Nearly everyone on occasion experiences a throbbing headache that interferes with concentration or saps the joy from the day. Surprisingly, the pain that emanates from the head can be traced back to the teeth, the bite relationship and the alignment of the lower jaw. Pain doesn’t happen randomly or because of bad luck, there’s a cause and effect to almost everything in the human body.
With many headaches the cause is the temporomandibular joint, or TMJ, the place at the front of the ear where the lower jaw and the temporal bone on the side of the head meet. Sometimes with aging, the bite and lower jaw loose alignment, putting additional strain on muscles, which leads to the headaches. And for many, TMJ headaches aren’t going away. Medication will mask the pain, not cure the underlying problem, expert says.
But how do you know a headache is caused by TMJ? According to Dr. Fred Abeles, author of the book Break Away: The New Method for Treating Chronic Headaches, Migraines and TMJ Without Medication.
5 Signs Your Headache May Be Caused By TMJ
- Your jaw clicks or pops. Any joint in your body should work silently and seamlessly, Abeles says. If your jaw clicks or pops when you open or close it, it’s a clear sign that the lower half of the joint is not in the proper position. Even if the popping and clicking don’t produce pain, he says, the muscles that have to support and stabilize the joint become fatigued and will produce pain.
- Your bite feels off. The TMJ is the only joint in the human body that has 28 teeth stuck between the opening and closing motion of the joint to complicate things. Every other joint is completely controlled by muscles, and the position of the joint, its movement and range of motion are mediated by muscle. The TMJ’s position is dictated by where our teeth come together in our bite. So if your bite feels off or your teeth don’t fit together well, there’s a good chance your TMJ joints are off, too.
- You have pain around your forehead, temples, back of head or radiating down your neck. Ninety percent of pain comes from muscle. If your muscles are not functioning well because of fatigue from supporting one or both of your TMJ joints in an improper position, they produce pain. It’s much like when you exercise or work hard and feel muscle pain later. The only difference is that TMJ is more subtle and chronic.
- You have forward head posture. Our heads are supposed to be centered over our shoulders. If yours is in front of your shoulders when you are upright, you have “forward head posture.” That relates to your bite and your airway. The human head weighs about eight to 10 pounds. The farther forward it is off the center axis, the more strain it places on neck muscles and vertebrae.
- You snore. Snoring is a red flag that respiration during sleep is disturbed. Several factors can lead to snoring, but one of the most important is the position of the lower jaw, he says. If your lower jaw is a little too far back, then the tongue is farther back as well. If the tongue is slightly farther back than optimal it vibrates against our soft palate, closes off our airway and we snore. The snoring doesn’t cause the headache, he says, but it could be a sign the lower jaw is too far back. As a result, the muscles that support the jaw in an improper position produce the headache pain.
