Jaw pain is one of the most common symptoms of mewing, an orthodontic technique that involves changing the position of the tongue, teeth, and jaw to improve facial aesthetics.
Fortunately, you can take a few simple steps to reduce or eliminate jaw pain while mewing.
In this article, we’ll explore how to stop jaw pain while mewing and provide actionable tips that can help you achieve the desired results with minimal discomfort.
What Is Mewing?
Mewing is an orthodontic technique that involves maintaining a specific posture for your mouth — essentially, an ideal tongue position that can help shape your jawline and facial structure.
To do this, you need to keep your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth and your teeth together. This posture helps to strengthen the muscles in the chin, jaw, and neck and can even help with posture problems.
It also has other benefits, such as improved breathing, digestion, and facial symmetry. And best of all, it’s a relatively easy and cost-effective way to achieve the perfect jawline.
Causes of Jaw Pain While Mewing
While mewing can be a helpful dental technique for improving your smile, it may also cause pain in your jaw muscles. Jaw pain is often a symptom of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction.
This condition is triggered by stress and can be caused by several different factors, including over-clenching, grinding, misalignment of the jaw, and the use of excessive force when mewing. A few symptoms that may suggest jaw pain as a result of TMJ include:
- Pain in your jaw muscles that increases when you chew, swallow, yawn, or talk
- Sensitivity when chewing
- Jaw clicking or popping
- Ear pain
- Headaches
- Neck pain
- Jaw joint swelling
- Trouble opening your mouth
If you experience any of these symptoms while mewing, you may suffer from TMJ. While the condition itself is usually not serious, it can cause significant discomfort and may require the help of a dentist or doctor to correct it.
How to Reduce Jaw Pain While Mewing
The best way to prevent jaw pain while mewing is to take steps to reduce stress on the TMJ as you go about your daily life. Follow these steps to help mitigate jaw pain while mewing:
Avoid clenching, grinding, and over-use of the muscles in your jaw
Over-clenching and grinding can cause stress on the muscles of the jaw, leading to pain and discomfort in the TM-J joint.
Avoiding these habits can help reduce TMJ pain and may even prevent pain from developing in the first place.
Use a soft-bite technique while mewing
A soft-bite technique involves using a relaxed, gentle bite while mewing to avoid over-using your jaw muscles.
This can help prevent TMJ pain, discomfort, and symptoms like headaches.
Avoid applying excessive force when mewing
Applying too much force while mewing can cause TMJ pain and may even lead to TMJ dysfunction, especially in people who already have TMJ issues.
Avoid applying too much force when mewing, we recommend to apply a gentle force throughout the day.
How Preventing Jaw Pain From Mewing
As we’ve discussed, a few steps can help protect your TMJ from pain while mewing. But what if you’ve already started to experience pain due to mewing?
If your TMJ pain is mild and occasional, you may be able to get by without any additional treatment. However, if you’re experiencing any more serious symptoms, you should visit your dentist or orthodontist as soon as possible.
If you’re experiencing TMJ pain due to mewing, these tips may help:
Changing your technique
Mewing is a very ‘trial and error’ process which involves carefully listening to any body cues.
If you’re feeling pain, then you are most likely mewing incorrectly.
However, if you have an underlying TMJ/jaw joint issue, then it’s only natural for mewing to cause pain.
Try to fix your technique & visit a dentist/doctor if it becomes too severe.
Take breaks while mewing
While breaks seem counterintuitive in terms of the effectiveness of mewing. They can actually aid in bringing in more progress.
When you overwork your muscles and jaw, it becomes more difficult to mew consistently. This can lead to inconsistency which will hinder your progress.
Taking short breaks is helpful. Resting for a little bit allows you to mew comfortably throughout the entire day and helps avoid soreness.
Avoid excessive force when mewing
Many mewers make the mistake of applying too much force.
Excessive force doesn’t lead to faster results.
Mewing with excessive force, also known as hard mewing, is extremely difficult to hold consistently. It’s a concept that doesn’t work in practice.
Not only that, but many people have experienced major pain and discomfort while hard mewing. This ranges from tongue, jaw, teeth, palate, and more.
That being said, hard mewing is something that should be done in the later stages of mewing to avoid any facial damage.
Should You See A Doctor for Jaw Pain?
If you’ve experienced jaw pain before mewing, then that may indicate that mewing is not the culprit of your jaw pain.
And if that’s the case, you should contact a doctor or dentist.
But, if you’ve recently gotten jaw pain from mewing, then that indicates that mewing is the culprit and you need to change your mewing technique.
If the pain continues even when you’ve stopped mewing though, you should then contact a doctor or dentist.
Summary & Wrap-Up
Jaw pain, or TMJ, is a common problem many beginners face when mewing. While it can be uncomfortable, the pain subsides quickly as you progressively get used to the new oral posture.
Luckily, you can use these techniques to relieve the pain and stop it from happening again!