My mouth won't shut

I have that thing where my jaw clicks loudly, can’t remember what it is called off the to of my head, but it’s a pest. Generally in the mornings, when eating my muesli it clicks like made.

The missus says I grind my teeth in my sleep a lot as well.

I can make it crack loudly enough to make people feel uncomfortable, and have on the odd occasion caused it to slip out of place and not close properly, which normally rectifies itself in a couple of days.

Since being on holiday, I appear to have done something more permanent, I don’t know if it’s the crap pillows that are causing me to sleep with my face and mouth pressed at a funny angle, or something else, but I haven’t been able to shut my mouth and teeth together now for two weeks.

It feels as if the lower jaw has shifted to the left a bit as when I shift it the other way it closes a bit more.

It’s a bit of a pain, eating is difficult, I can’t might noodles on one side, they just fall out. I can’t really chew anything that is large because it’s not moving in a correct chewing motion very well.

Anybody ever experienced this. Am I going to have to go to the doctor when I get home to get it reset in the correct place or do you think it will slip back into the normal side with time?

Your not turning into a Werewolf are you?

😉

Id start with your dentist who I assume is familiar with your problem. Then see if he thinks its dental/skeletal or muscular and get referred from there.

sounds like the articular disc in your temporo-mandibular joint has dislocated. You’ll probably need an ENT review and an MRI.

Id start with your dentist

I can’t remember who he is. I also object to paying for dentists, when my doctor is free, saying that I don’t know who my doctor is either, need to see if I registered when Mrs Q did.

Tits – having read a couple of links, looks like I have to find a dentist again.

The clicking phase after 20 years appears to be over, however it still opens wide enough as well.

I have similar – an offset jaw that clicks, and sometimes can be a bit off for a couple of days. It goes back to normal after that though, so hopefully you’ll have the same. Obviously go to the doctor/dentist if it doesn’t! Only time I had a more prolonged issue was when my wisdom teeth got infected and I couldn’t open my mouth more than half an inch.

My wife did the same.

Managed to dislocate her jaw eating an apple, it clicks a lot.

She even asked me to try to put it back, but I don’t know my own strength and might have ended up breaking her.

Eventually it clicked back into place.

But she did go to her doctor…I think.

^ It used to be a party trick to click out happy birthday using it, but that stopped when it slipped out of place and stayed that way for a few days.

This has been two weeks now.

Interestingly, the NHS doesn’t appear to recognise TMJ in some parts of the country (from a quick read up on it)

don’t rate Mr Sherman though, he doesn’t even think that tinnitus is a symptom of tmj. When I see him next time I’m gonna mention Patrick Grossman to him.

Interesting quote there – I have had tinitus for years, I always blamed it on the over enthusiastic night clubbing I did for years.

I’ve just tried clicking it and after all the years, it won’t click at all – not sure whether or not to be happy or sad.

My mouth won’t shut

An affliction affecting a number of people on this forum 😉

I get a similar thing, mine also locks in the night sometimes (I too grind my teeth when stressed).

I find that if I relax, drop my lower jaw as much as feels comfortable and then slowly push it forwards it releases itself and returns to normal.

I’m a dentist. This is free 🙂

You’ll have displaced the articular disc, backwards probably so the jaw can’t re-seat as it closes, on one side by the sound of it. Trouble is when you do that all the powerful muscles that move your jaw go into spasm and so things don’t always settle by themselves. You may be able to manipulate it back as described above. Or not . . .

A dentist will know loads more about it than a GP but either can refer you to someone who knows what to do with it.

HTH

…but as a GP I’d always send them to a dentist in any case – because the dentist knows more and we already do quite enough of the dentists’ work when they can’t be bothered to see patients with abscesses in a timely fashion… 😉

Quite so. I apologise for some of my colleagues 😉

Thanks for all the info – sitting here playing with my jaw now. Quite enjoying it, but a little scared that |I will manage to make it worse.

Maybe some thing to relax me is a good idea.

Your not a zombie are you? They have this problem quite a bit…

I had that, fixed itself IIRC

Your not a zombie are you? They have this problem quite a bit…

I don’t need to engage my zombie apocolypse disaster plan do I?

Thought we were going to get our first dentist v doctor fight there, boo!

Tip: get the grinding sorted out. It doesn’t do any good.

I don’t need to engage my zombie apocolypse disaster plan do I?

Might be best. My mate actually has a Z Day survival bag, with enough food, water and supplies (mostly fags it seems!) to last 2 weeks, all fitted in a rucksack! And a big ol’ machete strapped to the back of it!

I had this for years, got offered 2 options when I finally went to get it checked.

The first was chiselling out a slightly deeper jaw socket thing so the other bit would seat more securely. Needless to say, I did not like the sound of this.

The second was to apply ibuprofen gel round that part of the jaw in the hope it would reduce any slight swelling and ease things off.

I’ll be honest, I thought option 2 was a polite way of telling me to mtfu and get out but it worked a treat! Applied for about a week and had no problems for several months. And I got some free ibuprofen and no chisel so happy days…

Thought we were going to get our first dentist v doctor fight there, boo!

Just a bit of interprofessional banter. If you think that was leading up to a fight you’ve probably been on here too long 😉
He’s right anyway because he’s a GP.

I dislocated my jaw playing footie ages ago when somebody headed my chin instead of the ball

Whenever I open my gob wide I get a ded loud crack. Yawning does it most but used to happen when snogging when I was younger, most entertaining when it was with somebody new who hadn’t experienced it before 😳

I am also a werezombie, might that be relevant ?