THE specific BLOG

What a TMJ Headache is Telling You

Have you ever eaten a bunch of starbursts?

When I was in high school I would always get starbursts from the vending machines.

I would go through the whole pack in the course of an afternoon…at the same time I would notice that my jaw would get a little sore from all the chewing I would be doing…as they can be quite hard sometimes!

I’m thankful that the only sort of jaw soreness that I’ve ever experienced was from eating too many starbursts in a short amount of time.

There are a lot of other people out there who deal with jaw soreness, pain, clicking, tension, and much more every single day. This is often referred to as TMJ Dysfunction, or TMD. It is usually due to an issue with the jaw, the joint of the jaw, the ligaments, and muscles of the jaw.

When people think of TMD they usually only think of the jaw, which is understandable as that’s where the pain is being experienced. What gets tricky is a lot of people experience TMJ Dysfunction pain along with headaches. How the heck does that happen?!

The Hip Bone’s Connected To The Leg Bone…

You must remember that song from being a kid or from singing it with your kid.

It may seem silly but it can really help us understand why we experience certain things in our body.

Think about it….the jaw bone is connected to the cheek bone

Which is really your skull.

With this basic knowledge let me break this down a little bit more for you.

Maybe the pain and dysfunction that is being experienced in your jaw isn’t actually from your jaw. Maybe it’s because of your head/skull! It’s like a giant hinge/door. If our door frame is a little bit out of square, our door isn’t going to be able to close properly or close at all.

The same can be said about our jaw! If our head isn’t on our spine correctly, the jaw definitely won’t be able to open and close properly. This can be a huge cause of pain and discomfort in the jaw region.

Most people haven’t thought of jaw pain in this way before and they realize that having a head that’s on correctly is vitally important. Now sure if you’re using your jaw excessively or chewing a bunch of really hard food it’s going to cause pain but if you’re living your normal life and suddenly your jaw starts to hurt this may be the cause!

The Link to Headaches

I hope you’re following along up to this point so far. You might be wondering how your TMJ Disorder can lead to a headache. This is a fair concern and it really comes down to what we just talked about…your head being on straight!

If our head isn’t on straight (tilting to one side or the other) that is caused by a misalignment of the top bones in the neck. The C1 vertebrae is what the skull sits on and is how it’s connected to our body, along with a lot of muscles that are connecting it to that as well. If we have a misalignment of either C1 or C2 it causes our head to sit crooked. This not only causes the biomechanics of the jaw to be impacted but also impacts all of the muscles attached to our head.

The brain doesn’t want our head to be crooked, it wants it straight and rightfully so. We get most of our information from areas of our head. If our head is crooked then the information we are receiving can be skewed in a sense. In order to compensate for this the brain will actually contract and tighten certain muscles to help pull the head back to a straight position.

This is a smart thing that the body does but in turn it can also cause headaches.

The muscular imbalance can cause tension throughout the head and neck but also tension within the nervous system, which can be a major player when it comes to headaches.

It’s no wonder that if you have jaw pain you also may have headaches as well. They are basically directly related.

The Solution

Now that we know that both of these can be caused by the head not sitting on the body straight, how do we go about getting things straightened out?! We can look at things like certain exercises or stretches, massage and acupuncture can help quite a bit, dentists will recommend mouth guards to realign the jaw as well.

What we do at The Specific Chiropractic Center in Naples is focus on the top two bones in the neck. We make sure that these bones are in proper alignment. This is a big deal as we mentioned earlier that the heads position is in direct correlation with how C1 and C2 are positioned. We determine if there is any sort of dysfunction or misalignment with these bones that may be impacting the head and jaw.

We do this by taking a very specific set of x-rays that looks at these bones. If we see that there is some sort of misalignment we make a specific adjustment to either C1 or C2, depending on which one is misaligned. This is something that isn’t a one and done type of deal. It takes multiple visits to retrain these bones to stay in proper alignment but usually over the course of 6-8 months we see that these start to hold their position consistently.

Yes your jaw pain may not be caused by eating an exorbitant amount of starburst in a day but now you know why you might be experiencing not only jaw pain but also headaches as well. If this is something that you struggle with commonly I highly recommend you do something about it so it doesn’t become a bigger problem as time goes on. If you think what we do here at The Specific could be of any benefit to you, reach out! We offer complimentary consultations to help decide whether we can help you or not!