When your jaw hurts and your sleep and stomach are off too

What follows combines several people's visits into one reconstructed account. It is not any one person's story, and anything that could identify someone has been removed.

How do people describe it when they come in?

They come in for jaw pain, but when we ask, they also sleep lightly and their stomach feels bloated. They think they're dealing with three separate problems.

In fact, many are getting treatment for each one at a different place. But when we look at them all together, they're sometimes connected.

How are they connected?

If the body stays "on" at night, you clench your teeth while you sleep, your sleep becomes shallow, and your stomach doesn't get the energy it needs for digestion. All three grow from the same root.

It's hard to say which comes first. Some people can't sleep because their jaw hurts, others clench all night because they can't sleep — and usually it's both.

So rather than arguing over which came first, we look at all three together.

What do we look at?

We ask whether your jaw is stiffest in the morning, and whether anyone has told you that you make noises at night. And we press on your abdomen.

If it hurts most in the morning, it means you were straining while asleep. That's different from pain that builds up during the day.

If the abdomen is stiff and full of gas, we work on that too. We've written about this in more detail in clinical note 103.

How do we treat it?

While working on the jaw and neck, we also set a direction for sleep. If your stomach is uncomfortable, we make it comfortable first.

If we work only on the jaw, it improves during the day and comes back after you sleep, because you clench at night.

You can't stop force during sleep by willpower. So we also work on helping your body settle down at night.

What are the limits of this approach?

The three don't always share one root. Some people need each one treated separately.

One more thing: if you snore heavily or have been told you stop breathing in your sleep, get tested for that first. It sometimes comes together with grinding your teeth during sleep.

If you have the same symptoms

1. You may think the jaw, sleep and stomach are separate problems, but they're sometimes connected.
2. If your jaw is stiffest in the morning, you were straining while asleep.
3. If we work only on the jaw, it comes back after you sleep.
4. You can't stop force during sleep by willpower.
5. If you snore heavily, a sleep apnea test comes first.

We look at the neck, jaw and back together. Only by finding where it started can we keep the same spot from stiffening up again and again.

If the same spot keeps stiffening, or the tension starts in your neck and climbs up to your head, come in and get measured. It doesn't take long to find where it started.

Because there are many possible causes, progress differs from person to person, even with the same care.