HUMP NECK, HEADACHE & JAW (TMJ) PAIN

You may be suffering from insidious onset of jaw pain.

and that may be why you are reading this blog.

But..

People with jaw pain/ TMJ problem typically have poor posture where one’s head/chin pokes forward and often complain of headache and neck/shoulder pain.

These complaints quite commonly predates the onset of jaw/TMJ symptoms such as pain, tightness, stiffness and clicking sound on movement.

This forward head posture produces a hump at the junction of neck and upper back (upper thoracic spine). Various names are used to describe this such as Dowager’s hump, grandma/grandfather hump, buffalo hump etc…

I see this more often lately. It may be due to the use of mobile devices (looking forward with slight downward angle or straight down) more often these days from a lot younger age.

In this chin poke posture your neck and shoulder girdle muscles would have to work harder and eventually develop some symptoms in the neck and shoulders.

When this advances, it progresses to cervicogenic headache (originating from neck).

Often if headache, neck and shoulder conditions that are due to poor posturing have not been properly addressed by improved correct postural awareness, jaw/TMJ pain and other symptoms develop as an end result.

So in order to improve and get rid of jaw/TMJ symptoms for good and keep it that way, better posture will need to be achieved!

So reach back to the base of neck with your middle 3 fingers (index, middle and ring) while reading this and check to see if you feel a protrusion that is rather large to your finger palpation.

If so, look straight ahead at your eye level and pull your chin back horizontally to reduce your hump.

That’s the first step in getting your jaw feeling whole lot better with the added bonus of reducing your headache and neck/shoulder pain as well.