Yes it can! When it comes to certain lifestyle factors and habits, the TMJ or Jaw joint is especially prone to vulnerability.
Our patients are informed that stress and posture are the two most common lifestyle factors that affect poor jaw mechanics and function. Let's be honest poor posture or rather, repetitive posture is just another stress on our body.
How do we know if we have good or bad Jaw posture?
Like any joint in the body our posture effects how the TMJ moves and functions. With good posture, the Jaw joint maintains good alignment and puts less stress on surrounding structures. Poor posture on the other hand causes muscular tightness around the jaw joint which leads to suboptimal alignment and mechanics.
When we are assessing someone's Jaw pain in relation to posture we first need to ask more questions. These include:
Work:
Do you have a regular workstation or do you have hot desk/hybrid work conditions?
Do you feel your work station is erganomic?
Do you perform any repetitive tasks at work?
Do you favour one monitor over the other?
For how long are you in the same position at work? Do you take any breaks?
Home:
Do you perform any regular activities be is sports, hobbies, housework that may involve repetitive postures?
Do you engage in regular exercise?
The answers to these questions paint a picture of what your day to day posture is like and allows us to analyse where improvements can be made. As an example, lets see what is wrong with the picture below:
Screen not at eye level
leaning forward, hunching through shoulders
round table means little room for wrist support
resting hand on chin - puts lots of pressure through the TMJ!
now i feel like a croissant!
What is "Good Posture"?
One of the catch phrases you might hear around the clinic is "your next posture is the best posture". This tag line really encapsulates the essence of what we advise for so called good posture. That is; even if you have the most perfect, ergonomic desk set up there is no one posture that is good for any length of time.
When we discuss modifications to posture that may be made, it is often looking at where we can change position. For work this may include a standing desk, regular trips to the kitchen for a glass of water or even rules like standing even time you answer or make a phone call. All of these modifications are to ensure there is just a change of posture being made.
Research tells us that sitting down again even after getting up just for a couple of seconds improves our posture for the next 20 minutes compared to if you just kept sitting. We also know that exercising regularly, even if its just 20 minutes a day helps to improve your posture.
But wait, how will this help my jaw pain again?
Regular and sustained postures create tight, overused muscles. The most common example we deal with in relation to the jaw is "head forward posture". For many of us who work on computers or look look down regularly at our phones we end up spending the majority of the day with our head in a forward lean position which as a jaw physio I like to call "jaw forward posture".
This means that our centre of mass shifts forward over our base of support, placing undue stress on the jaw and neck joints. In turn this results in muscle spasm and illicits the "jaw closing reflex" or to put it simply, jaw clenching.
Clenching our jaw just increases the muscle spasm and tightness around of face and neck and places stress on the structures inside the TMJ itself. Often this results to jaw pain, clicking, locking and a blocked feeling in the ears.
Using something as simple and easy to change as posture to help combat our Jaw symptoms can be a vital step in an overall managmenet of the TMJ.
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