Jaw Disorders

The jaw is the strongest muscle in your body. It can crack nuts, tear leather, generate forces far beyond what you need in everyday life. It is the tool with which you bite — in the literal and in the figurative sense. And that is exactly why it is so revealing when it hurts.

Jaw disorders come in many forms: temporomandibular joint pain, clicking when opening, tension in the chewing muscles, nocturnal teeth grinding, jaw locking, inflammation. Medicine groups much of this under the term craniomandibular dysfunction and treats with splints, physiotherapy, sometimes surgery. That has its place. But it does not answer one question: why are you biting so hard?