You may have heard people say they are dealing with TMJ. Well, let’s learn a little bit more about that. First, TMJ is not a condition. TMJ stands for the temporomandibular joint, and we have two of them. TMJ an important joint formed by your skull and your jaw bone and involves the muscles needed for chewing. Your TMJ acts like a sliding hinge, and connects your jawbone to your skull. It is responsible for opening and closing your mouth, allowing the jaw to move smoothly up and down and side to side, and enables you to talk, chew, and yawn. When you experience pain in this area, you have temporomandibular disorder, or TMD or TMJ pain.So, what causes this disorder or pain? The bones of the joint are separated by a disc of cartilage to keep your jaw movement smooth. When muscles are irritated, joints are displaced, or if you have arthritis or another joint disease, the smoothness may be disrupted. Common signs of discomfort are popping, clicking, muscle tenderness, joint tenderness, or being unable to open your jaw as wide as possible. There are three main categories of the type of pain you may experience in this joint: 1) myofascial pain, or pain in the muscles that control the jaw and the connecting neck and shoulder muscles (this is the most common form); 2) a dislocated or displaced disc; and 3) a degenerative joint disease, like arthritis, in the jaw joint. Things that can increase your risk of developing TMD are jaw injury, stress, or grinding and clenching of teeth.You can treat or reverse TMJ-related pain with conservative steps, including eating softer foods, applying ice packs, avoiding extreme jaw movements, learning techniques to relax and reduce stress, and practicing gentle stretching of the jaw to help increase its movement. Spinal manipulative therapy, soft tissue massage, and exercises have also been shown to reduce pain and symptoms. Another treatment that has been proven to help is intraoral myofascial release a technique chiropractors can use to release the muscles surrounding the joint, accessing them from the inner side of a person’s cheeks.