TMJ disorders occur when something goes wrong with your jaw joints and jaw muscles. Here are some natural remedies to get relief from TMJ.
Targeted exercise
This is one of the fastest, most effective long-term remedies. One of the biggest causes of TMJ can be from over chewing on one side of your mouth. So think about this. Notice this next time you’re chewing food. If you are chewing something, do you chew on only the left side or only the right side of your mouth? There are many people who do not chew bilaterally. So here’s what happens. They start chewing, let’s say it’s all the time on that left side of the mouth, what happens is that masseter muscle. That big muscle in your jaw starts getting really strong and tight and starting to pull to one side and the other side gets weak.
So what you can do is this. Go in a mirror and slowly open your jaw. Slowly open and close your jaw and see if your jaw shifts off to one side or another. Let’s say you’re always chewing on that left side, that left side has become too strong and you know it, you start to see that jaw shift over the left side. What you’re going to do is get a clothespin, you’re going to the open side and bite down on it. You’re going to…not too hard, but just slightly bite down for five seconds. You’re going to do that five times a day.
Posture
Now, if you can start to get something called forward head posture. You should have a full curve in your neck. When your head starts to go forward like this from sitting in a desk all day, nursing a newborn baby, carrying heavy things, these things, over time, can lead to poor posture. When your neck moves forward, it puts pressure on the upper bone in your neck called the atlas bone, that in turn, that atlas is very connected to your jaw. It can actually cause your jaw to shift out of alignment and put damaging pressure there.
So a few natural things for posture, one, start doing exercise especially things that open up your back and shoulders. Getting some dumbbells and doing what is called reverse flies are good. Getting a cable or a band and doing rows are good. Also, anything where you’re working your rear delts or rhomboids, your back, pull-ups, things like that, opening up your chest, these exercises are going to be good as well. The other thing is going and getting work done by a chiropractor can also help improve your posture. They can actually adjust your jaw for TMJ, they can do specific adjustments to relieve stress in that back that can cause forward head posture. But improving your posture is key to getting rid of TMJ.
Reduce stress
You know, for a lot of people, they tend to clench while they sleep. What I would recommend is take a healing bath at night. So here’s what you’re going to do, get a bunch of essential oils of lavender. I’d also get some peppermint, maybe some peppermint oil, rub it on your jaw and I would get Epsom salt, put it in a bath. Soak in a bath before bed for 20 minutes. Go to sleep. It greatly reduces emotional stress and tension and will reduce clenching or grinding of the jaw while you sleep.
Now, sometimes people can get a mouth guard as well, can be beneficial. But to really get to the root cause, reducing emotional stress is big.
Anti-inflammatory diet
Now, here are some of the key nutrients you want to get in order to get rid of TMJ. You want to get lots of omega-3 fats in your diet, enzymes and, magnesium. Those are the nutrients you want to look in.
Get more omega-3 fatty acids. You’re going to find omega-3fats and high levels in the wild-caught fish such as salmon, mackerel, tuna, sardines. Most wild-caught fish is going to be high in omega-3 fats, which reduce inflammation.
Flax seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts, these are omega-3-rich foods that can naturally reduce inflammation.
Enzymes are found in high amounts in vegetables and fruit. So start eating more fruits and vegetables on a regular basis. And then, also, I would say doing magnesium-rich foods like dark chocolate, Pumpkin seeds, certain types of red meat, spinach, avocados, etc.
But remember, get omega-3 fats, enzymes and, magnesium. You might also consider taking a magnesium supplement, 500 milligrams a day, and an omega-3 supplement, 1000 milligrams a day to help you reduce inflammation and relieve that stress on the TMJ joint.
Bone Broth
You know, bone broth contains amino acids, proline, and glycine, as well as it contains chondroitin, glucosamine and hyaluronic acid.
Glucosamine, chondroitin and hyaluronic acid, they can actually help lubricate and strengthen the connective tissue of your jaw. Well, just like glucosamine and chondroitin and hyaluronic acid have been proven to help out with arthritis of the knee, arthritis carpal, pain in all of your joints.
Bone broth contains glucosamine, chondroitin and hyaluronic acid, all of which help you build healthy connective tissue and can actually relieve arthritic pain in your joints. So if you have TMJ, you absolutely want to start drinking bone broth every single day. Now, you can buy bone broth frozen, you can make it yourself at home or the easiest, convenient way is going and buying a bone broth powder protein. So, there’s bone broth protein powder, doing a scoop of that in a smoothie every single day is great for your body.
Natural pain relievers
One of my favorite ways of relieving of natural pain relievers is using peppermint or wintergreen essential oil. You can make your own at home muscle rub.
So have you ever heard of a product called Icy Hot? Well, Icy hot gets things cool and warm. That opens up arteries, which can actually help increase the circulation and the healing of an area.
So peppermint oil with cayenne, peppermint oil is very cooling, cayenne pepper is very warming. When you blend those two things together or peppermint oil with black pepper oil, those two together have tremendous benefits.
Just do peppermint oil with black pepper oil. Mix those together with some coconut oil and do a one-minute rub on that jaw. So really, that jaw muscle, you simply get on there and massage that, as well as your now upper neck area. Massage those two areas can absolutely relieve TMJ pain there as well. There are some other natural pain relievers internally, turmeric or cumin is very powerful, ginger, bromelain. So these herbs are naturally anti-inflammatory and great for reducing inflammation and giving you natural pain relief in the body.
