Top 5 Tips in Managing Jaw Clenching and Grinding
Have you noticed that when you get headaches, your jaw can hurt during or afterwards? Do you find that when you're stressed or anxious, the jaw or around the front of your mouth can be really tender? These could all be signs that you're clenching and grinding your jaw involuntarily. This presentation is more common than you think. And today I'm going to run you through my top five tips to manage your jaw clenching and grinding at home.
First, it's important to discuss the anatomy of the jaw and how it relates to your headaches and migraines. The main brain of your jaw is called your mandible, which is the brain that connects into the head through a ball and socket joint. The mandible itself is held by a bunch of really strong musculature that help you do things like talking, eating, and drinking. Your upper cervical vertebrae are very closely related to this area as well. Meaning, if your jaw is dysfunctional, it can lead to problems with the upper cervical spine and vice versa leading to headaches and migraines.
The most commonly tight muscles of the jaw are your masseter muscles, which runs from the outside of your jaw and into your face, medial and lateral pterygoids which are much deeper and internally inside the jaw, and your temporalis muscles, which are above and around your ear. When you chew and clench your jaw, these muscles are all activated in different amounts. The muscles can often get really tight when they're being used excessively during clenching and grinding and may require some manual therapy to actually help reduce this tension.
A really great exercises to try at home could be a myofascial release. Find the muscles of your temporalis above the ear and through the masseter. It should be quite tender to touch, which is normal and then slowly open and close your jaw while maintaining the pressure. This should slowly increase the length of these really tight muscles and helps the jaw decrease the tension.
Another really good one that can almost instantly decrease your tension is doing a jaw jiggle. All you want to do is open your mouth about halfway and jiggle your jaw to either side. The more it's done, the more the jaw can get mobilized and decrease the pain levels almost instantly.
Supplementation with magnesium has also been effective in releasing jaw tension, as well as decreasing the frequency, duration, and intensity of the headaches. Magnesium has been seen to help support healthy muscle contraction and relaxation, as well as relieved, muscular aches and pains in most parts of the body Most headache and migraine sufferers suffers as well as highly stressed individuals actually need a lot more magnesium and electrolytes than other people. They need magnesium to help them manage stress. It's recommended to consume about 300 to 400 milligrams of magnesium per day, with many factors influencing the amount required such as BMI, gender, and physical activity levels. So, adding magnesium to diet may significantly decrease jaw tension and your headaches and migraines.
Jaw clenching and grinding at night is a very common occurrence in a lot of people and a number of people don't realize they're doing it until their partner, or their practitioner mentions it. Grinding your teeth at night can not only be painful on the jaw muscles but can also wear down the teeth themselves. The jaws splints are something that's commonly prescribed by dentists to people who need help with the grinding of their teeth at night. These splints are highly recommended to protect the integrity of your teeth and prevent the wearing down over time to prevent long-term damage. Although the splints helped to decrease the damage to the teeth, they unfortunately might not help the jaw clenching and grinding. But in some individuals, they do so, I highly recommend getting on top of that one.
The last point and potentially the most important point I'd like to make is that jaw clenching and grinding does not always has something to do with musculoskeletal system. Clenching and grinding can be a habitual response to stress and therefore manual therapy can be effective. Then it may not solve the complete their problem completely. To get rid of your clenching and grinding completely, a multimodality response is highly recommended with the use of psychological services to help manage the stress and the reasons you might be experiencing the jaw clenching in the first place.
Hopefully some of these tips help you to better understand your jaw clenching and grinding and their relationships with your headaches and migraines. If you're suffering with any of these issues, send us a message and we'll get back to you or you can book a FREE consultation here.
