When something in your body is causing pain when it moves, it is best to minimize the movement of that body part. When it comes to jaw pain, it is not so easy to do since you have to eat, and you have to speak, and both of those movements involve moving your jaw. However, you can limit the amount of movement of your jaw so that you are not using the muscles that are causing your pain by choosing foods that do not require a lot of chewing, and avoiding habits that make the muscles work.
Foods to Avoid with Facial Muscle Pain
Some of the foods to avoid might seem obvious and some not so obvious. One of the foods that many people are surprised to learn that they should not eat is salad. When you think about it, you have to do a lot of chewing to eat a salad.
Generally you should avoid foods that are chewy, crunchy, hard, and sticky, and any food that requires you to open wide to bite into such as whole apples, submarines sandwiches, double deck deli sandwiches, a Double Double, etc.
This is clearly a partial list but it should give you a good guide to what types of food you should not eat in order to give your facial muscles as much of a rest as possible:
- Abba Zabba
- Apples
- Bagels
- Baguettes
- Caramels
- Carrots (raw)
- Celery
- Chewing gum
- Corn chips
- Corn on the cob
- French bread
- Gummy bears
- Hard candy - since we all know that no one can just suck on a hard candy without biting into it
- Hard rolls
- Ice
- Jawbreakers
- Jelly beans
- Licorice
- Look bar
- Now and Laters
- Nuts
- Peanut brittle
- Pizza crusts
- Popcorn
- Pretzels
- Raw vegetables - cooked vegetables are fine but they should be very soft
- Salads
- Snickers
- Skittles
- Starburst
- Sugar Babies
- Taffy
- Toffee
- Tootsie rolls
- Tortilla chips
Habits to Avoid with Facial Muscle Pain
It is important to not chew your nails, bite your lips or cheek, or bite on items with your teeth such as pens, pencils, bobby clips or any other object that causes your jaw muscles to make small repetitive movements.