Why my Jaw is so Goddamn Big
Ever wondered why my jaw is so large?
I have a very big jaw. It’s always funny to see the comments on it.
Some people seem to think it’s great.
However, it honestly depends on the angle. Sometimes it looks ridiculous.
This is from my video where I fasted 7 days. Take a look at the side of my face and how it makes a kind of concave curve. If you look at me from the right angle, it looks like there’s something stuffed in my cheeks.
Some people seem to think my jaw is actually fake or that I might even have a tumor.
I was disappointed no one mentioned the Godfather yet. Marlon Brando apparently stuffed his cheeks with cotton when auditioning for this part then later had a dentist make some sort of appliance for him.
Looking at these greasy pictures from high school I suppose my jaw was on the squarer side, but it’s certainly changed over 15 years. That tumor on my jaw is actually my masseter muscles which are way too big now. At 2:25 in this video about coffee and anxiety, I talk about how drinking too much coffee causes me to unconsciously clench my jaw and showed myself flexing my masseter muscles.
But the reason these muscles are so big isn’t because I drink coffee. Actually I haven’t drank coffee since early July this year.
I don’t chew hard gum or do any specific type of “mewing” to make these muscles large either. My masseter muscles are huge because of the several hour daily workout they get while I’m sleeping. I have a condition called temporomandibular joint disorder which simply means that the “hinge” of my jaw is kinda fucked up. This started somewhere in High School.
Aside from my jaw looking pretty weird from certain angles, I’m pretty sure it’s hampering the overall quality of my sleep. I often wake up in the middle of the night with a stiffness in my neck at the base of my skull. The funny thing is the stronger my masseter muscles get, the worse this issue became …and now they’re really strong.
There are a lot of theories of how it arises but frankly none of them have been very convincing to me except one from a Dr. Dwight Jennings. I won’t go into too much detail as I imagine none of you have TMJ, but he explains that it’s basically the result of misaligned teeth. This made a lot of sense to me because I had some cavities filled in high school which slightly changed the height of some of my teeth. I specifically remember complaining to the dentist that it didn’t feel quite right, like the tooth he just worked on ended up too high. After a while I got used to that new position but sometime later I started waking up with headaches and tons of tension in my temples. Not long after (still in high school), we went to a specialist who told me I had TMJ disorder and they made me a mouthpiece that cost my parents 2000 dollars. The mouthpiece was designed to make it so my teeth could slide comfortably around at night, so when I was grinding my teeth, there wouldn’t be so much friction and the grinding wouldn’t hurt my teeth as much. Only thing is I wasn’t grinding my teeth - I was clenching. I was basically biting down as hard as I could all night.
Jennings explains that contrary to what many dentists believe, it’s actually most natural for the teeth to first meet at the back molars. This made tons of sense to me when sometime in 2021, I finally found a dentist in Japan who seemed to specialize in fixing teeth alignment to ameliorate TMJ. His adjustments mainly consisted of adding resin to my teeth to adjust the height of some of them. Unfortunately, he was adjusting my teeth with the idea that it’s most natural to have the teeth meet somewhere in the middle - where the premolars are.
After he made this adjustment, I woke up in the mornings with my actual teeth hurting as well as increased tension in my temples and more tension at the base of my skull. It very quickly made sense why this was so uncomfortable. Remember, my problem is that I am biting down as hard as I can all night. Imagine you’ve got a piece of hard candy or a chicken bone in your mouth that you’re trying to break in half. Where would feel most natural to break it? Incisors are thin and pointy, that would hurt. The canines and premolars don’t feel so great either. What can stand the most force is your back molars.
In specific, I think the problem is that my left, back-most molar is too low. The reason for the clenching is that (maybe) I am unconsciously trying to get my back molars to touch. I’m sparing several details since I imagine none of y’all have this issue, but Jennings explains that the teeth not being able to touch properly is quite stressful on the body. Soundsfarfetched, but I always have to wake up to pee (anxiety is linked to nocturia) and I never have good dreams. They’re not terrifying nightmares, but the storyline is just always generally shitty - nothing good is ever happening.
Neal Hallinan explains how he was finally able to fix the alignment of his spine/body by fixing his TMJ.
This is certainly the most persistently annoying health problem that I haven’t been able to fix.
-I’m almost always conscious of my lower jaw because it never feels quite comfortable.
-My neck is always stiff
-I have plenty of almost-nightmares.
-I even buy Hallinan’s theory that TMJ messes with your body’s overall alignment because mine is out of wack as well.
But… my jaw looks pretty chad from very specific angles so that’s sorta cool.
What’s the moral of the story? More masseter muscle is not always better. I got tumor looking masseter muscles on accident, but this guy specifically tried his hardest to get this ridiculous look by chewing on some masseter strengthening piece of rubber.
If any of you guys have TMJ and have gotten relief with any specific strategy, please comment or shoot me an email at joseph.everett.wil@gmail.com !
P.S. This guy is the real CEO of Jawline.
fwiw I had TMJ for a while and my dentist gave me a thing to help it at night, but it turns out tons of nutrient deficiencies cause TMJ and (at least in that case) it’s less about the actual tooth alignment than the jaw just wanting to clench. Something to consider is whether you have better or worse TMJ days, because if so, it suggests something other than teeth alignment is at least a factor, even if tooth alignment is too.
Based on your saying that you also have a headache in the back of your skull and poor dreams, B6 (supplement P5P, not normal B6) and/or magnesium deficiencies stand out as the most likely. I solved my own TMJ entirely with nutrients and I was able to help a few others as well.
It might also interest you to know that restless leg syndrome and TMJ are tightly linked via nutrient deficiencies too, in case you ever experience that (especially twitching yourself awake).
Some other nutrient deficiencies linked to TMJ are vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamine, riboflavin (probably because it supports B6; its deficiency also causes do e headaches), niacin, folate, B12, zinc, and iron.
I’m curious if you’ve ever gotten a nutrient deficiency test like Spectracell or similar that actually analyzes intercellular levels of nutrients, because most tests analyze blood levels and are not especially useful since the body has lots of mechanisms for maintaining circulating levels of nutrients by simply pulling them out of cells.
Speaking from personal experience, doing unusual diets or taking supplements can easily deplete some nutrients, even and ESPECIALLY if you get good results from them; every effect that happens is the result of whatever you take or eat reacting with *something else.* We don’t have infinite supplies of everything, and often even when our bodies can make something, we can’t make it at the rate needed to keep up with whatever unusual thing we’re consuming. Then the things we can’t make, like minerals, are sometimes getting incorporated into new tissues/cells.
I actually developed TMJ when I was doing paleo back in 2012 and getting tons of health benefits from it. I just couldn’t get enough of the nutrients I needed from even a high nutrient diet like paleo to do everything my body wanted to do.
Let's look at the root cause. I wouldn't blame the TMJ on misaligned teeth, even if they are. I think the issue is the clenching, and that may have a cause as well.
I had TMJ when I was in the Marine Corps, and it was due to clenching my teeth at night. When I moved back into civilian life, I had far less stress, the clenching subsided, and my TMJ went away. When I currently have a particularly stressful day, I will wake up with a "tired" jaw and I know I was clenching my teeth in my sleep again. Fortunately, those stressful days are few and far between so the TMJ has never returned.
I know removing stress from ones life can be very difficult, but you seem like a guy who could really commit to it and see a noticeable difference. I guess that takes us a step further into the root cause rabbit hole as well--what is causing the stress?