Ok, so that might be an attention-grabbing headline, but the statistics do suggest that women experience Jaw pain (TMJ dysunction) a lot more commonly than men. It has been suggested to me by numerous patients that it might be because women talk more than men…. Well, is there any truth to that statement?
Let’s look at Who actually talks more? Women or men? The answer might surprise you! If your answer was women, you were wrong! Although it is often claimed that women speak more words per day than men, there have actually been no scientific studies that have verified this claim. In fact, studies looking at the word counts of males and females have found roughly equal words per day (16,000). There is, however, large variation amongst individuals. Some people were found to say less than 1000 words per day, whereas some people say 47,000 words per day!
In other words, there must be other variables that predispose women to jaw pain, but talking too much certainly isn’t the cause! That’s not to say that if you already have a sore jaw, talking less might help the existing pain improve. Check out our other blog posts for more likely risk factors for developing jaw pain.
