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Jaw Pain and TMJ Treatment Melbourne

Is jaw pain affecting your everyday life? Adaptive Chiropractic Melbourne can help! Let us provide you with holistic and effective jaw pain treatment that will ease your discomfort and transform your life for the better.

Understanding Chiropractic Treatment for TMJ Pain

TMJ pain or temporomandibular joint syndrome, can be incredibly painful. It hurts to talk, it hurts to eat sometimes, or it hurts to just open your mouth. When the jaw pain is bad, it can even lead to headaches and tension around the neck, in some cases.

Chiropractic treatment of the TMJ joint focuses on relieving tension in the muscles around the joints, using trigger point therapy to alleviate the jaw pain associated with TMJ. In some cases, misalignment of the jaw that results from bad posture or a pre-existing back problem can cause TMJ pain.

Here at Melbourne Adaptive Chiropractic, our approach to TMJ treatment caused by misalignment in your neck and upper back is to perform chiropractic adjustments on your spinal joints around these problematic areas. We also use cranial therapy to help alleviate tension in the skull to further improve painful TMJ symptoms. Our team of TMJ treatment professionals will be able to teach relaxation techniques to help loosen your jaw muscles and relieve pressure, as well as recommend dietary and lifestyle changes to improve your quality of life. After a detailed assessment of your condition, our Melbourne TMJ practitioners will look to identify the source of the discomfort and provide the right treatments and suggestions that will help and alleviate pain.

What are some of the common symptoms of TMJ dysfunction

Besides pain or tenderness of the jaw, here are some of the TMJ symptoms that might make you consider chiropractic treatment. Please note that the following list may not include every symptom a TMJ patient may experience:

  • Pain in one or both of your temporomandibular joints
  • Aching pain in and around your ear
  • Fatigue
  • Difficulty chewing or experiencing pain while chewing
  • Restricted jaw movement
  • Chronic headaches
  • Sleep disorders
  • Neck ache and back pain
  • Aching facial pain
  • Locking of the joint, making it difficult to open or close your mouth
  • A clicking noise while yawning or chewing, accompanied by pain or limitation of movement

Depending on your symptoms, our chiropractic team will work closely with you to provide treatments and exercises to help improve the motion of your TMJ joint. This in turn causes related symptoms such as facial pain, jaw locking, headaches, and neck pain to be reduced.

What is the cause of temporomandibular joint pain?

If you are experiencing jaw joint pain, it can have many causes, including but not limited to:

  • Trauma to the surrounding muscles of the TMJ from an incident (e.g. sporting injury, physical incident, car accident etc.)
  • Misaligned bite from mispositioning of the jaw, uneven teeth or incorrect bite
  • Stresses on other areas of the skeletal system (e.g. neck and lower back)
  • Arthritis or other inflammatory musculoskeletal conditions
  • Daytime clenching of the jaw and grind of teeth while asleep at night

The foundation of the issue is usually a combination of many different causes, which are interacting and straining each other, all of which are playing a role in contributing to muscle tightness and dysfunction. As it is difficult to identify the real cause of the problem, our team of TMJ practitioners at Adaptive Chiropractic encourage a holistic approach as we feel that it is the most effective treatment to relieve these muscles around the joints.

How can TMJ dysfunction be treated?

TMJ dysfunction can present in many different ways with some people experiencing oral pain, ear pain, facial pain or neck pain. Depending on the severity of your symptoms, your doctor may recommend over-the-counter or prescription medication, chiropractic therapies, or surgery.

Pain relief

There are a number of treatment options available for TMJ disorder in Melbourne, Australia. If you have mild TMJ pain, over-the-counter pain relievers such as paracetamol or ibuprofen can often provide relief.

Heat and ice

You can also try applying ice to the affected area for 15 minutes at a time several times a day. If you have more severe or persistent jaw pain though, your doctor may prescribe stronger medication such as steroids.

Chiropractic therapy

Chiropractors are licensed healthcare professionals who focus on the diagnosis and treatment of neuromuscular disorders, with special attention to the spine. When someone is experiencing pain, TMJ dysfunction, or other symptoms that may be related to a musculoskeletal disorder, they may seek out the help of a chiropractor.

Chiropractors use a variety of techniques to relieve pain, including manual therapy, massage, and exercise. In addition, chiropractors may also recommend lifestyle changes, such as modifying your diet or sleeping habits. By working with a chiropractor, you can find relief from your pain and live a healthier life.

Other treatments

If conservative treatments don’t relieve your pain, your doctor may recommend surgery. Surgery is usually only considered as a last resort, and there are a number of different surgical procedures that can be used to treat TMJ disorders.

TMJ treatment at Adaptive Chiropractic Richmond

Here at Adaptive Chiropractic, we take a holistic approach to treating jaw pain and temporomandibular disorder. Our TMJ practitioners focus on providing gentle yet powerful chiropractic techniques, for fast and effective pain relief of the muscles around the TMJ joints.

We work hard to be among the best chiropractors in the Richmond area, and are proud of our expertise and high standard of treatment.

When you first begin treatment at our TMJ clinic, our chiropractors would conduct a comprehensive and dynamic diagnosis to find out if the symptoms you are experiencing are a jaw problem or if they are coming from another body part.

With the correct assessment, we are able to tailor the jaw pain and TMJ treatment recommended for you, whilst also supporting you to reach and maintain optimal health.

Our chiropractic TMJ treatment focuses on relieving tension in the muscles around the joints, using trigger point therapy to alleviate the jaw pain associated with TMJ. However, if the cause is a misalignment in your neck and upper back, our TMJ chiropractor will perform chiropractic adjustments on your spinal joints around these problematic areas as part of your TMJ treatment. We also use cranial therapy to help alleviate tension in the skull to further improve painful TMJ-associated symptoms.

Our founder at Adaptive Chiropractic, Dr Clarence Ho, is passionate about well-being and preventative care. In addition to focusing on jaw pain and TMJ treatment, pinched nerve and sciatica treatment, spine-related treatments, back pain, neck pain, and posture correction, he also assists patients with stress management and migraines. He treats a wide range of people, from all walks of life and of all ages, from infants to senior adults and elite athletes.

Easy access and quality care in our Richmond clinic

Located near Richmond train station, Adaptive Chiropractic provides outstanding jaw pain and TMJ treatment in a warm and inviting practice. For those juggling studies with health concerns, our proximity to Melbourne, particularly Richmond, makes it possible to easily arrange appointments around your schedule. We believe in providing a fun and safe working environment, not just for our patients but also for our practitioners.

Our founders have lived and/or worked in Richmond for over 10 years and are uniquely positioned to understand and serve the health and wellbeing needs of the local community. Our team of experienced chiropractors care more because they are looked after well, and this in turn allows them to focus on their patients.

Experiencing jaw pain and other TMJ disorder related symptoms? Contact us for more information, or make an appointment to see our chiropractor today.