"Tooth Rage"...?

When my wisdom teeth came through I started getting triggered by the shape of my own mouth. This eventually led me to the jaw expansion community, and the idea that modern diets contribute to jaw dysfunction via underdevelopment (we don’t chew enough to prompt our jaws to grow to the correct size).

The result is all kinds of dysfunction and disharmonies—I have tinnitus, sleep apnea, occasional vertigo, whole-body posture issues, TMJ issues, and hearing sensitivity, all of which (I believe) can be traced back to suboptimal jaw development. I have the classic set-back and narrow jaw and downswung maxilla that fit with Mike Mew’s (the controversial UK orthodontist) ideas on underdevelopment.

Add to this recent research identifying a link between misophonia response and orofacial motor areas of the brain (https://www.jneurosci.org/content/41/26/5762) and I can’t help but think maybe there’s a connection here.

Could it be that jaw dysfunction—sounds and sights as well as tactile sensations that correlate with it, both in ourselves and others—is part of what drives misophonia? Some connection would of course be expected, as a lot of the sounds that trigger us are mouth-related. But it does strike me that the vast majority of my own triggers, from all modalities, are somehow connected to jaw dysfunction in non-obvious ways.

The main ones are:

  • (visual) facial characteristics (downswung maxilla, small mouth, deep bite, etc)

  • the sound of the tongue popping off the soft palate/epiglottis (indicates insufficient tongue space?)

  • snorting when laughing (indicates flaps of loose skin at back of nasal cavity area, associated with snoring/sleep apnea and generally suboptimal layout?)

  • certain vowel sounds or word pronunciations that correspond with a narrower mouth and/or with a lower jaw that’s trapped behind an underdeveloped upper jaw

  • one of the few times a non-relative has triggered me, it was a co-worker with a severe sinus issue; he was constantly clearing his nasal cavity

To test this possibility I would suggest a study where two groups—misophonia and non-misophonia—are tested for jaw dysfunction, according to orthotropic principles. (This is important because it takes the harmony and function of the whole face into account whereas most orthodontists, in the UK at least, are fairly cosmetically focused, and will routinely extract teeth to facilitate superficial straightening, which can actually make functional issues worse).