Jaw pain and stiffness levels after repeated maximum voluntary clenching.

Ten normal male volunteers performed six maximum voluntary isometric jaw-closing muscle contractions within an 80-minute experimental period. Each individual contraction was sustained until maximum pain tolerance was reached. Before and one, two, three, and seven days after the experiment, the following measures were made: (1) superficial masseter and anterior temporalis muscle tenderness (pain threshold), (2) jaw movement (opening and lateral excursion), and (3) current pain level for the right and left sides of the jaw. In this study, measures of current jaw pain, muscle pain threshold, maximum active opening, and maximum lateral excursions showed no significant post-experimental changes. These results challenge the idea that sustained isometric clenching in healthy male subjects could be used as a model for chronic or even subacute muscle pain, as has been suggested by previous investigators.

Endurance and recovery from a sustained isometric contraction in human jaw-elevating muscles.

Ten males sustained maximal voluntary contractions (MVC) of the jaw elevators. Unilateral bite force and electromyographic (EMG) activity were recorded from the right masseter and temporalis. The experiment comprised three endurance trials, and each trial consisted of two sustained 100% MVC clenching tasks. Between the two tasks, the subjects took a randomly assigned rest of either 30, 120 or 300 s. Immediately after each task, they performed an additional brief 100% MVC to check for contractile failure. EMGs were taken from the beginning and end of each sustained 100% MVC and used to determine and compare the EMG centre frequency. The difference in endurance times between the first and second clenchings was greatest for the 30-s rest and progressively decreased as the rest period increased. The beginning EMG centre frequency was significantly greater than the end for each clenching. These findings strongly support the proposal that even though the jaw elevators are resistant to a contractile element failure, a contraction-induced pain is produced, which limits a sustained jaw-closing effort. Recovery from this effort pain is related to the post-contraction blood flow.