today we're talking about four ways that
you can tell whether or not your jaw is
contributing to your postural imbalance
and when we talk about the jaw we refer
to the temporal mandibular joint so if
you take your fingers and position them
right here and open your mouth
you'll feel a bone pop out that's the
condyle that's your temporal mandibular
joint now the condyle sits in the fossa
and in between the two you'll find the
meniscus now what's really important is
that when you open your mouth the
movement of this condyle needs to rotate
forward and down if there is an
asymmetry of tension in either one of
those joints this could potentially
create an imbalance with your posture so
you're ready let's jump into the first
test
test number one is what i call the three
finger test
take three of your fingers and position
them in your mouth are you able to fit
those fingers in your mouth now if you
feel that opening your mouth is painful
causes pain in the same area that you
located before
if you find that mouth opening is
limited or if you find that you have to
squish your fingers together to bring
your fingers in your mouth then your
temporal mandibular joint may be
compromised the second test is whether
or not your lower jaw your mandible is
deviated on one side this is referred to
as a cross bite now a cross bite is
caused by an asymmetry of tension
between your jaw muscles whereas one
side is tighter and the other side is
weaker which causes a lateral deviation
of the jaw either on the left side or
the right side from a postural
standpoint this causes a problem because
the lower jaw is connected to your
shoulders so in other words if you have
a cross bite from a postural standpoint
if you were to look at yourself from the
top you may find that one shoulder is
either protracted forward or one glute
is posteriorly
rotated so what a crossbite creates is
torsion
on your body causing imbalances in the
transverse plane
next up are missing teeth if you have a
missing teeth other than your wisdom
teeth what ends up happening every
single time you speak or swallow your
saliva the tongue will fill the hole to
prevent
drooling on yourself now over time this
ends up creating what is referred to as
a lingual dysfunction now because the
tongue attaches on your hyoid bone and
because your higher bone is connected to
your shoulder blade
via the omohyoid a lingual dysfunction
can also cause rotations in the
transverse plane but can also cause
tilts in the frontal plane this is when
you may notice that one shoulder or one
hip is lower on one side now last but
not least the fourth thing that i want
you to look for
is noise or cracking or screeching
upon opening your jaw so what i'm going
to want you to do is take your fingers
position them on that coin doll right
here and when you open your mouth
do you hear screeching or cracking
if there is screeching or cracking then
what that means is that your meniscus
or joint is being compromised now if you
found that you have either one two or
three or all four of those problems
what that means is that your jaw
is creating
a postural imbalance