Temporomandibular Joint Disorder
Temporomandibular Joint Disorder
If you think pronouncing “temporomandibular joint disorder” is tough on your jaws, try living with it. This ailment, also called TMD, is best known for the pain it causes in your jaw joint.
As many as one in three Americans is said to suffer from TMD, but the pain can go well beyond the jaw, affecting the temples, back teeth, cheeks, throat and the area behind the eyes. It even causes earaches and headaches.
And TMD may mean more than pain: It can cause a clicking or popping sound when the jaw moves as well as a stiff neck, stuffy nose and ringing in the ears. It’s usually caused by improper alignment of the teeth, arthritis or trauma such as whiplash or a punch to the jaw. The natural remedies in this chapter—in conjunction with medical care and used with your doctor’s approval—may help reduce the symptoms of TMD, according to some health professionals.
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Acupressure
To relieve the jaw aches and pains of TMD, press both St 6 points near the jaw area, recommends Michael Reed Gach, Ph.D., director of the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley, California, and author of Acupressure’s Potent Points. Find the points by clenching your back teeth together. Feel for the muscles that bulge between the upper and lower jaw, near the jaw area. (To help locate these points, refer to the illustration on page 567.) Press these points with your middle fingers for one minute, two or three times daily, to train your jaw muscles, says Dr. Gach.
Massage
To help ease the painful muscle tension in the jaw area that can accompany TMD, you can use a simple technique to massage your jaw muscles, suggests Elliot Greene, past president of the American Massage Therapy Association. The first set of muscles is located at the back of your jaw away from your chin. To find them, clench your teeth. Feel for the muscles with your fingers—left fingers on the left side of your jaw, right fingers on the right side. Once you have found them, unclench your teeth and rub the muscles with small, firm circular strokes until you feel the tension release. You can also press into the muscles with your fingertips and hold for 10 to 15 seconds.
To find the second set of muscles, clench your teeth again and feel on your scalp in front of the tops of your ears. Unclench your teeth, and rub or press the muscles.
Greene recommends doing this massage for about ten minutes once a day. For acute pain, you can repeat it two or three times a day, he says.
Relaxation and Meditation
Practicing stretch-based relaxation twice a day may help reduce symptoms of TMD, says Charles Carlson, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Relaxation slows the part of the nervous system that is responsible for regulating muscle tension and heart and breathing rates in response to stress, Dr. Carlson explains. That slowdown reduces a person’s sensitivity to pain caused by TMD. See page 602 for one stretch-based relaxation technique.
See also Tooth Grinding