Bite It: Jaw Disorder Can Cause Back Trouble

When he tried the test, moving his jaw slightly to the left and forward, his entire right side loosened, followed by a single loud pop near the ear. “Everything relaxed from my neck to my toes,” he recalls. “I had been treating the wrong place all these years.”

That place is the temporomandibular joint, or TMJ, which is a small hinge connecting the jaw to the skull, located just in front of each ear. When this joint falls out of alignment, it can distort muscle chains that run through the head, neck, and spine. A tiny change in how the teeth meet can ripple down the body, affect breathing, pelvic balance, and even foot pressure. Nonetheless, most patients and many doctors never suspect the jaw.

Orthodontist Dr Kishore Govardhan, who heads TMJ Hyderabad in Jubilee Hills, has seen the pattern often. “People come with ear pain, headaches, shoulder tension, and even tingling in the fingers. They’ve already visited ENT doctors, neurologists and general physicians. When none of them finds a cause, the patient starts believing it’s all in their head.”

He explains that the teeth act as the pillars of the skull. “If your bite is off, your body adjusts to look normal. The head shifts forward, the shoulders round, the back curves. Over time, the entire posture changes.”

Jaw clenching and nighttime grinding, also known as bruxism, are now so common that many people accept them as stress habits rather than early warnings. Pollution-related allergies and poor nasal breathing worsen the cycle. “When your airway narrows, the body subconsciously clenches the jaw to pull in air,” says Dr Govardhan. “Those muscles were meant for eating and speaking, not for holding tension twenty-four hours a day.”

Rajan’s case shows how deep the connection runs. His long-standing ankle injuries and pelvic tilt made him prone to uneven weight-bearing. Over the years, one-sided tightness crept upward until even his eye and shoulder felt drawn to the right. Simple physiotherapy helped briefly, but it was only when a dentist gave him a temporary orthotic to rebalance his bite that his neck began to turn freely again. “It sounds unreal,” he says, “but the jaw really controls the whole body.”

The science isn’t fringe. Researchers studying the postural restoration model, popularised by Neal Hallinan, describe the body as a loop of asymmetries, like a dominant right diaphragm, a rotated pelvis and a forward head. Correcting one link through breathing, sensory feedback or jaw repositioning can reset the rest. Physiotherapists in Hyderabad are beginning to explore this integrative approach, with dental splints, breathing drills and pelvic work.

However, awareness remains limited. Most clinics treat TMJ as a dental curiosity rather than a postural disorder. Patients like Rajan spend years collecting labels, neck spasm, sciatica and anxiety, while the true trigger sits centimetres away from the ear.

As someone who has been an avid climber and musician, he confesses he hasn't been able to do any of that in the last couple of years. “It was like I could barely recognise myself. That pain had taken over my entire being. Even my personality changed. There was a point I felt like I couldn't live with this pain and no doctor understood what I was going through. Not even the best in the country.”

Chronic pain changes, he admits, narrows thought, isolates and erodes patience. “You start believing something is broken in you,” Rajan says. “When it finally begins to ease, even a small relief feels like getting your life back.”