Why is head position so important for TMJ disorders?

Do this for me right now: Bite down and tell me where your teeth first contact.

Note exactly where your teeth touch and what you are feeling. Do you have any pain or strain? Does everything feel symmetrical? Now tip your head all the way back looking at the ceiling and bite down again. What happened now? Did your first tooth contact change? Did you get any strain or pain in your jaw? Now lastly tip your head left or right or down and bite down. Again, you should notice that your tooth contact will change depending on head position. Forgive me if I have said this before but posture of the head and neck is the key to managing TMJ symptoms. It is called the Temporal mandibular joint. Temporal (yellow) is the bone that is within the cranium (the colored bones)

The temporal bone is the yellow bone here. As you can see it houses the jaw joint and the ear canal right behind the jaw joint, behind the ear canal is the mastoid process which houses our vestibular system which is responsible for our balance and for telling our brain how to keep our head level. 50% of jaw position occurs at the cranium, 50% occurs at the mandible. Wherever the cranium sits the temporal bone sits they are permanently fixed after we are babies. Due to gravity the mandible (jawbone) hangs downward when we are in normal upright position, so if the head is tilted, one side of our jaw joint and muscles gets overstretched the other gets compressed. If the head is excessively forward the muscles that attach the jaw to the neck and the skull will get over stretched compressing the jaw joints. Any of these abnormal positions of the cranium can also cause a bite discrepancy that you may or may not notice.

If you have problems with TMJD, facial pain, facial tension the first thing we need to do is change the position of the cranium. Many times, we only need a millimeter of movement for relief to occur and positive changes to start taking effect.

For the first 5 years I treated TMJD I only treated the neck and never did anything to the jaw, but most of my patients found relief, and this is why. If you want to start seeing relief of jaw pain begin with position of the cranium.

Here is the link to the 3 exercises that will get you going in the right direction for head position. https://youtu.be/SEIYOaZ1rhw OR watch below!

It is better to begin with the 2 neck exercises followed by immediately performing the fish exercise. Spend time doing things you love with people you care about. Dr Josh