Video calls were supposed to simplify work. For many people, they added a new kind of tension. I started noticing it in patients around the second month of widespread remote work: aching jaws, headaches that felt like a tight band around the temples, tender teeth with no obvious cavities. The story repeated in different forms. A manager who clenched through back-to-back Zoom reviews. A graduate student who sat with her jaw locked during seminar debates. A sales director who found himself chewing on his molars during every high-stakes pitch. When you put a camera on a human face for hours at a time, you invite a set of habits that the jaw and surrounding muscles don’t handle well.
The jaw is resilient. It can withstand decades of chewing, talking, and moving without complaint. What it does not tolerate, at least not quietly, is prolonged isometric contraction under stress. That is exactly what clenching is: a sustained, low-level contraction of the masseter and temporalis muscles, often paired with a forward head posture, shallow breathing, and a still tongue. Blend that with screen ergonomics and social pressure to appear engaged, and you have a textbook recipe for temporomandibular discomfort.
What exactly is clenching, and why do Zoom calls provoke it?
Clenching is the act of holding the upper and lower teeth tightly together or near together without functional purpose. It’s different from chewing, which cycles. It is also distinct from grinding, which involves lateral tooth movement and loud friction. Many patients clench silently and continuously for minutes at a time without noticing. On a video call, several triggers converge.
There is the social performance. When we stare at our own thumbnail, we tend to correct, pose, and freeze. Holding a neutral smile for twenty minutes is like asking a sprinter to hover at the starting block. The facial muscles engage and stay engaged. The jaw elevates slightly to maintain a pleasant line. Over time, those micro-contractions accumulate.
There is also the sympathetic nervous system. Performance anxiety, even mild, pushes the nervous system toward fight-or-flight activation. Heart rate rises, breathing drifts upward into the chest, shoulders gain tension. The jaw, wired for defensive readiness, often closes. In an office, brief walks between meetings release some of that load. On Zoom, the next meeting starts in twenty seconds, and the jaw never gets a chance to reset.
Then add posture. Laptops sit too low. People lean forward, chin jutting toward the screen. That posture rotates the jaw joint backward in its socket, reducing space in the joint and compressing the soft disc. The neck flexors fatigue, the temporalis picks up slack, and the bite feels heavier even when the teeth are only lightly touching.
From a dental perspective, what matters is the repeated strain across the temporomandibular joints (TMJs) and the masticatory muscles. The masseter, a small powerhouse that can exert several hundred newtons of force when chewing, is not meant to hold a static contraction while you absorb a slide deck. Microstrain creates trigger points. The joint’s supportive ligaments and disc can inflame. Teeth can become sensitive, especially those with larger existing fillings or minor cracks.
How stress turns into jaw pain
The path from stress to jaw pain follows predictable physiology. When the brain anticipates demand, it increases muscle tone. If you do not move, that tone has nowhere to discharge. Muscles become hypoxic and acidic in micro zones. Metabolites accumulate. You feel that as dull ache along the angle of the jaw, pain in front of the ear, or a headache that starts above the ear and creeps toward the forehead.
The joint itself can protest. The TMJ is a sliding hinge with a fibrocartilaginous disc that cushions movement. Prolonged clenching loads the joint superiorly. If you also protrude your jaw slightly to sound clearer on a microphone, the disc is dragged forward repeatedly. In some people, that results in popping or clicking. In others, it manifests as a sense of stiffness or fullness near the ear canal. When inflammation builds, sleeping on the affected side may feel uncomfortable and chewing tougher foods can provoke a sharp twinge.
Teeth, too, relay the message. Enamel is hard, but the structures supporting teeth are dynamic and sensitive. crown and bridge instagram.com The periodontal ligament compresses under load; with frequent clenching, teeth can feel high or bruised. If you already have areas of enamel wear or recession, cold sensitivity flares. Microscopic craze lines in enamel may expand. In the dental chair, I see accelerated wear facets and dentin exposure developing over months when it previously took years.
The Zoom factor: small design choices with big jaw consequences
Zoom and similar platforms are not the villains, but they invite behaviors that compound jaw strain.
Self-view is a potent one. Watching yourself while performing increases self-monitoring. You hold expressions longer and make fewer natural micro-movements. The jaw stays set, the lips press, the tongue sits high and stiff against the palate. Turning off self-view reduces that freeze and often lowers resting muscle tone by a small but meaningful amount.
Audio lag encourages people to over-articulate and project. Users lean toward the mic, push the jaw forward, and talk with a higher force than in person. In a quiet room with marginal acoustics, you unconsciously recruit more masseter to sound crisp. A headset with a boom mic positioned near the mouth changes that instantly. The jaw can relax, and the voice carries with less effort.
Camera placement matters. When the camera sits below eye level, you crane forward. The jaw joint shifts mechanics. Raising the camera to eye height or slightly above reduces that forward head posture and allows the jaw to hang more neutrally between speaking turns.
Back-to-back scheduling removes transition time. People don’t chew, walk, drink water, or yawn between meetings. Chewing is not merely for nutrition; it cycles the joint, perfuses muscles, and clears metabolites. Five minutes between calls to move and hydrate reduces jaw stiffness a surprising amount.
A quick self-assessment you can do at your desk
Patients often ask for a simple way to gauge whether their jaw pain is clenching-related. Without turning this into a diagnosis, a brief check can guide next steps.
- At rest, notice whether your teeth are touching. They shouldn’t be. In a healthy resting position, the tongue rests gently on the palate, lips are closed or softly closed, and the teeth are slightly apart. Place a fingertip just in front of the ear while opening and closing your mouth slowly. Smooth movement with minimal noise is ideal. Clicking that starts recently or pain during opening warrants a professional look. Press along the jawline at the thick part of the cheek. Tenderness there often indicates masseter fatigue. Track symptoms with context. If headaches or jaw ache cluster on heavy meeting days and fade on light ones, clenching is a likely contributor. Note morning symptoms. Waking with jaw soreness suggests sleep bruxism. Daytime Zoom clenching can still aggravate it, but management may include night safeguards.
This list is not a substitute for a dental exam. It helps you pay attention to patterns you can influence.
The dental perspective: what I look for in the chair
In the operatory, clues accumulate quickly. Wear facets on the canines and incisors that match like puzzle pieces. Hypertrophy of the masseter muscle may be visible as fuller angles of the jaw, especially in people who have ramped up clenching over months. Mobility or sensitivity in a tooth without caries. Gum recession with notches near the gumline, known as abfraction lesions, which may deepen under excessive occlusal stress.
I also ask about sound. Clicking that has been present for years and is painless may be a benign disc displacement with reduction. New clicking paired with pain during chewing or wide opening is more concerning and may benefit from imaging or referral. Ear fullness without infection often relates to joint inflammation. Tinnitus sometimes flares with jaw strain as well.
We discuss sleep. People who brace their jaws during the day often carry that habit into the night, but the reverse can also be true. If a partner hears grinding or if a patient wakes with daily temple headaches, I consider night bruxism on the differential. The management plan blends day and night strategies because the tissues don’t clock out.
Practical changes that ease jaw load during video-heavy days
Relief comes from reducing baseline muscle tone, improving joint mechanics, and protecting teeth. You don’t need a radical overhaul to begin; small adjustments stack.
Adjust the environment first. Elevate the camera to eye level using a stand or books. Position the screen so your head stays over your shoulders, not in front. Use a wired or wireless headset with a boom mic if possible. Your jaw and voice will both relax. Turn off self-view; most platforms allow you to hide your own tile while staying visible to others.
Schedule micro-breaks. Even ninety seconds between calls helps. Stand, roll your shoulders slowly, inhale through the nose, exhale twice as long. Let the tongue rest against the roof of the mouth and let the teeth separate. If you can, chew sugar-free gum for two or three minutes once or twice a day. The cyclical movement flushes tired muscle fibers without overloading them.
Train a resting posture for the jaw. The cue I teach is simple: lips together, teeth apart, tongue on the palate. Place the tongue tip on the spot just behind the upper front teeth, then let the rest of the tongue settle up. That position naturally opens a small gap between the teeth. Set a subtle reminder on your screen that says “LTA” so you recall it during calls. It sounds silly. It works.
Address the body, not just the jaw. Forward head posture shortens the suboccipital muscles and increases load on the temporalis. Gentle chin tucks, slow neck rotations within comfort, and scapular retraction drills lower that load. Breathing deeper into the abdomen through the nose shifts you out of sympathetic drive and lets the jaw release. I’ve seen stress splints fail because the underlying posture and breathing never changed.
Apply heat appropriately. A warm compress on the masseter for ten minutes in the evening relaxes muscle fibers and improves blood flow. Combine it with slow, pain-free opening and closing. If the joint itself is acutely inflamed, heat can aggravate swelling; in those cases, short, gentle cold applications near but not directly on the joint can calm it. Pay attention to how your body responds rather than locking into a single rule.
Mind caffeine and hydration. Dry tissues and high nervous system arousal make clenching more likely. Moderate caffeine, especially late in the day. Drink water steadily. If you sip citrus frequently, use a straw to protect enamel and rinse with water afterward.
When to consider a night guard or other dental appliances
Patients often ask for a mouthguard at the first sign of jaw pain. Appliances help, but they are tools, not magic. A custom night guard made by a dentist distributes force, prevents tooth-to-tooth wear, and can improve joint positioning. For someone who wakes with tightness and has visible wear, it is a straightforward protective step. Over-the-counter boil-and-bite guards are better than nothing for some, but they often bulk up the bite, irritate soft tissue, and can alter the jaw position unfavorably.
For daytime clenching during Zoom, a full-coverage appliance worn while speaking is typically impractical. Some patients benefit from a small anterior bite appliance used briefly during desk work to cue an open bite and interrupt clenching. That approach requires careful supervision to avoid unwanted tooth movement. A better first-line tactic is awareness training. Place a small sticker on the edge of the screen; when you notice it, check whether your teeth are together. With repetition, the jaw learns a new default.
If joint noise appears, especially clicking with pain or limited opening, a different class of appliances that guides the jaw to a more stable position may help, but this is not a do-it-yourself project. Seek evaluation. Imaging with cone-beam CT or MRI may be indicated if there is trauma, repeated locking, or suspicion of degenerative change.
Pain that masks as dental but isn’t
Not all jaw or tooth pain during Zoom originates in the bite. Sinus congestion can create upper tooth soreness that worsens when you lean forward. Ear issues can refer pain to the TMJ area. Neuralgias, though less common, present as sharp, electric pains that don’t track with chewing or clenching. I have seen patients with vitamin D deficiency or anemia report generalized facial aches that improved when the underlying condition was treated. If pain patterns don’t fit the typical clenching story, or if they persist despite behavior changes, widen the lens. Collaboration with primary care, ENT, or a physical therapist can untangle overlapping issues.
The psychology of performance and the jaw
I once worked with a trial attorney who clenched hardest during objection-heavy days. We practiced a micro-ritual between statements: a quiet exhale through pursed lips, a small tongue sweep across the palate, and a reset to lips together, teeth apart. He didn’t do it on camera; he did it in the momentary pause while another attorney spoke. His pain halved in two weeks.
The ritual matters because the jaw feeds back to the nervous system. Holding it closed signals readiness to act. Letting it rest tells the system it is safe to shift down. For people who equate relaxation with reduced performance, reframing helps. A relaxed jaw is not a lazy one. It is a responsive one. Speakers sound clearer when their tongue and jaw move freely. Leaders look more confident when their face isn’t frozen into a polite grimace.
If anxiety spikes before high-stakes calls, test your pre-call routine. Five minutes of diaphragmatic breathing through the nose, slow inhales for four counts and exhales for six to eight, drops baseline tone. A short walk around the room with shoulder rolls breaks the postural mold. Even setting the agenda with colleagues to reduce surprises lowers anticipatory clenching. Small, consistent shifts beat heroic efforts you abandon after a week.
How dental care fits into a sustainable plan
A good dental exam does more than spot cavities. We map wear patterns, palpate muscles, test joint ranges, and evaluate bite contacts. Sometimes a high spot on a new filling exacerbates clenching by prompting the jaw to hunt for a comfortable position. Adjusting that contact changes the daily experience. We also screen for sleep-disordered breathing when daytime clenching matches morning headaches and heavy snoring; untreated airway issues increase nocturnal bruxism and daytime tension.
For many, the plan blends self-care, ergonomic tweaks, and a guard at night. Follow-up matters. I like to check early, in four to six weeks, to see if pain has receded, whether the guard shows marks in specific places, and whether new habits stuck. If progress stalls, I bring in a physical therapist with craniofacial expertise. Targeted manual therapy to the masseter and pterygoid muscles plus mobility work for the cervical spine often accelerates recovery. In resistant cases with marked masseter hypertrophy and pain, botulinum toxin injections can reduce muscle force for several months. That option has trade-offs; weaker muscles can alter chewing dynamics and facial aesthetics, and it doesn’t solve the stressor, but it can create a window for habit change.
I avoid irreversible changes such as aggressive bite adjustments or full-mouth reconstructions for pain alone unless there is a clear structural indication. Most Zoom-era jaw pain responds to conservative management when applied consistently.
Working from home without wearing down your jaw
The most encouraging pattern I’ve seen is how quickly muscle-related pain recedes once people interrupt the loop. A product manager came in with daily temple headaches and sore molars. We fitted a night guard, raised her laptop on a stack of cookbooks, turned off self-view, and gave her the lips-together-teeth-apart cue. She set two breaks in her calendar labeled “water and jaw reset.” Two weeks later, headaches were rare. After three months, her bite felt normal again, and wear facets stabilized.
You do not need to be perfect to get relief. You just need to tilt the balance. If you spend six hours in meetings, carve out ten minutes of true rest for the jaw. If you speak for long stretches, use a microphone so you can speak softly. If you tend to clench when listening, place a reminder where only you can see it. If you wake sore, guard your teeth at night while you retrain your daytime habits.
Video calls will continue, and many of us will keep using them because they work. Your jaw can adapt. It simply needs the same thoughtful support you give your eyes and back when you adjust screen brightness or chair height. Listen for the subtle signals. The body rarely whispers for long if you ignore it.
A pragmatic routine you can start this week
- Raise the camera to eye level, turn off self-view, and use a headset with a boom mic to reduce over-articulation. Place a discreet cue on your screen for lips together, teeth apart. Check in at the start of each meeting and during long listening stretches. Insert two short breaks in your calendar daily for water, a warm compress if helpful, and two minutes of gentle jaw and neck movement. If mornings bring soreness or teeth show wear, talk to your dentist about a custom night guard; pair it with daytime habit changes. Notice triggers like tight deadlines or contentious meetings. Prepare with two minutes of nasal breathing and a posture reset before the call.
Give yourself a month. Track pain on a simple 0 to 10 scale at midday and evening. Most people see a drop of two to three points by week two when they follow even half of the steps above. If your numbers don’t budge, or if pain includes locking, significant clicking with pain, or difficulty opening widely, bring a professional into the loop.
Your jaw is sturdy, but it is not a clamp for holding stress. Let it do what it evolved to do: move, chew, talk, and then rest. The rest is up to us to design into our workday.