Jaw joint causes dizziness

Symptoms 🌡
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I noticed that the jaw joint causes dizziness, as well as constipation and gas.

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yeah … I have a theory about this.

from day one of chronic I started to get my jaw “cracking” open … not a feeling of clicking or a cartilage, but a kind of stickiness/stuckness that was releasing. It makes a lot of noise, sometimes bystanders can hear it.

Then a squishing.

Never been explained.

I have never had a doctor explain this … and definitely not to my satisfaction, but I’m sure there is congestion or inflammation in my eustachian tube.

when you move your jaw … that congestion puts pressure on the windows of the inner ear so you end up feeling dizzy?

there is supposed to be some anatomical connection as movement of the jaw is supposed to help keep the eustachian tube clear … so …

Could this be some side effect of an unhappy facial nerve?

The other weird feature of this is that I never get any jaw pain, or any feeling of misalignment. … so what the heck is going on?!

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Odd that this would come up now. This past week, I’ve noticed a crackling noise in my good ear when I move my jaw. At first I associated it with excessive moisture in my ear, especially since it was just the one ear. I had an Audiologist appointment on Monday, so I decided to wait until then to do anything about it.

Monday morning rolled around and no crackle. Doesn’t that just figure. At any rate, I brought it up with her and she looked in my ear, and didn’t see anything unusual. She said there was a usual amount of wax, and she could clean it if I wanted her to, but in her opinion, there wasn’t anything that was going to be gained by cleaning it out. She pointed out that insurance doesn’t cover cleaning wax out, and the amount of wax she sees is what she expects to see in most ears.

I haven’t heard any crackling since. I’m really wondering if there wasn’t blockage in the eustachian tube that has since dried out.

I’ll keep watching this thread to see if something comes up.

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Yeah, this is nothing to do with wax.

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I’ve been reading Oliver Sack’s book, Migraine, the second edition published in 1992. Definitely precedes VM as a diagnosis, and the 1992 version is mostly like the earlier version from the '70s with additional comments. Nonetheless, this book has made me feel less crazy than any scientific article I have read so far! His close descriptions of the variety of ways that people experience migraine, auras and prodrome, recovery make it clear that neurologists at least have known for quite a while how various the symptoms associated with migraine are. One of the things he discusses several times is the interrelation between the brain and the gut. It’s incredibly common for guts symptoms to precede, coincide with, and follow migraine type headache pain. He also mentions the extra cranial nerve systems, and while the jaw is more or less part of the cranium, those nerves don’t necessarily begin there.

All of this was a long way saying that I also have jaw and throat issues. I just finished 6 weeks of PT for the same, and although the symptoms aren’t gone, the cervical stretching and other exercises for the jaw have been really helpful. Now, it’s just part of my maintenance routine.

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I exercise my jaw muscles periodically to finish off the crackle and free them up. It’s a physical sensation.

I do get it mildly on the opposite side.

I’m almost certain my tinnitus is completely related to the impact this physiology is having on my eustachian tube.

I’m prepared to accept this is down to the innervation of this area and possibly migraine.

Very frustrating that no doctor has ever walked me through this. Not even expensive private ones.

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5 posts were merged into an existing topic: New to vestibular migraine, migraine without headache?

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the entire head is heavily innervated with major sensory nerves. This figure only depicts the cutaneous nerves (right under the skin); there are many more that go down deeper into the muscle and other tissues.

I think problems with migraine and dizziness can be bidirectional here – mechanical problems in the jaw and elsewhere feed into this very complicated system, but problems higher in the CNS can also flow down (primary migraine causing muscle tension, poor coordination etc)

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Yeah.

And what physically is happening when you crack the jaw open? What is blocking the full movement of the jaw and what is freed up?

Can the eustachian tube be constricted and or pinched acutely by this activity?

Has anyone done any research on this?

All I see is casual “TMJ can cause migraines” and … “migraines can cause TMJ” … but has there been any detailed study of causation that discusses actual physiology?

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Really the intestines have a role, I also suffer from my stomach, whenever constipation and gas increase = dizziness, dizziness and imbalance multiply and I feel a throbbing headache, stomach acid, vitamins and minerals must be repaired, as well as I feel a pulse under my left foot

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I still think my ear rings because of the jaw, but I had a hole in the eardrum before, but it healed, but the jaw joint I couldn’t find a cure, and the medical suggested to me Knight Guard

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This comes down to “what is causing what?”

There is much talk of association but no definitive causation?

My wife tells me I do not clench my jaw whilst sleeping.

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I feel like neurogenic inflammation could be a cause – ETD is notably caused be infectious things like flu/etc. In migraine neurogenic inflammation is infamously driven by CGRP…

of course this is the migraine → ETD dysfunction direction. I’d be curious to hear if people have better symptoms after they go on CGRP antagonists

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primer on neurogenic inflammation and inflammatory messengers being released from nerve endings:

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This is some anecdotal evidence:

imho, inflammation that consitricted the Eustachian tube would do several things:

  1. apply pressure on the windows of the inner ear
  2. amongst other things that might cause high frequency tinnitus as the vibrations of the inner ear windows would be damped.
  3. cause the perception of a difference between that ear and the other ear (alternobaric vertigo?)
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I agree; the nerve endings are so packed together there and around the middle ear that any inflammation driven process is going to diffuse out and influence other things in the immediate area. These things are also right on top of eachother (only centimeters away when we’re talking about the jaw and inner ear).

gut problems are interesting too – when these inflammatory signal molecules are released, they are very loud to the rest of the body and travel far. The gut is a huge source of potential inflammatory signalers and is also very sensitive to them…

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yes, when I had Gastritis it made me extremely dizzy when I had bad bouts.

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all of my symptoms will appear together normally during flares…ETD, jaw problems, ear fullness, gut issues :frowning: the joys of this disease

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So, does neurogenic inflammation in face secrete some kind of fluid into the tissue?

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the nerve endings will secrete inflammatory messages and they will travel locally in the tissue, and will also travel distantly through blood

when you think about it the body is just a big bag of water with bones – things that are far away are much closer than they would seem :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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