Jaw Pain, Neck Pain, Chronic Headaches

I had quite a few patients last week, who had different backgrounds – men, women, high schoolers, who had issues that related back to their jaw tension.

I have been taking an intensive four month continuing education program and our most recent module was on how the pelvic floor relates to jaw tension and ties it into anatomy trains, that fascial connection from one body part to another, and how that kind of all plays in.

If you don’t notice that you clench your teeth in the day or at night, you might have other problems prop up in other areas like a chronically tense neck, pelvic floor issues, and those kinds of issues. You could also have jaw pain such as clicking, popping, and grinding. It is more accessible to change your habits during the day, but it is extremely hard to change when you are sleeping.    

What I Ask My Patients To Do Regarding Clenching Our Teeth When We Are Asleep  

I have been giving people things to do to combat the portion of clenching our teeth when we are asleep. There are release things that we can do with yoga tune-up balls or we can use our hands. There are different muscles that do the gripping or the clenching  of the jaw and can be easily accessed superficially. These muscles would be temporalis and masseter. 

Other muscles involved in jaw clenching are the mentalis muscles, which are around the mouth, and the buccinators muscle that can be accessed from inside the mouth. I posted a video on my youtube channel to show you how to access these muscles with your thumbs from inside your mouth. 

One of my patients this week mentioned that their dentist told them they have probably been clenching their teeth. Dentists want to protect the teeth so they often suggest using a guard. A guard is great for protecting the teeth, but if you think about it, when you have a guard on your teeth, you are not preventing yourself from gripping down.  You are only preventing harm to your teeth. We might still be creating tension and could still get headaches from it, TMJ issues, neck pain issues, and pelvic floor issues despite having a guard.

Once you have addressed the muscular issues, you can try to do some stuff to help down regulate your nervous system and put you into that parasympathetic state, the rest and relax state.  This is to help relax the jaw for sleep. I love to have people do their breathing exercises because engaging their diaphragm is going to rub on their vagus nerves and that is going to help switch you over to the rest and restore state. You can try doing different breath work and meditating.  You can try guided meditation, Vedic meditation, and or whatever works best for you. .

If meditating is not for you yet. Try doing a body scan before bed. You would start at your head and work your way down. Tense up the very top of your head and think of melting into your pillow or your mattress and then you can scrunch up your eyes and hold them really tight then relax. After that, allow the cheeks to relax, allow the teeth to fall open. You will then tense up the shoulders by drawing them towards your ears, and then fully relax them. Next is to tense up the biceps and then relax again. Do the same thing for the rest of your body and be sure to go all the way down to the toes. Everything you can think of to be tensed, flexed, or squeezed, do it and then relax. After being completely relaxed, you can now go to sleep.  These help you focus on something else when you struggle with clearing your mind. 

Breathing With Your Mouth When Sleeping In Relation To Jaw And Neck Tightness

The other thing to notice that I’ve picked up from a few different sources is taping your mouth shut when you are sleeping. The first time I heard about this was from Dr. Perry Nickelston. It might sound weird and could be scary for some people, but if you are a mouth breather when you are sleeping, that can affect the tightness of your neck and jaw.  

One interesting thing I found through this current module I am working through, if you are a mouth breather throughout the day, throughout the night, and whenever, the distance caused by the parting of your lips will atrophy and shorten over time. That to me was so interesting because that translates into altering your sleep and how we engage our diaphragm. What they suggested to help retrain yourself to lengthen the tissue and work on those muscles that keep the lips together is to use a piece of theraband tubing and put it on the upper lip between the teeth and the lip as well as on the lower lip. Draw them together for 15 minutes at a time and you will be surprised at how fatigued you will get if you are a chronic mouth breather. The effort to keep the mouth together with the tubing will essentially retrain and stretch that area so you can more easily have the lips together and not parted.

Tongue Placements

Another big thing with that fascial line all the way down to our pelvic floor is tongue placements. 

If you are normally just sitting with your lips closed, where is your tongue at? Is the tip of your tongue touching the top front teeth?

Many people who walk through my office has a forward head posture. Their head is shifted forward. If your tongue touches the top of the teeth and out, do you feel like it makes your head shift forward? I myself have a forward head posture and the tip of my tongue touches the top front teeth. This is because I see patients all day and I am always working on my computer. I do a lot of things that make my head come forward.

Ideally, instead of the tip of your tongue touching the teeth, you would take the middle of your tongue and press it to the very highest point of the roof of your mouth, and the tip of the tongue should not be touching anything. If you have the tip of your tongue touching your top front teeth, you should try out the ideal position.  See if that suddenly shifts where your head naturally goes.

Conclusion

If you are someone who is struggling with chronic neck pain, pelvic floor issues, headaches, or TMJ, these are all very interesting things to think of and take note of in yourself throughout the day. If any of those things you might be able to change, note that these are super subtle exercises and very easy things to do.

They can make a lot of drastic changes and give yourself a lot of benefits in relation to something you might have been struggling with for a long time.

I will share more of the new things that I learn because I try to keep doing continuing education all the time and expect that I will be sharing whatever tidbits I get in the future.

If you have any questions, you can drop it in the comment section or you can send me a message through Facebook or Instagram. I’d be happy to do another podcast about your questions. Also, if you want me to talk about something specific, let me know!

You can also check my TikTok account as I use the platform to educate viewers about movement, chiropractic education, yoga, pregnancy, and more!