Hi everyone and welcome back to my YouTube channel! My name is Priya Mistry and I'm a General
Dentist with a practice dedicated to taking care of patients with TMJ disorders. Today's video
is going to be about how to relieve jaw pain, headaches, and neck pain. Before we delve right
in, if you are suffering with these I just want to forewarn that these exercises will not necessarily
be helpful if you also have clicking or popping within your jaw joint itself, or crackling noises,
or you've experienced incidents of locking or catching within the joint. So again,
this is mainly for headaches, jaw pain, neck pain, and it can affect shoulder pain as well.
Another thing I wanted to say before delving right in, is that TMJ relief is sometimes more
about NOT doing than it is about actually doing so I wanted to go over some things not to do
first before we delve into what you can do. First and foremost, you really want to avoid chewing
hard to chew foods such as steak, bagels, beef jerky, and salads. This can put a lot of excess
pressure on the joints and the muscles and when you avoid those foods, it gives everything a break
and a chance to just sort of relax and feel better. Second, you definitely want to avoid
clenching or grinding your teeth during the day. You can't really stop or control this at night,
but during the day having an awareness of where your teeth are is always a really good place to
start with jaw relief. Your lips should be together when you're not speaking or eating,
and your teeth should actually be apart - so lips, together teeth apart. Having this awareness
during the day can go a long way in terms of helping with joint pain or muscle pain as well.
Third, you definitely want to NOT open to your maximum opening so if you can open
your mouth really, really wide - you kind of want to tone that down to 85
90 percent of your maximum opening.. so when you go to bite into a sandwich, or you go to yawn,
just sort of reel it in a little bit. That'll give the joints and the muscles a little break as well.
Fourth, you want to avoid any bad habits like biting your nails, or chewing on a pen
or pencil, or opening things with your teeth. This puts unnecessary
strain on the joints and muscles as well. Another thing that you want to NOT do is rest with your
fist sort of propped up against your jaw or your chin and you want to make sure you don't sleep
like that as well. What that does is it ends up putting a lot of lateral or sideways pressure
on the joints. These joints [the TMJs] are built to take up and down and forward
and backward pressure, but they are not built to take a lot of sideways pressure..
so getting that pressure off of those joints and the muscles that surrounds them is always good.
Another thing you don't want to do is drink too much caffeine! What caffeine can do is
dehydrate the muscles and dehydrated, overworked muscles will send out pain signals a lot more than
hydrated and and not overworked muscles. And lastly, you want to make sure that you're avoiding
frequent exposures to sugar throughout the day. A lot of us will graze all day or snack all day
and unfortunately, sugar is linked to depression, to an increased proclivity for headaches.. and so
really checking carefully what you're eating all day can be super helpful. And
sugar is sort of snuck into a lot of different products, so just being really careful, reading
the labels of what you eat, knowing what you're putting into your body can really go a long way.
So those are sort of the DONT'S the DO'S. What you CAN do, there is one exercise that
can be a little bit beneficial if you are having clicking or popping in your joint
and that exercise is called the "Six by Six". So what we ask you to do for this exercise is bring
your teeth edge to edge as if you're biting off a thread, and then open and close six times almost
to your maximum opening. And when you close, you want to close back to that edge to edge position.
What that does is it lubricates the jaw joint, one, and two, it actually brings the
condyle - which is the little bony knob that our jawbone ends on - it brings it closer to the disc
that's misplaced within the joint that's causing the clicking and popping, so it can help with
that. You don't want to do it more than six times a day; you can definitely overdo it with
this exercise. What that kind of looks like is bringing your teeth edge to edge and then open...
..and you can do that six times, six times a day. Again, that's called the "Six by Six". What you
can do next is train your tongue. Your tongue - the tip, the middle, and the back - should be up
elevated against the roof of your mouth if possible. If you feel like this is
not possible or it's causing strain on your throat, or your neck, or your head in general,
I wouldn't try to do this. That might indicate that you have a tongue tie, which there will be
a whole other video on tongue ties alone - so that'll come later. But if you're able to train
your tongue to be against the roof of your mouth - the entire tongue - and you're able to breathe
through your nose instead of your tongue being low on the floor of your mouth and mouth breathing,
that's always a good relaxing thing for the muscles of the jaw as well.
Third, there are some exercises that you can do. I wanted to go over the ones that you can
do inside your mouth and then we'll go over the ones that you would do outside your mouth.
For the intra-oral or the exercises inside your mouth, you definitely want to wash your hands
really well and grab a pair of gloves, so I'm going to get my gloves on and then we'll continue.
All right, I'm back! So there are three exercises you can do inside your mouth. One is the floor
of mouth release - so what that is, is you take your pointer finger on the same side of the mouth
and you find where your tooth and your gums meet on the inside of these bottom teeth..
and you apply a little bit of pressure at that junction all the way back to the molar. Then once
you get back, you drop your finger down and put a little bit of pressure on the floor of your mouth
and slowly come all the way back. If there are any areas that are restricted or feel tighter,
you can apply a little bit more pressure there or just stay there a little bit longer with the same
amount of pressure. But this can really relieve a lot of the tension that a lot of us hold in
the floor of our mouths without even realizing it. So I'm going to show you what that looks
like. I'm about to look really cool here, so bear with me here. Take your pointer finger..
..so you can see at the end, I was quite a bit deeper down in there than at the beginning. I
really did drop my finger down into the floor of the mouth in the back. You want to make sure you
don't have long nails for this too because that could really hurt, so clip your nails if you're
going to do that one. The second one is the lateral pterygoid release, so for that one:
same side, same hand. You're going to use your pinky. Not everybody can reach this muscle,
so this may not work out if you don't have small fingers. But if you do and you can reach back
there, this can feel really good! This lateral pterygoid muscle is a troublemaker - it can
cause a lot of jaw pain and headaches. What you want to do is hook your finger onto your
cheek and go as far back as you can above that last upper molar into the tissue way up there,
and you just want to find kind of where it may be sore and apply a little bit
of pressure back there. I'm going to go ahead and show you guys what that looks like on me..
..good, and then you can just release out. That one feels really good. My patients love
it when I do that for them, but again, not everybody can do it on themselves.
The last one inside the mouth is the medial pterygoid, and this is
one hand to the opposite side. Okay, so with this one what you want to do is hook your thumb inside
all the way back till you feel the border of your jawbone and you want to go on the internal aspect,
the medial aspect, of that.. and then with your pointer finger you want to hold on to your
cheekbone here and then you want to rub your thumb all the way up the internal border of the mandible
and then up into the tissue and then out. I'll show you what that looks like as well..
..so you can do that slowly. It feels better if you do it a little slower than I did it, but
that'll get you to relieve some areas of tension within the mouth and those are really really
effective if you're having a lot of discomfort. Another exercise that you can do outside of your
mouth is rubbing the temples as well as the masseters. So this temporalis muscle here,
we use it a lot when we're clenching or grinding our teeth and it can lead to temple headaches,
tension headaches. So the way to sort of rub that area is to grab your hands like this
and place your fingers against the temporalis muscle and apply as much pressure as feels good
and rub all the way back. The way I'm rubbing is the way the fibers of this muscle run,
so that's how you want to massage that area out. As for the masseters,
you're going to start right where your cheekbones end and go all the way down..
..and you can do that a few times too. People love how that feels! Another muscle that carries a lot
of tension is called the sternocleidomastoid muscle, so I'll just call it the SCM because
that's quite a mouthful. That is this band of tissue right here - or band of muscle,
rather - right there that you're seeing. What you can do is turn your head so you can get a good
grip on it and just pinch stopping where there are areas that feel tighter or knotted or restricted,
and that can really feed up and affect the jaw joint. So you can of course do that on both sides.
Another area we hold a lot of tension is the trapezius muscle, which is just the the back
right here so if you have like a massaging tool that vibrates or you can even just use your
fingers or ask someone to get in there for you.. but massaging all the way up the trapezius muscle
to the base of the skull feels really good and can go a long way in relieving a lot of tension that
we all hold in those areas. Lastly, I wanted to talk a little bit about the computer head
posture - that's what I call it. A lot of us are always hunched forward at our computers or hunched
forward on our phones and so this - these two exercises actually - really can help relieve any
of the tension that's caused by that. Every inch that our head is forward, that's an additional
five pounds five to ten pounds, of pressure on our neck, and that can lead to a lot of pain. So
really, holding your head back over your shoulders - so imagining there's a string at the top of
your head pulling everything up - and holding that position for 30 seconds to a minute a couple times
a day can really go a long way. And lastly there's another exercise where you can take your hands
and grab the back of your head tilt your chin down and actually bring your elbows forward
and that feels really really good for everything along the back of the neck down to the trapezius
and the shoulders; so that can help a lot and holding that position for 30 seconds to a minute
a couple times a day can go a long way. Another thing that you can try doing is introducing
magnesium into your diet! Magnesium can go a long way in terms of helping dysfunctional muscles,
and dysfunctional muscles that guide and support the jaw is the number one reason for headaches,
jaw pain, neck pain. So really getting those muscles relief is helpful.
I have linked below a calcium magnesium supplement that has worked really well for our patients.
Another thing to try is a topical cream that works really well called Theraflex;
I myself have not used this but my mentor - Dr. Parker - has experience with it and
some of our patients do too. One patient in particular said that it was her lifesaver during
all of quarantine. She said that it helped her so much because she couldn't get in here
for physical therapy; we were closed. And there is a book, as well, that I recommend.
It's called "the TMJ Healing Plan" and I will have that linked below too. That has some
really great postures and exercises and tons of information as to why the TMJ is acting up.
Last couple things is remember to stay hydrated! Water is so good for our bodies! It's so good for
our muscles, flushing out toxins so stay hydrated! Most of us do not drink enough water every day,
and make sure that you're not drinking too much caffeine! So more water than caffeine.
Remember to get up walk around, exercis,e get your blood flowing, get your circulation going,
bring new blood to those muscles that are stagnant and angry and overworked and fatigued!
That's always good, and I personally really like to meditate - so meditation can just really calm
the mind the body and the soul bring a mind-body connection that maybe wasn't there before.
And so kind of all of these things together the - DONTs and the DO'S, I think will really work
towards getting you some great jaw relief. I do want to say again that if it's a problem within
the joint, seeing the specialist is probably the best way to go. So thank you guys so much
for watching. I hope that this was helpful to you and I hope to see you all again soon! Thank you!