People often advocate exercises to improve the appearance of certain body parts. And sometimes this can work. Buttocks, chest, stomach, and arms, for example, can be reshaped using exercise because these locations have large muscles that can provide definition. However, other body parts don’t always have the muscles that allow you to sculpt them. Your jawline is one of these. Despite the claims of the JawlineMe Fitness Ball, you are unlikely to be able to tone your jawline with exercise. Plus, the exerciser has the potential to cause damage to your jaw joints. This exerciser is not a good alternative to a nonsurgical facelift.
What Defines Your Jawline
Most of the definition in your jawline comes from your bones. The mandible is the bone that attaches to your skull on both sides just in front of and below the ear. The jawbone is connected to and controlled by several major muscles. However, these muscles are mostly in the cheeks, with some in the neck. None of them run along the edge of the jaw–what we think of as the jawline.
There are some minor muscles that are there, but these are small, used mostly for moving the skin and lips. Doing major motions of the jaw with the exerciser won’t do much for these muscles. Instead, it will build up the large muscles that are mostly in the cheeks. To exercise your minor muscles, you would want to make funny faces, not move your jaw against resistance.
How the Jawline Gets Obscured
Seeing how to achieve a defined jawline depends on understanding what causes an unattractive jawline.
It typically comes down to three factors: development, weight, and teeth. One of the biggest reasons why many people don’t have the jawline they’d love to have is that the jaw just didn’t develop enough when they were young. This is often because they didn’t chew enough hard foods. This is common in our age of processed diets–our jaws aren’t as large as those of our ancestors, and that’s why most of us have our wisdom teeth removed–there’s not enough room for them.
Another problem is weight gain. If you gain weight and your body stores it in the cheeks and neck, it’s going to obscure your jawline. You might think that this is a place where exercising your jaw will help, but there’s no good evidence that exercising a particular body part leads to local fat loss. Your body has a pattern for storing fat, and it’s going to follow that pattern, no matter what you do. So while overall exercising and dieting to lose weight could contribute to fat loss, in the neck and cheeks, it’s unlikely that specifically exercising your jaw will help. And there’s a problem with weight loss: it can leave you with more hanging skin, particularly if your facial proportions have changed because of tooth wear, which we’ll talk about next.
A strong jawline can be lost as a result of changes to your teeth. Our teeth help define the dimensions of our face–the way the skin is supposed to drape over the facial structure is determined by the size and configuration of your teeth. Over time, your teeth can wear down, allowing the jawbone to move up and back. This causes the mandible to move so it’s more concealed by your cheek fat pads, which might also be moving down due to gravity and skin changes.
Don’t Strain Your Jaw Joint
It might be tempting to try this jaw exerciser even if it’s not going to help your jawline definition. You might think: it’s not that expensive. What’s the harm?
Potentially plenty. Your jaw connects to your skull at the temporomandibular joints. These are complex joints designed to give your jaw maximum freedom and strength. But this makes them vulnerable, particularly to repetitive high stress.
If you do the kinds of exercise that the jaw exerciser recommends, it can put excessive stress on the jaw joint. We know that repetitive stress on the jaw joint, such as frequent gum chewing or biting objects other than food (like this exerciser) can contribute to jaw joint damage, leading to temporomandibular joint disorders (TMJ).
Put Your Jaw in a Better Position
While a jaw exerciser might not do much for your jawline, we may be able to help. We can evaluate your jaw, teeth, and soft tissues to determine how we can improve the relationship between them. This is normal for a neuromuscular dentist, but when we do it with an eye to rejuvenating your appearance, we call it a nonsurgical facelift.
By restoring the youthful position of your jaw, we can help you regain jaw definition by building up worn down teeth. This can also give you a more beautiful smile, which will also help you look younger.
Learn More about Facial Rejuvenation in Rochester
There are alternatives to facelifts in Rochester, MI. If you’re looking to improve the definition of your jawline without surgery, please call today for an appointment with a Rochester, MI TMJ dentist at Rochester Advanced Dentistry.
