Did You Know Your Jaw Could Be Causing Your Lower Back Pain?

The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is the joint between your jaw bone and your skull. We all know it for two main reasons, talking and eating. But I bet you didn’t know just how far reaching its influence on the body actually is! 

I have assessed thousands of peoples bodies in my time working as an Osteopath including, as you can imagine, a great deal of lower back issues. No two issues tend to be exactly the same, but often they share many similarities. However in recent years I have learned just how far afield these issues stem from.

Take for example a gentleman I assessed last week, let's call him Tim. Tim was a keen runner and had completed multiple half marathons, park runs etc. in his running lifetime, however over the years Tim had been dealing with a twinging hamstring and lower back ache. The longer he left it and continued running, the worse it got (duh).

As soon as it started impacting his running ability Tim started seeking advice, seeing multiple different practitioners who provided a range of techniques centered around his hips, knees, lower back and hamstrings. If you were a betting man/woman, you’d put your house on something being found in that area that’s causing Tim's issues. 5 years ago I would have too. Now though, I’d happily bet against that, and I'd likely die a rich man. 

When I assessed Tim I did indeed find things struggling to do their jobs in his hips and hamstring. They were struggling though because of the job they were being asked to do. They were doing MORE than what should be expected, picking up the extra slack from other parts of his body not functioning properly. This was happening all the time and when he goes on his runs the stress on his body, and therefore his area of concern, increased, causing symptoms. 

When examining him further things all started leading back to his TMJ. The TMJ on his right side had become dysfunctional. Not only did this affect how his jaw worked, but it also disturbed the incredible amounts of sensory information his jaw input into his nervous system, even replacing some of it with stress. We could see when we assessed his posture that it was starting to affect his head positioning too. Meaning his natural posture was to have his head shifted an inch to his right. 

Now think about that for a second. 

Tim is walking (and running) around with his brain thinking his head is sat on top of his body. What we observed though is that his entire sense of body position is in a different place to where he thinks. His entire perception of where he is and what he’s doing is a lie. Granted, he will have adapted to it really well as he can still walk around without bumping into things every minute, but when you have to do this again and again, day after day, year after year, things start breaking. 

Good news is, we fix his jaw, regain that sensory input to his brain, remodel his soft tissues to how they should be now and hey presto, Tim’s back running. Much better than giving his hamstrings a rub and sending him back out running lop sided huh?

P.S if you don’t think head positioning being off by an inch to the right is anything bad, try it for a few minutes. It sucks.