The Digital Dental Surgeon

Yawning is an involuntary act. It is widely believed as a bodily response to lack of oxygen therefore initiating the reflex of deep inhalataion and exhalation.

There is a article on yawning in Wikipedia which would be a good read. Click here.

What does yawning have to do with my oral health?

A lot really. Yawning involves not only the respiratory tract but also the muscles and the jawbones.

I’ve seen a few cases there overextension of the lower jaws, or in layman terms very wide opening of the mouth during yawning would dislocate the lower jawbone. Once this occurs the person could not close his/her mouth again.

Based on the picture above, the condyle (c) would rotate within the back of the articular eminence (e) during mouth opening. If the mouth is open too widely, the condyle would move further forwards and sometimes ‘jump’ over the articular eminence. What happens afterwards is, the condyle is unable to move back into the socket behind the eminence. This is when the person panics and the jaw muscles tighten and contracts.

So you would have a dislocation of the lower jaw.

The trick to correct the dislocation is to relax the muscles, which would require the person to relax and not panic. Some may need an injection of local anaesthesia with or without muscle relaxants to assist in the relaxation of the muscles. For simple and unsevere dislocations a dentist should be able to move the jaw back into it’s place without much difficulty. For more severe cases, surgery might be necessary.

After correcting the dislocation, the patient would be advised to limit the mouth opening and to have soft diet for around one to two weeks. Most patients would not have recurrences of the dislocation and would live normal lives.

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