Complaints & connections · borters.ch
Dysfunctio craniomandibularis
Clicking without pain needs no treatment — and the teeth should not touch during the day at all, only when swallowing.
Also known as: TMD · temporomandibular disorder · jaw joint and chewing muscle problems
Open in the tool — with search and all the links →This compilation is for information and replaces neither medical diagnosis nor treatment. If you have symptoms, see a doctor.
Temporomandibular trouble gathers three things that are treated differently. Commonest is muscle pain: the chewing muscles are overworked, tender to pressure and pull into temple, ear and neck. Less often the joint itself hurts, and thirdly there is displacement of the cartilage disc in the joint, which produces the familiar clicking. Here lies the most important and most reassuring sentence on the subject: clicking without pain and without restriction needs no treatment. A great many people click, and most never become ill from it. What is treated is what hurts or limits movement. Behind it almost always stands an overload: grinding at night, but above all the unnoticed pressing of the teeth together during the day under tension and concentration. The teeth should not touch at all in everyday life — only when swallowing. Anyone who knows this catches themselves several times a day. Effective are a splint for the night, physiotherapy, warmth, exercises and reducing tension. Neither effective nor reversible are procedures that permanently change the bite; they do not come first.
The teeth touch in everyday life only when swallowing — a few minutes a day in total. Reminding oneself several times a day, for instance with small stickers on the screen, takes the main load off the chewing muscles. It is the most effective free lever there is.
It does not prevent the grinding but spreads the force and protects the teeth. With muscle pain it often brings clear relief within weeks.
A warm compress on the cheek, with slow opening and closing, circling and a gentle stretch — a few minutes twice a day. Physiotherapy guides this precisely.
No chewing gum, no hard crusts, no big burger, a fist under the chin when yawning. A gentle period of two to three weeks is often enough.
Sleep, strain and jaw trouble are closely linked. Whatever improves sleep and lowers tension works on the jaw as well — and lasts longer than any splint.
Grinding teeth down, extensive crowns or a procedure on the joint do not come first. By far the largest share improves with the reversible measures — and what has been ground away does not grow back.
A bite splint does not change the jaw joint — it protects the teeth and spreads the pressure, and works for some people over weeks. Anti-inflammatories help in the acute phase. What works reliably in reviews is explanation and self-exercise: relaxing the jaw, not letting the teeth touch during the day, warmth, gentle movement — over four to eight weeks. Irreversible work on the bite comes at the end, not the beginning.
The jaw normally opens forty to fifty millimetres; under thirty counts as limited. A click without pain and without locking affects up to one in three people and needs no treatment. In most, the complaints improve within four to eight weeks with explanation and self-exercise. At rest the teeth should not touch — normally they do so for less than twenty minutes in total across the day.
Jaw pain and headache right after waking speak for grinding at night. Often a bed partner knows, or worn teeth show it.
That is the commonest finding of all, and it needs nothing beyond the information that it needs nothing. Treatment begins when pain or a restriction is added.
From there it pulls into temple, cheek and neck. Many take it for an ear problem — with the jaw joint it hurts on chewing and yawning, not on hearing.
Normal is about three of one’s own finger widths between the front teeth. A sudden lock in which the mouth stays closed belongs looked at quickly.
The connection is so reliable that it is itself part of the treatment. Sleep, strain and jaw trouble almost always move together.
A common wrong turn: the pain seems to sit in the tooth but comes from the jaw joint or the muscle. Telling sign: several teeth hurt at once and nothing shows on the tooth.
The muscle that clenches is the one that hurts. So grinding and jaw-joint trouble usually belong together.
Normal in the ordinary form. Raised, together with swollen and painful joints elsewhere, it is about an inflammatory joint disease.
Only when several joints are involved and the morning stiffness lasts a long time. The jaw joint can be involved in rheumatoid arthritis.
Makes sure the muscle lets go again after tensing. A lack favours cramps, twitching and inner restlessness — and the blood value reflects the store poorly.
Sets the excitability of muscle and nerve. A low value causes weakness and cramps, a high one is dangerous for the heart rhythm — here one measures rather than guesses.
Sets off the tensing in the muscle in the first place. A low value causes tingling around the mouth and in the fingers and cramping of the hands.
With heavy sweating both are lost together. Drinking only water dilutes the sodium further — with long exertion salt belongs with it.
Frequently recommended for jaw clenching, barely studied. Where it helps, it helps via sleep — and nocturnal clenching really does hang strongly on sleep and on the day’s tension. Citrate or glycinate in the evening; oxide mainly loosens the bowel.
A low level makes diffuse muscle pain, and the chewing muscle is not exempt from it. That does not explain the jaw joint complaints, but it can explain why they appear together with shoulder and neck pain.
The plainest and most effective lever: caffeine in the afternoon worsens deep sleep, and in shallower sleep clenching happens more often. Two weeks without coffee after midday say more than any capsule.
Women between twenty and forty are affected distinctly more often, and the jaw joint has receptors for this hormone. Many report a worsening around the period — in a calendar that becomes an observation.
Tension raises the resting tone of the chewing muscles, in the daytime too and without grinding. At rest the teeth normally do not touch at all — noticing that is the first point to work from.
For 2–3 weeks smaller bites and softer food ease the joint. Afterwards normal chewing resumes — permanently soft food weakens the chewing muscles.
A link is not established. With a proven deficiency correction is worthwhile anyway; taken on suspicion it usually does nothing.
Warmth on the chewing muscles relieves; cold helps with acute inflammation in the joint.
The clenching mostly happens unconsciously under tension; awareness is the first step.
At the back of the head where neck and chewing muscles connect. With jaw joint complaints TCM and physiotherapy work on the same place here.
The manual technique of TCM — firm pressing and stroking along the meridians. With tense chewing muscles the grip is the same as in physiotherapy, the reasoning a different one.