We close our jaws in chewing food, of course — and most persons also press their teeth together one or two thousand times a day between meals in swallowing. If the teeth do not meet properly, the pressures on them during chewing and swallowing may force the lower jaw into a strained position that pinches the joints in front of the ears.

If you could see through the skin and get a side view of the TMJ, you would see how the mandible, or lower jaw, hinges to the skull. The joint consists of a ball-and-socket arrangement, with the ball being a rounded mass of bone in the back part of the lower jaw that fits into a socket at the base of the skull. When you open and close your jaw, this "ball" rotates in its socket, and — if the teeth push the jaw too far in any direction — the soft tissues between the bones are pinched.