How to Deal With TMJ Safely

TMJ exercises refer to exercises a TMJ patient can use to relieve their TMJ symptoms. TMJ stands for Temporomandibular joint which are the joints on either side of your face that connect your jawbone to your skull. When someone is diagnosed with a TMJ disorder they could be experiencing trouble or pain with eating, sleeping, breathing, yawning, or talking.

The TMJ disorder could affect your neck, ears, jaw, back and head. Some of the symptoms associated with TMJ are clicking, popping, or grating noises when you open and close your mouth, trouble opening your mouth, jaw pain, earaches, headaches or migraines, neck pains, and shoulder pains.

The most common cause for the TMJ disorder is clenching or grinding your teeth in your sleep because of stress or tension. If you are a TMJ patient and stress or tension is the root cause you will need to do more than just TMJ exercises. If you do TMJ exercises and fail to do something about your stress levels you will keep on damaging your TMJ in your sleep.

Here are some TMJ Exercises:

1. Place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth and open your mouth as far as possible without letting your tongue lose contact. Breathe in slowly with a two count as you open your mouth and then use a two count to close your mouth. Repeat this 10 times.

2. Put your chin on your fist and try to open your mouth. If your jaw has been clicking when you open your mouth you want to make sure you are not pushing hard enough for that to happen with this exercise. Hold the pressure for 10 seconds then release. Do this 10 times.

3. Push your hand against one side of your jaw below the joint and try to hold steady pressure. Hold for 10 seconds and then do the other side. Repeat until you have done each side 10 times.

4. Now you want to press 1 finger on each side of your face and open your mouth slowly using your fingers to keep your jaw from clicking. If your jaw does click you need to start over and try it even slower to keep it from clicking.

5. For this exercise you want to hold your jaw between your thumb and pointer finger. Then you want to relax your jaw and very carefully shake your chin back and forth so your jaw can release and move freely.

If you repeat these TMJ exercises every day or even more times per day it shouldn't be long before you start to feel better. But I cannot stress enough that if your TMJ disorder is caused by stress you will need to aggressively attack that with a separate treatment plan that you can do along with your TMJ exercises.