Jaw pain can be debilitating. You can get pain on chewing and clenching your jaw when eating. Stress, anxiety or poor posture can contribute to this. You could have spent a prolonged time in a dentist chair with your mouth wide open that could also lead to discomfort on the side of the face. Symptoms present with pain around and in front of the ear, along the temples and even on the side of your neck. Physiotherapy could help to understand why you have these symptoms and how to manage them. Gentle treatment, advice and exercises could help.
In the late 1990s I did a study at the Westmead Hospital in the School of Dentistry on the muscles responsible for this tension mentioned above. I found that when chewing our temporalis muscle (the one found along our temple) fires up. With excessive clenching this muscle can lead to a lot of pain. The muscle that I did study the most was the lateral pterygoid which is responsible for control of the little disc located in the TMJ (temporomandibular joint). Some of the exercises that can be given especially using a small hyperbolic shaped plastic for between the teeth to do fine motor movements of the jaw-lateral, protrusion and retrusive movements.
