If you’re suffering right now from lower jaw pain or have had acute or chronic jaw pain episodes in the past, you may or may not have sought medical attention. Lower jaw pain can be caused by a few things including arthritis, fractures, dislocations, whiplash injuries and structural issues in the jaw that you were born with.
Do any of these symptoms sound like the kind of lower jaw pain you’re having? Clicking or popping jaw, sore jaw, jaw ache, locked jaw, clenching jaw or does it feel like a dislocated jaw? If so, your jaw and jaw pain can be treated and possibly cured and most of the time naturally. Of course removing the cause is the most important part once it’s recognized or diagnosed.
If you’re wondering what kind of jaw pain is linked with heart problems is the most important thing to remember about lower jaw pain is that it can be caused by heart problems and you want to make sure it isn’t related to your heart first of all. If it is you want to seek treatment immediately. You don’t want to wait around. This can be serious and a heart attack may be looming. If you have eliminated heart issues as a cause you can review the above list and see if any of that could be the cause.
If not the most common cause would be what people commonly call a TMJ problem. Pain in the lower jaw is usually due to temporomandibular joint or TMJ pain as it is called. These joints are located on both sides of the head just in front of your ears. There are other related problems in these areas but all fall under the category of TMJ disorders.
Most TMJ problems happen due to physical stress or sometimes emotional stress on the structures that support the joints. It can be one-sided or the lower jaw pain can be felt on both sides, to varying degrees of pain. The structures involved include the cartilage that connects the joint, muscles in the face, neck and jaw along with ligaments, nerves, blood vessels and teeth in the lower jaw area.
Some of the structural changes can happen if you have an overbite. Or get partial denture or full dentures that don’t change your overbite – which is hard to do. If you clench or grind your teeth at night or throughout the day this can pose serious stresses on the tempormandibualr joints (TMJ). This clenching causes a lot of stress on the jaw. Even poor posture can influence the muscles in the TMJ area. If you’re sitting at a computer all day long and not in an ergonomic fashion you may unwittingly put a lot of stress on the lower jaw and it may cause you pain then or later.
Other factors that might make TMJ symptoms worse are stress, poor diet, and lack of sleep. Complicating factors could be you develop headaches, toothaches or earaches caused by the lower jaw referring pain to those areas.
Once you have eliminated the possibility of heart-related issues and decided on whether your lower jaw pain is caused by, arthritis, fractures, structural problems, dislocations, whiplash or TMJ or a combination there are many natural approaches you can take.
You don’t have to suffer with TMJ or any other jaw pain. I suffered in the past too but I no longer have any TMJ or arthritis problems. Identifying the problem and being properly diagnosed by your doctor is the most important part. But try natural approaches to arthritis, TMJ and lower jaw pain treatment first before resorting to invasive treatments.