Why does my jaw click?

A clicking jaw is one of the most common things people ask about and one of the least likely to need anything done about it. The click on its own is not the problem. What it comes with is.

What the click actually is

A small disc of cartilage sits between the jaw joint and the skull and moves with the joint as you open and close. In most clicking jaws that disc slips slightly forward of where it should sit, and then snaps back into position part way through the opening. The snap is the sound you hear.

The clinical name is disc displacement with reduction, and reduction here just describes the disc returning to place. It is the most common of the internal jaw joint problems and it is very widespread.

Why a painless click usually needs nothing

This is the part that surprises people. Where the jaw opens a normal amount and nothing hurts, the click frequently needs no treatment at all. The joint is working, the noise is a mechanical event rather than damage accumulating, and chasing it can create a problem where there was not one.

A reasonable position is to leave a quiet, painless, full-range click alone and pay attention to it if it changes.

What is worth assessing

⚠ The picture changes when the click arrives with any of the following:

• Pain in the joint, the cheek, the temple or the ear
• Locking, where the jaw catches or will not open or close properly
• A limited opening, particularly if it has narrowed recently
• Difficulty chewing, or fatigue in the jaw through a meal
• A recent change in a click you have had for years

Those are not emergencies, but they are worth having assessed rather than waiting out.

Why the neck comes into it

Jaw symptoms and neck symptoms travel together more often than people expect. The muscles that control jaw position work across the upper neck, clenching loads them, and posture through the head and neck changes how the jaw sits at rest. A jaw assessment that ignores the neck is looking at half of it.

That overlap is why this is within a chiropractor’s scope to assess. It is also why the honest answer is sometimes that the problem belongs elsewhere: a dentist manages the bite and splint therapy, and where that is the next step you will be told.

What management looks like

Where treatment is appropriate, it is aimed at the pain and the function rather than at silencing the joint. That usually means hands-on work through the jaw muscles and the upper neck, and changing the things loading it: clenching through the day, chewing habits, sleep position, and the stress patterns that sit underneath a lot of jaw pain.

The click may or may not settle. A jaw that opens fully and does not hurt is the outcome worth aiming at, and it is a different target from silence.

If yours has started hurting, locking or opening less than it did, that is worth an assessment. If it has clicked quietly for a decade and does nothing else, that is worth leaving alone. More detail on the joint itself is on the jaw and TMJ page.