Is Jaw Pain Tooth Related?
If you’re experiencing pain in your jaw, you may wonder if the source of the pain is a tooth, or if it’s the jaw itself. Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) can cause pain in the jaw, but toothaches can, too – and TMJ can cause toothaches, along with multiple other uncomfortable symptoms. To better understand the relationship between jaw pain and pain in the teeth, it’s helpful to have some basic knowledge about the teeth and the jaw.
The temporomandibular joint is located just in front of the ears and is the joint that opens and closes the mouth. If this joint gets inflamed, it causes TMJ. Inflammation in the jaw can be caused by a few different things, and it can have more than a few different symptoms, including varying levels of pain in the jaw, complications when eating and speaking, and pain that radiates to adjacent areas of the face, head, or neck. In serious cases of TMJ, the jaw can even lock shut. The temporomandibular joint is surrounded and supported by an intricacy of nerves, muscles, and connective tissue, all of which help TMJ pain spread out away from the actual joint. This radiating pain is called referred pain and can be deceptively painful and difficult to pinpoint; TMJ can cause pain in the head, eyes, and ears, or it can circulate downward and cause pain in the teeth. When the muscle that covers the jaw becomes tense and knotted, which happens when people clench or grind their teeth, it can cause pain throughout the oral cavity, and the pain from TMJ can have similar characteristics as the pain from a toothache.
The connection between the health of the teeth and pain in the jaw is complex and important. If you’re missing any of your natural teeth because of gum disease or injury, or if your teeth are damaged or deformed, this will affect your bite. A person’s bite is the way their upper teeth and lower teeth connect when the jaw is closed, and when the bite is uneven, this can make the jaw joint have to bear disproportionate force, causing areas of the joint to swell. In some patients, dental crowns or dental restorations can also affect the bite; if you notice anything off about your bite after a dental procedure, let your dentist know right away. Over the long term, an uneven bite could cause chronic pain from TMJ. If you have a toothache in one of your upper molars, these teeth are close enough to the temporomandibular joint to cause pain in the joint that might be mistaken for TMJ; when the toothache is fixed, the jaw pain usually goes away, too.
Because pain in the jaw and pain in the teeth are so interconnected, it might be tough to tell where your pain is coming from. If you notice that one tooth or a few teeth are uncharacteristically sensitive to extreme temperatures or excessive sugar, this might be because of a cavity. Try massaging your jaw near the area where it hurts, and see if that helps; if it does, it might be TMJ. Examine the inside of your mouth in the mirror, looking for chipped teeth, cracked teeth, or cavities that might be sources of pain. If you see pus seeping from a tooth, that tooth is infected and needs to be addressed by a dentist. In addition to causing pain that may radiate to the jaw, tooth infections also cause a foul odor to emanate from the mouth and leave a bad taste in the mouth. These uncomfortable symptoms go away when the infection is treated.