The Silent Torturer- The Jaw Twinge

Picture this: You wake up at the crack of dawn, 9:04 AM. You roll out of bed and your ankle pops slightly as you put weight on it. You shuffle blearily out into the kitchen and pull the box of Frosted Mini-Wheats off the shelf. Stuffing your hand directly into the box, you pull out one of those sugar coated fiber nuggets and pop it into your mouth. All is well until… you bite down. A searing pain strikes you just behind the earlobe, as if someone has driven a nail into that soft spot where your jaw hinges. You have fallen prey to… The Jaw Twinge!

Well, you probably never have. But this short cereal drama was created to illustrate a very real affliction that ails literally tens of people around the world.

I personally am a sufferer of what my Grandpa referred to as “The Jaw Twinge.” It has happened to me my entire life. My mother also suffers from it, though I am not sure of its regularity for her.

For me, The Twinge occurs whenever I bite down into something, usually hard or chewy, after several hours of not chewing, munching, crunching or otherwise masticating something into a pulp. I can experience it several times a day; sometimes it is worse than others. The pain lasts for a few seconds and then disperses. On a pain scale, I’d place it somewhere below Childbirth, but above watching it on The Learning Channel.

Aside from the discomfort of having someone shove a ball point pen into your jaw joint, we Twingers also are subject to a lifetime of dining companions observing our pained expression, one which conveys the idea that what we have just bitten into was not a hamburger, but instead turned out to be a dead hamster. It isn’t that we don’t enjoy the food, it is that our jaw has kicked itself, and rather hard.

Tragically, just as with our fellow diners, this problem is not particularly understood. An online search for “Jaw Twinge” yields very few results, I guess not a lot of people refer to it in this manner. The only malady of the jaw and ear area that I could find which sort of fits my symptoms is a Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (+1000 Scrabble Score). This is a disorder of the blood vessels, tendons, muscles, ligaments, lagnuts, pins, bolts, and rubber bands that make your jaw work.

The problem with TMD is that its manifestations are broad, everything from a popping sound when you chew to migraines and tinnitus.

Many of the underlying causes of the disorder, so I have found, are brought about by trauma or mishap, either from clenching or grinding teeth in the night, improper dental surgery, or a degenerative joint disease that affects more than just the jaw. I’m not a clencher or a tooth grinder, so for me, it isn’t that.

I still haven’t been able to find out why it has happened to me my whole life, or why the sensation lasts only a few seconds. I suppose that I will continue to live with it, for the rest of my life, until someone adequately describes and finds out exactly what “The Twinge” is all about.

In the meantime, if you are sharing a meal with me and I make some sort of a grimace, either I have just experienced The Twinge or you have fed me a hamster.

Look for The Twinge Thursday nights this fall on CBS.

Question of the Day: Do you have a malady that defies scientific understanding? Do you have a relative that defies scientific understanding?