Alleviate Your Persistent Jaw Pain with Dry Needling

Jaw pain is often described as excruciating, uncomfortable pain that can be anywhere from mild enough to grab your attention or severe enough to disrupt your day-to-day. This impossible-to-ignore pain can impede basic daily activities, such as talking, drinking, chewing, and making facial expressions, resulting in an overall decrease in quality of life.

Unfortunately, there are several possible causes of jaw pain, which makes it difficult to tell if your jaw pain is due to an actual jaw issue or if it’s a mere symptom that points to a more serious, underlying condition that requires treatment. Below, find out the most common causes of jaw pain and how dry needling may help alleviate the pain.

Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) Disorder

The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) acts like a sliding hinge, connecting your jawbone to your skull. The TMJ features an articular disc running between its two articular surfaces. This disc helps support joint stability, reduce joint contact pressure, and safely move the condyle when the mouth opens and closes. When this disc moves out of alignment or erode, or the joint receives physical damage, you can experience pain in one or both sides of your jaw. Besides jaw pain, you may also develop jaw stiffness, difficulty opening your jaw, locked jaw, and painful clicking.

Fortunately, the pain is typically temporary and is unlikely to worsen. The first line of treatment can be somewhat conservative, mostly revolving around lifestyle modification. However, this doesn’t alleviate your symptoms, you may want to talk to your doctor about further interventions.

Sinusitis

Sinusitis refers to an inflammation of the tissue lining the nasal cavities. It typically develops because of allergies and colds, and sometimes, bacterial infections. Since these sinus passages exist between the eyes, in the cheekbones, and above the nose bridge, inflamed sinuses can affect the nerves in these areas, causing pain and pressure. Since the affected areas are connected to the jaw, this may also translate to pain in one or both sides of the jaw.

Often than not, sinusitis will clear up on its own, but you may want to consider checking with your doctor if the condition persists for more than a week.

Bruxism

Those experiencing severe stress and anxiety may develop certain perfunctory habits in which they would use their mouth and teeth in ways beyond their intended function. Such perfunctory habits include bruxism, otherwise known as teeth grinding. This condition features the grinding, gnashing, and clenching of the teeth, which in turn creates tension in the jaw and teeth, as well as the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that support the jaw. Not only does this result in jaw pain, but it may also cause headaches and earaches.

Teeth grinding can happen when you’re awake and while you’re asleep. You can actively stop awake bruxism when you’re aware it’s happening. If you’re experiencing sleep bruxism, you may want to consider using a night guard, which acts as a protective layer between the top and bottom teeth to help alleviate grinding-related tension.

Manage Jaw Pain with Dry Needling

It’s worth noting that while jaw pain in and of itself is a concern, jaw pain can also be related to serious health issues like chronic headaches and even heart attacks. As such, it’s always imperative to have it checked out. A visit to a doctor can offer you peace of mind as well as possible procedures to treat the underlying cause of your jaw pain.

That said, if you wish to have quick relief, there are some treatments you may want to consider, with one of them being dry needling. Dry needling treatment is a revolutionary pain-relieving procedure that involves inserting solid filament needles into myofascial trigger points, which are involved in acute and chronic, localised and widespread pain. Doing so will cause tight muscles to twitch and relax, which helps reduce muscle tension and pain, promote healing, increase range of motion.

If you’re considering dry needling treatment in Singapore, head to Equilibrio Health! Book a consultation and we’ll help you alleviate and manage your persistent jaw troubles.