FACT: TMJD is an enemy of restful sleep.
Every evening before I attempt to slumber, that old familiar anxiety rises up in my body cavity and I circle the bed like a chupacabra preparing to attack a baby lamb’s blind side. That might be because, every evening for months, I’ve failed to attack that baby lamb. What baby lamb, specifically? The one consistent with the whole point of getting under the covers and powering off my carnal computer for the next several hours: to wake up refreshed. And that’s because (among other aches and pains) once the alarm jars me back into the wakeful world, I feel like the chick from Strangeland.
(Yes. Like this, if Dee had stitched her upper and lower jaw together as well. With barbed wire.)
So what’s the fix to pry my tension stitched jaws apart? Get them to relax and stop acting like a giant Grizzly is bearing down on me for the entirety of my nocturnal escape from reality? How do you or I fix temporomandibular joint disorder? Thus far, I’ve come across a handful of pointers that are helpful (when I actually do them). And, since I’m kind and generous, I’ve opted to share them here with you.
Let’s start with how we’re sleeping:
1.) Sleep on your back – not your side.
I’m not going to lie.
This one feels kinda like men must feel when they’re standing at the altar (“What I only get to sleep with one person the rest of my life?”) For us sufferers of mandibular misery, though, it’s one slumber position. Forever. Well, I mean, that’s if you don’t want to wake up feeling like you gave a 12 hour lecture using nothing but vowels which then culminated in getting clocked in the face with a two by four. This is part of my nightly anxiety, I think. I know that – much like elephant man – I can sleep exactly one way. Except – to be fair – if he slept any other way, he’d die; I just wake up wishing I had. While I’m (half) kidding, I will admit that supine sleeps are indeed your best bet for less clenching and grinding. And the experts tend to agree:
Sleeping on your back is going to be the best position if you suffer from TMJ, another TMD or orofacial pain. Lying on your back has a number of benefits:
• It won’t put pressure on the jaw.
• It will offer proper support to the head, neck and shoulders.
• It provides the best alignment of the body keeping the spine, neck and head in a neutral position.
• You will be less likely to clench your jaw or grind your teeth.
2.) Get a proper night guard.
Sure, it’s not necessarily the sexiest thing to pop in your oral accessories during a sleepover.
But if you wear one more nights than not, you may notice a big diff with a night guard. Don’t make the mistake I did, though, and buy one before you figure out whether it’s actually TMJ or bruxism that you have. They’re two similar disorders but different enough that you may need special retainers with all the bells and whistles.
3.) Jaw exercises before bed.
I’m just gonna leave this here…
4.) Listen to binaural beats as you drift off
From erectile dysfunction elimination to superconsciousness acquisition, binaural beats can do a helluva lot.
Among those things is ushering you off to uninterrupted sleep by bashing down the Berlin wall of oral spasms sitting betwixt you and rejuvenation seven hours from now. See, the problem with TMJD is that – if you’re like me – at best, you’ll wake up once or twice in the night (though normally it’s closer to four or five times). The thing about that is that you keep interrupting your sleep cycle and never get a true rest, which makes you wake up not only in pain, but feeling fatigued. Where binaural beats come in is at the brain hackery level. How? Well, first you have to listen with earphones in (I use those Apple ones I’m just now learning I’ve been wearing upside down my whole life). And that’s because you get two different tones in each ear that make your brain squeeze ‘em together. The end product of this science experiment happening in your cerebral laboratory? One fluid tone with a byproduct of brainwave alteration. And that brainwave, in the case of TMJD catered beats, is relaxation in the muscles of the jaw. So, if you’re feeling adventurous, seek out some beats for yourself.
Or try mine:
5.) See a profesh
Finally, this one’s a non DIY: Seek assistance from an expert.
I say this as someone who’s so shamefully good at self-treating via the internet that I could have a PhD in WebMD based diagnosing: don’t try to be your own doctor. That means that, as much as I love having you as a guest in my digital clinic, you’ll hafta schedule an appointment to see your primary doc and then (probably) a physical therapist. And while that sounds like a giant load of inconvenient, it’s actually fantastic. Because that means they can tinker around to see where the source of your issue comes from. Remember at the beginning how I said I wake up with jaw pain just being one of my many aches? That’s because it’s a symptom of issues coming from elsewhere. Where? You might be surprised, but for many of us, it’s from far lower than the street our teeth live on. In my case, it’s postural and structural issues that originate in my hips. My own PT (when I can afford to see him, insurance be damned) helps me sort out the source of the problem which thus alleviates my jaw pain. And that means yours (you can’t have mine; sorry – I’m greedy and need as much of his magical powers as he’s willing to save for me) can also design a personalized plan with your name on it.
Something that works specifically for your pretty little chatter chasm so you can beat TMJD during REM.
The advice falling outta my own defective jaws’ll be far more generic.
Best of luck!