Last updated: September 2026
Three complaints turn up together often enough that it is worth treating them as one topic. A jaw that clicks. A headache that is already there when the alarm goes off. Teeth that a dentist says are wearing down, which nobody had mentioned before.
They are related, but not in the way most people assume, and the relationship matters because it decides whether anything needs doing. Plenty of jaws click for decades without ever becoming a problem. Plenty of teeth wear down quietly with no symptoms at all. The useful question is not "do I have this", it is "does mine need treatment".
Put a fingertip just in front of each ear and open your mouth. What moves under your finger is the temporomandibular joint, one on each side, connecting your lower jaw to the base of your skull. It is an unusual joint: the two sides are locked together by one bone, so neither can move independently, and it both hinges and slides forward as you open wide.
Between the jaw bone and the skull sits a small cartilage disc that is meant to travel along with the jaw as it moves. In a lot of people that disc has slipped slightly forward of where it should sit. The jaw then has to jump over it to open, which produces a click, and it slides off again on closing, which produces a second one. That is why so many people describe two clicks per cycle, one going down and one coming back.
None of that is bone snapping, and it is more common than it sounds. It is worth understanding, because a mechanism you can picture is far less alarming at two in the morning than a noise you cannot explain.
A useful way to sort this is to ask what else the clicking brings with it.
Usually monitored rather than treated:
Worth having assessed:
Same day rather than next week: a jaw locked open that will not close, or locked closed that will not open past a couple of centimetres. Also jaw pain with facial swelling and fever, which suggests infection rather than a joint problem and is a different urgency altogether. During our hours, ring (03) 9725 8040. Outside them the nearest emergency department is at Maroondah Hospital on Mount Dandenong Road.
A click that loses its noise but gains a limit on opening is worth a mention on its own. People often report it as an improvement, because the sound they were annoyed by has stopped. Sometimes it means the disc is no longer being jumped over at all, and the jaw is now running into it. Silence plus a smaller opening is not the same as silence plus a normal one.
Headaches have many causes and a dentist is not the right person for most of them. But one pattern is fairly distinctive, and it is the one that belongs in a dental appointment:
The muscle responsible for most of that is the temporalis, which fans out across the temple and contracts every time you clench. Several hours of overnight clenching leaves it fatigued exactly as any other overworked muscle would be, and it refers pain into the head. The masseter, the thicker muscle along the angle of the jaw, contributes tenderness on chewing and sometimes an ache that spreads down into the neck.
Two caveats worth stating. A headache pattern that is new, severe, changing, or that comes with visual disturbance, weakness or numbness needs a doctor, not a dentist. And morning headaches are also associated with disrupted breathing during sleep, which brings us to a point that gets missed.
Night-time grinding is associated with obstructive sleep apnoea. It is the single most commonly overlooked part of this whole picture, because a splint is a satisfying answer and it makes the teeth stop chipping, so nobody looks further.
If you snore heavily, wake unrefreshed after enough hours in bed, wake with a dry mouth or a sore throat, or a partner has noticed you stop breathing briefly, say so at the appointment even if you have come in about your teeth. In that situation the airway is the more consequential problem and the enamel is the symptom. Diagnosis belongs with a doctor and a sleep study. The dental side of that, including appliances that hold the lower jaw forward during sleep, is covered on our snoring and sleep apnoea appliances page and in the article on how a dentist fits into sleep apnoea care.
A splint fitted to protect teeth in someone with undiagnosed sleep apnoea protects the teeth. It does not treat the apnoea, and it should not be mistaken for having addressed it.
Most people find out they grind at a routine check-up rather than by noticing it. Grinding happens while you are asleep, so you do not experience it directly, and it leaves its evidence on surfaces you never look at closely.
The clearest sign is a wear facet: a broad, flat, polished area on a biting surface that matches up precisely with a facet on the opposing tooth when the jaw slides sideways. Ordinary chewing does not produce matching flat planes. Alongside those, a dentist looks for a horizontal ridge along the inside of the cheeks where they press against the teeth, scalloped indentations along the edges of the tongue, enamel worn through to the yellower dentine at the biting edges, and restorations that keep chipping or coming loose in one particular person.
The reason this matters is that enamel does not come back. Once it is worn through, the softer dentine underneath wears faster, so the process tends to accelerate rather than level off. Identifying it early is the whole point. Our article on the signs of night-time grinding goes through the full list, the teeth grinding condition page covers the underlying problem, and building up worn teeth deals with what happens once significant length has been lost.
An occlusal splint is a custom acrylic appliance made to your own teeth and worn during sleep. Full detail sits on our teeth grinding splints page. What it does is straightforward: it puts a replaceable acrylic surface between your upper and lower teeth so the grinding forces land there instead of on enamel, which is not replaceable. Because it also alters how the teeth meet, many people find the jaw muscles feel less fatigued in the morning, though how much varies between people.
What it does not do is where the disappointments come from:
Three appliances get confused with each other, and the confusion is understandable because they all look like plastic that goes over teeth. An occlusal splint handles sustained overnight load. A sports mouthguard is built to absorb a single impact and is not designed for nightly wear. An appliance for snoring works by holding the lower jaw forward to keep the airway open, which is a different mechanism again. Wearing the wrong one of the three does not achieve the job of the right one.
None of these replace protecting the teeth, but they are reasonable and they cost nothing to try:
The daytime clenching point deserves more attention than it usually gets. Sitting in traffic on Maroondah Highway or Mount Dandenong Road at the wrong hour is exactly the sort of low-grade sustained stress that keeps the masseter working, and unlike anything happening at three in the morning, you can catch yourself doing it. A useful check: your teeth should only touch when you swallow or chew. The rest of the time there should be a small gap. If yours are together while you read this, that is the habit.
An examination for jaw symptoms involves feeling both joints and the muscles around them, watching the path your jaw travels as it opens, measuring how far it opens, listening for joint noise and checking the teeth for wear facets and cracks. Most of the information comes from that.
Where the clinical picture calls for a closer look at the bone of the joint itself, we have cone beam CT on site. That gives a three-dimensional view of the condyle and the surrounding bone, which a standard dental X-ray cannot show, and it happens in the building rather than as a separate appointment at a radiology clinic on another day. Not every case needs it, and your dentist will say when it is warranted.
If a splint is the right answer, the records for it are taken with an intraoral scanner rather than impression material. A small handheld wand, a couple of minutes, no tray and nothing to gag on. That matters more here than it sounds: the group of people who grind overlaps heavily with the group tense enough to dread an impression tray, and a scan is often the difference between the appliance being made and the appointment being postponed indefinitely. Our TMJ treatment page covers the wider assessment and the management options.
Morning symptoms are easiest to describe accurately while they are still happening, which is an argument for taking the first appointment of the day rather than fitting it in at lunchtime. We open at 8:30am Monday to Saturday, and the practice runs until 6:00pm on weekdays and 5:00pm on Saturday. There is parking on site at Wicklow Avenue, which is worth knowing if the jaw ache means you would rather not walk in from the Main Street strip.
If you are coming by train, Croydon Station is on the Lilydale line, out through Ringwood and Ringwood East. From Heathmont or Bayswater you are on the Belgrave line and will need to change at Ringwood, so allow for it when booking a morning appointment.
One local pattern worth naming: the mouthguard question comes up most often in autumn and winter, when football and cricket seasons change over at H.E. Parker Reserve and Hookey Park and a family suddenly needs a guard for one child and has a splint conversation running for a parent at the same time. They are not the same appliance, and one will not do the other job. It is a five second clarification that saves a wasted purchase.
No referral is needed to have a jaw assessed. If the clicking turns out to be the harmless kind, being told so with a reason attached is a reasonable outcome for an appointment. If it is not, the earlier version of the problem is always the smaller one.
Call (03) 9725 8040 or book online. We are at 59 Wicklow Avenue, Croydon, with parking on site and Saturday appointments available. Treatment detail sits on our TMJ treatment page and our teeth grinding splints page.
This article is general information, not personal dental advice. Jaw pain has several possible causes and diagnosis requires an examination. Headaches with unusual or changing features, and any suspicion of disrupted breathing during sleep, should be discussed with your doctor.