Neck pain, upper back pain, ear symptoms, with or without jaw symptoms?.Most importantly, treatment has to be focused on your lifestyle, including identifying any habits that may contribute to your pain, emotional or physical stress, and sleep quality. Since everyone’s symptoms are different, it’s important that treatment be tailored to your specific symptoms, but can include myofascial release techniques, soft or deep tissue mobilization, joint mobilizations, dry needling with electrical stimulation, specific exercises to help posture, and spinal manipulation when appropriate. Physical therapists with additional training in treating TMD learn special hands-on treatment techniques to reduce jaw joint tension and pain. The list of pain and problems related to TMD is long, but many are related to the surrounding muscles. Do you clench or grind your teeth at night, chew gum frequently, bite your cheek, lips, nails, or pens? All of these habits increase the tension of the muscles connected to your jaw and can cause symptoms of TMD. Bad habits that unnecessarily create more muscle stress are another common cause. Interestingly, a combination of stress, poor sleep, and poor posture can actually be the primary cause. However, most people have no idea why their symptoms began. Occasionally, an injury to the jaw is the obvious culprit. Getting down to the root cause if your TMD symptoms is an important first step in the process of getting relief. This issue affects women more than men and most commonly affects people from 25-44 years old. TMD is the second most common musculoskeletal pain behind low back pain, causing one in three people to have at least one symptom. TMD (temporomandibular dysfunction) refers to pain or problems with the TMJ.

If you press your finger into the indentation just in front of your ear, then open and close your mouth, you’ll feel your jaw joint moving. The temporomandibular joint (or TMJ) is located just in front of your ear. Interestingly, you may experience upper back or neck symptoms and not be aware that your jaw muscles may be to blame. Some have only one or two mild symptoms and others may suffer from nearly all of these. Pain related to the jaw joint and muscles surrounding the joint can cause a long list of symptoms, including headaches, muscle tension, neck pain, upper back pain, ear pain, ear fullness, jaw pain, popping, pain when chewing, and lockjaw. Those who suffer from problems related to the jaw know that it’s no joke.

MRIs can reveal problems with the joint’s disk.By Jake Hoeppner, DPT, OCS and Brian McQuilkin, DPT, OCS.

A CT scan can provide detailed images of the bones involved in the joint.

Press on areas around jaw to identify sites of pain or discomfort.

Listen to and feel jaw when open and close mouth.

A change in the way the upper and lower teeth fit together.

Painful clicking, popping or grating in the jaw joint when opening or closing the mouth,.

Limited movement or locking of the jaw,.

Radiating pain in the face, jaw, or neck,.

Injury to the TMJ or to its cartilage disc can cause TMJ pain.

For example, Rheumatoid Arthritis and gout are both types of arthritis which may affect various joints in the body and they can sometimes affect the jaw joint. This problem tends to affect older rather than younger people. Sometimes this is due to a Type of Arthritis called Osteoarthritis.

Wear and tear to the inside of the joint – for example, wear and tear to the cartilage.

Some doctors call this type of problem a pain syndrome because the exact cause of the pain is not known. We don’t know why this happens but it may be linked to stress, or to some other process which affects pain sensitivity. For example, there are some rare kinds of movement disorders (called orofacial dystonias) which cause excessive jaw clenching.

Rarely, other conditions make the jaw muscles overactive.

Overuse of the jaw muscles, such as habitually chewing gum, or biting nails.People also clench their jaw during the day if they are feeling tense or anxious. This can occur if you clench your jaw a lot during sleep, which is quite common. Problems with the muscles may be caused by: The muscle problems are the most common type, particularly for younger people. Problems linked to the muscles working the joint.

Feeling off balance lock jaw