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Headaches & TMJ Pain

Most people, including medical doctors have a hard time believing that your bite, the way you chew is impacted by your feet. Truth is there is a two way postural path from your feet to your head, and from your head to your feet.
chiropractors especially, like to talk about the Kinetic Chain. The Kinetic Chain is the way the joints of the body connects from your feet to your jaw. Joints are tightly connected with ligaments and muscles, so when one changes position, that change ripples through the postural system like a set of gears. For example, when your ankles roll inward from over pronation, your legs are rotated inward. You can try this yourself: When you rotate your legs inward, your hips will rotate forward, so your but and belly will protrude more. The trick with overpronation and foot mechanics is that it is seldom symmetrical, so one hip will rotate slightly more forward than the other. Not only does that cause a rotation of your upper body, but it causes a functionally short leg. Now you can see that your body is starting to become asymmetrical - one hip higher than the other, and the opposite shoulder becoming higher. So you can see how this pattern continues to travel up toward your head. It results in a "Head Forward Posture" which slides the jaw back to create an increasing overbite.

There is another two-way path between the hips and the head and it is the Dura Mater (Dura). The Dura is a tough fibrous sheeting that surrounds and protects the spinal chord. At the bottom of your back it is attached to the sacrum and tail bone. The dura is basically free floating in the spine, but attached at the top at the very upper neck bone (Axis) and inside the scull. The Dura can be stretched or torqued by external forces like the hips being unlevel, the tailbone being bent, or the bite being uneven. Forces can travel up or down, so a problem with the feet affecting the hips can ultimately impact the bite and the TM Joint.

Good myofascial therapists understand this, and they use many techniques for improving posture and body mechanics to normalize the Kinetic Chain and Dura configuration. Hyperprnation is a significant perpetuating factor causing distortions in both systems. You can easily and quickly check your feet to see if they may be contributing to your problems.