The Anatomy of Anxiety by Ellen Vora

Author:Ellen Vora
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

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TMJ

Picture a dog about to fight: it tightens its jaw, bares its teeth, and growls. Similarly, during a stress response, the muscles of the human jaw along with the hip flexor and trapezius, which are keenly innervated by sympathetic nerves, tense up. We automatically tense our jaws under stress because, originally, this was a way to signal aggression, strength, and readiness for a brawl. That may be fine for a dog gearing up for a fight, but if you’re simply a chronically stressed-out office worker, it’s not so great to be woken from sleep with jaw pain. What’s more, there’s a two-way connection between our jaw and our central nervous system. So, just as stress tells us to clench the jaw, a clenched jaw can communicate back to the brain that we’re in a fight, making us feel anxious—and round it goes.

TMJ (which stands for temporomandibular joint) colloquially refers to a common condition, also called TMD, for temporomandibular disorders, of chronic and often painful jaw clenching; this is also frequently connected with bruxism (teeth grinding). There are actually multiple aspects of modern life that can lock us into a pattern of TMJ: (1) unprocessed stress; (2) certain medications and drugs, including some SSRIs and stimulants,13 as well as illicit drugs such as cocaine and MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as ecstasy)14; (3) a diet of soft, processed foods (eating real food, especially in childhood, gives our body tactile feedback that helps us develop strong and properly aligned mandibles; as such, when we grow up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead of gnawing meat off a bone, our mandibles may not form properly);15 and (4) the neck position typically held while staring at screens and bending to look at phones, which creates tension in the neck and jaw muscle.

Though we can’t do much about the PB&J sandwiches from our youth, we can complete our present-day stress cycles and take steps to release jaw tension. Interestingly, there is thought to be a connective-tissue relationship between the jaw and the hips. So, if you’re struggling to release jaw tension, try some yoga stretches to open the hips, such as pigeon pose, or any pose that helps stretch and release the hip flexor, such as a lunge. Just as a clenched jaw signals that we’re about to fight, a relaxed jaw reassures us that we have nothing to fight about.

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