Is your jaw pain causing your anxiety?

Today we’re talking about the trigeminal nerve, in the TMJ the temporomandibular joint.

You have one too, in fact, you have two of them.

What does the trigeminal nerve do?

The trigeminal nerve gives you the ability to feel and move your face, and it has an added bonus too, which I’ll touch on at the end. It gives us the ability to move our jaw, which we use for chewing. It sends messages backward and forwards from the face to the brain, giving us sensitivity, to our teeth our jaw, our face our mouth nose, and most of our scalp.

Its primary function though, is sensory, and as such it has a hundred times more nociceptors (pain receptors), than anywhere else in our body. So if you’ve noticed that you can feel more pain with your tongue, and in your mouth, for instance. If it feels more sensitive to pain than any other place in your body, there’s a good reason for that, there are a hundred times more receptors. Specifically pain receptors, not sensory, but pain receptors.

This is one of the reasons that trigeminal nerve issues, and TMJ dysfunction as well, can be so, so painful!

Hello, I’m Sarah Gowans. Massage, and craniosacral therapist at BlossomingMe. Today, I’m not just talking about the trigeminal nerve, but its connection to powerful emotions like anxiety and depression. Emotions that you may have met once or twice in your life before. If you’ve been experiencing those it could also be, that TMJ work, fixing any jaw dysfunctions that you might have, can actually positively impact any anxiety or depression that you’ve been suffering. And other challenging emotions. 

Where is the trigeminal nerve located?

The trigeminal nerve starts just in front and to the side of, the mid-pons part of our brain. Roughly in line with our ears, but in the back of the head. It comes forward and actually branches into three different branches. So from inline with our ears, to up the top of our face, just below the eyes. The second, middle branch goes from the ears to the front and top of our jaw. That’s the maxilla level and the mandible level comes from the ears down to the front, the bottom level of our jaw, to the mandible.

How can the trigeminal nerve cause anxiety and depression?

So, the job of the trigeminal nerve, as I said, is to send sensory information between the face and the brain. It also has a major role in the sympathetic nervous system (the fight and flight part of the nervous system). Meaning that by impacting the trigeminal nerve we can actually have an effect on that part of the nervous system. But more than that it actually has fibers in those nerve branches that also connect it to the parasympathetic nervous system, the one that helps us to rest and digest, rest and repair. That’s really where the crucial part comes in, for linking in to our emotions. That’s where we can actually help our body to calm itself. 

There is also a powerful connection between the trigeminal nerve and the vagus nerve. That’s important because the vagus nerve is the main nerve in the parasympathetic nervous system. The whole parasympathetic nervous system. It’s the biggest nerve in the parasympathetic nervous system and has the most power in that part of the nervous system.

When the vagus nerve is functioning well, our stomach is not in knots; it’s calm, our heart rate is not palpitating; it’s calm too; it’s at a slow rate and our breathing is normal. These are the effects that the vagus nerve has on our body. And stress, as you’ve probably noticed, can have a dramatic effect on those functions in the body. It can radically reduce their effectiveness. So they function less well when we’re stressed because the vagus nerve has been affected.

It’s the link between the trigeminal and the vagus nerve is where most of our power is. It can either set us up for fear anger, anxiety, frustration, or pain, etc. Or it can set us up for a sense of well-being and peace of mind. A recent 10-day-long study of trigeminal nerve stimulation found that depression in the participants was relieved by over 36%. 

That’s in just 10 days!

So yes, working with your TMJ, to clear any dysfunction, and stimulate your trigeminal nerve, can significantly reduce your anxiety and depression.