acupuncture was shown to reduce infarct sizes due to cerebral ischemia. This and other clinical and basic research prompted the investigators to conduct this study. The findings demonstrate that a rigorous regime of acupuncture care is appropriate for patients with DAI and that the intervention should start in the early stages of illness to achieve the best possible clinical outcome.

Article originally appeared on healthcmi.com

A Must Read For People in Pain: 'Explain Pain'

If I could make only one recommendation to individuals living with chronic pain, it would be to read the book Explain Pain by David Butler and Lorimer Moseley.

Directed at both clinicians who work with chronic pain patients and patients who live with chronic pain, Explain Pain shows how the discoveries of modern pain science can be put to practical use. Written in understandable language with a touch of lighthearted humor, Butler and Moseley take a complex subject and make it possible for the average person to understand and use. One client remarked that she thought it would be hard to read and was delighted that she did not find it difficult at all. 

Pain education can help

Research has demonstrated that pain education can help to reduce chronic pain. For instance, a recent study by the army followed 4,325 soldiers over a two year period and found that one session of pain education could help lower the incidence of low back pain. Understanding how pain works is not a magic bullet that will make pain go away immediately, but it can help to take some of the fear and anxiety out of the experience which can then begin to help alter the experience. With time, thinking a little differently about pain can lead to more successful strategies for reducing, limiting, and eliminating pain.  

Pain is useful and should not be ignored. Pain is a protective mechanism generated by the brain in response to perceived threat. However, when pain is chronic and there is no direct or immediate threat to the body, understanding how the body can get "stuck" in pain can suggest ways to help it get "unstuck." 

Butler and Moseley provide some amazing stories to illustrate the surprising discovery that pain is not directly related to tissue damage. While this concept may, at first, seem odd and difficult to grasp, they produce convincing evidence to support this idea. Consider this: a paper cut produces very little tissue damage, yet can cause a lot of pain. A soldier can get shot in battle, yet not realize he is injured until he is off the battlefield. Amputees may experience phantom limb pain in tissue that no longer exists. How does that happen? The part of the brain that corresponded to the amputated limb can still generate the sensation of pain, even after the limb is gone.

Pain can be influenced by context. If everyone around us seems to be in pain, we may also expect to be in pain. Athletes involved in vigorous sports ignore impacts that would upset most of us because to them it's all part of the game. In that context, it is expected and not a threat. 

Butler and Moseley describe how pain is generated by the nervous system. Understanding that pain is generated by the brain, rather than by damaged tissues, does not mean that pain is "all in your head" and should be ignored or dismissed as imaginary. In fact, understanding that pain is the body's alarm system highlights the importance of treating pain so that the alarm system does not become oversensitive. 

The book describes what happens in different systems of the body and how they may be affected by pain. Normal responses to painful stimuli are contrasted with what happens when the responses become altered. The influence of our thoughts and beliefs is examined for the role it can play in chronic pain.

Practical suggestions

The last few chapters of Explain Pain suggest practical tools that can be used to manage chronic pain. Using "the virtual body" is explained, as is the use of graded exposure to break the association between particular movements and pain and to cultivate successful movement without pain. 

Pain education should be part of every client or patient's rehabilitation.Explain Pain provides an excellent model for pain education.

One of my clients suffered for many years with a painful chronic condition and found this book immensely helpful. Although she had seen many doctors and therapists, she had never been given any pain education. After reading this book, she asked, "Why didn't anyone tell me this?" My response was, "They didn't know." Although Explain Pain was first published in 2003, pain science is still only slowly finding its way to practitioners. 

Since I've begun studying pain science, I've incorporated information the information presented in Explain Pain into my practice. It has been a useful tool for helping clients get out of pain and feel in control of their lives once again.

Additional resources

I've posted a fifteen minute TED Talk by Lorimer Moseley on Why Pain Hurts in a previous post. There is also, in the same article, a forty-five minute lecture to a professional audience for those geeky folks who want to understand details about the biology of pain. Recently, I've found a twenty-five minute video by Moseleywhich has become a favorite because he addresses how we think about conditions like herniated discs and how our thinking can feed and perpetuate fear, anxiety, and pain. If you watch only one of these videos, this is the one I recommend. These videos are educational and entertaining. Moseley, who is both researcher and clinician, has a charming Australian accent and a great sense of humor. Imagine Crocodile Dundee giving an introduction to pain science and you'll get the picture.

For more information about understanding pain, I also suggest the following: 

Painful Yarns by Lorimer Moseley (stories to help understand the biology of pain)

Also, check out this article about understanding how pain works by Paul Ingraham of SaveYourself.ca. 

Cory Blickenstaff, PT, has put together some useful videos of "novel movements." Here are links to the ones on the low back, neck, and hand, wrist, forearm, and elbow. 

This article originally appeared massage-stloius.com and was written by 'Ask the Massage Therapist'.
 

Why We Need Acupuncture

What is 'Acupuncture'?

Acupuncture is a holistic health technique that stems from Traditional Chinese Medicine practices in which trained practitioners stimulate specific points on the body by inserting thin needles into the skin.

Acupuncture, from an Eastern perspective, is all about energy and its flow through your body. If that flow is blocked, the thinking goes, pain or illness results. By gently tapping as many as 20 thin needles into your body at strategic points, acupuncturists try to reestablish the flow. That's a compelling but not necessarily convincing explanation. So Western medicine is working to understand the mechanisms of acupuncture. "There are many details we still don't understand, but essentially, acupuncture seems to stimulate specific muscles and nerves, activating changes that reduce pain and symptoms and promote healing.

There are two types of acupuncture that use light electrical stimulations that flow through the needles, or no needles at all. For example, acupressure is often thought of as simply “acupuncture without the needles” and uses targeted massage-type techniques to stimulate energy in the body by pressing on certain points.

How It works?

An integral part of Chinese Medicine is the concept of Qi (pronounced Chee). Qi is often referred to as energy or life force, but in reality it is much more than this. Qi cannot be measured but without it we could not exist.

Acupuncture points, or “acupoints,” are specific locations on the body that are the focus of acupuncture treatments. TCM explains acupuncture as a technique for “balancing the flow of energy or life force,” and that energy can be reached by stimulating small specific channels on the body.

In traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture is linked to the belief that disease is caused by disruptions to the flow of energy, or qi, in the body.

Acupuncture stimulates points on or under the skin called acupuncture points or acupressure points, releasing this qi. The qi then travels through channels called meridian. if this flow of qi is balanced that means we are fit and healthy.

How acupuncture works may be unclear, but the benefits stick out.

9 Benefits of Acupuncture Treatment

1.Drug-free treatment.
2.Effective in treating Addiction.
3.Reduce Headaches and Migraines.
4.Works Wonders for Women’s Health Issues.
5.Effective Preventative Medicine with Positive Effects.
6.Affordable Medical Therapy.
7.Boosting immune function.
8.Herbs do Benefit body in a good way.
9. One of the Best alternative for pain management

This article originally appeared on Acupuncture Specialist Atlanta & was written by Chen Zhang.