Working Out Your Jaw: Can TMJ Exercises Relieve You of TMJ?

Temporomandibular joint disorders are a leading cause of chronic facial pain as well as headaches, jaw pain and earaches. An article from http://happytoothnc.com has showed us that several TMJ exercises that can help relieve TMJ:

• Find two 5-minute periods each day, when you are relaxed, and perform this exercise while sitting upright in a chair.

• Close your mouth to touch your upper and lower teeth without clenching them. Rest the tip of your tongue on your palate behind your upper teeth.

• Run the tip of your tongue backwards towards your soft palate as far as you can, keeping your teeth together.

• Force your tongue back gently to maintain contact with the soft palate. Then slowly open your mouth until you feel your tongue being pulled away. Keep your mouth open in this position for five seconds before closing your mouth to relax.

• Repeat this process slowly but firmly for five minutes. Use a mirror at first to make sure your teeth are closed straight up and down, and not off to either side.

• As you open your mouth, you should feel tension under your chin and in the back of your neck. But you should not hear any clicks or noise from your joints. If you do, restart until the exercise is click-free. Do not perform this exercise more than the recommended 5 minutes twice daily for the first week. But do them as often as you can thereafter.

• Note that you may experience worse pain at first, as your jaw gets used to the new movement. But the pain will subside. And after about 2 or 3 weeks of the exercise, your muscles will be retrained so that your jaw opens and closes smoothly without clicking.

• Also, to minimize pain and issues caused by TMD, avoid biting your nails, biting your lower lip, biting on your front teeth and closing your upper and lower teeth together while resting or sleeping.

• Resisted mouth opening: Place your thumb or two fingers under your chin and open your mouth slowly, while pushing up gently on your chin with your thumb. Hold for three to six seconds and then close your mouth slowly.

• Resisted mouth closing: Place your thumbs under your chin and your two index fingers on the ridge between your mouth and the bottom of your chin. Push down gently on your chin as you close your mouth.

• Tongue up: Slowly open and close your mouth while touching the roof of your mouth with your tongue.

• Side-to-side jaw movement: Place an object about .25” thick (for example, two tongue depressors) between your front teeth. Slowly move your jaw from side to side. Increase the thickness of the object as the exercise becomes easier.

• Forward jaw movement: Place an object about .25” thick between your front teeth and move your bottom jaw forward so that the bottom teeth are in front of the top teeth. Increase the thickness of the object as the exercise becomes easier.

Read more here:

http://happytoothnc.com/tmj-exercises/

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