5 Oral Habits to Avoid and Lessen TMJ Pain

Some oral habits, that you may or may not be aware of, can aggravate and perpetuate your TMJ pain. These habits involve repetitive use of your biting muscles resulting in increased tension, tightness, fatigue and subsequent pain in the jaw muscles. Not only can these muscles become more painful, but they can also refer pain to other parts of your face and head. While these habits may or may not be the initial cause of TMJ or jaw and face pain, they can make your existing pain much worse, and make it difficult to break the tension-pain cycle. In medical jargon, these oral habits are called oral parafunctional habits.

The Top 5 Oral Habits to Avoid are:

1. Clenching your teeth together or bracing/holding tension in your jaw muscles without tooth contact.
2. Grinding your teeth (also called bruxism). This often occurs during your sleep. Not only does this overwork your jaw muscles, but it can cause excessive wear on your teeth.
3. Biting the inside of your cheeks, lips or tongue.
4. Biting nails, pencils, pens, toothpicks, flossing sticks etc.
5. Gum chewing, ice crunching, biting hard candy. These activities, over a long time, not only can create muscle overuse and pain, but tend to unevenly load one side of the jaw.  

Be mindful of your oral habits

Take a few moments to review this list, and see if you “catch” yourself doing any of these habits during your day. Set alarms or reminders on your phone/computer to remind you to do a self awareness check. Start being mindful of what you do with your teeth, cheeks, lips and tongue when you are at home, at work, during recreation or while in transit.

Try and be aware of what you do with your teeth, cheeks, lips and tongue when you are stressed, overloaded and trying to keep it all together? It may be during physical stress or an emotional stress.  What do you do with your teeth, cheeks, lips and tongue when concentrating intensely on a specific task? When you’re at the computer or reading? While writing or texting?  When you are bored? Sitting on the bus or train? During a movie? 

Perhaps you will notice pain after a certain activity which will be a clear indicator to you that it is aggravating your pain. You may notice pain and tightness in the jaw muscles and face when you wake up in the morning, which may indicate that you were clenching or grinding while asleep. Some people even awaken during the night due to excessive grinding. It is also possible that you have one of the above habits, but will not notice immediate pain aggravation afterwards. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the habit is healthy for your jaw muscles or joints in the future.

A Physical Therapist specializing in TMJ disorders can assist you in recommending alternative strategies to overcome oral habits. No one strategy will work for everyone in every situation. It’s a very gradual process of being more mindful of your oral habits in various situations and making substantial cognitive effort to replace them with effective substitute strategies that do not compromise the health of your muscles and joints. Some strategies will be discussed in future blogs, so stay tuned.

If there is a will to be pain free naturally and prevent future jaw, face and neck pain and headaches….there is a way!