Overchewed

One of the challenges with me is that sometimes I don't know when to not overdo it..

I am one of those dudes who is aware of their limits to an extent.. but doesn't exactly know when to tone it down a bit :D.

A few months ago, one of the things that I had heard on a podcast which made a lot of sense was that our jaws and facial muscles are getting weaker because the foods we are chewing aren't making us work very hard. This leads to a number of cascading health issues such as sleeping problems, digestion issues and many others.

One of the things that they talked about on the podcast was getting some gum and chewing it regularly to increase the strength of our jaw and facial muscles. I knew this made sense, because those muscles need to get worked on just as much as others do, so I figured fuck it, let's give it a go!

I was chewing gum at least once or twice a day, and often doing to for 30 or 60 minutes at a time. I know that this was likely way too excessive.. lol but it was some decent gum and I was determined to help exercise my jaw muscles. I didn't go nuts in that I was popping in new pieces of gum every 2 hours, but I would do it in the morning and in the afternoon for the most part. Things were going great!

I don't know what I did the other day though.. but damn did I piss off my jaw! LOL I haven't had jaw pain like this in a pretty long time, and I don't really remember what was causing it before but it feels vaguely familiar strangely enough. Perhaps it's a weird way I was yawning and it fucked up my temporomandibular joint? Who knows.. but this thing hurts like a MoFo!

What was funny as well is that of course LAST weekend, as of when I am writing this, I didn't get any steak from the farm because we were busy and didn't make it to one. This weekend though.. I got TWO steaks and holy shit was it painful to chew the first one today hahaha. I am really hoping that this is a short lived issue in that I just overworked it a bit, and like any muscle, it just needs a bit of a break and some love.

It's also the fact that we completely take advantage of how amazing our bodies are until they don't work properly. This is a clear example of not appreciating how incredibly complex our facial structure is because we do these things without any issues on the average day. When you are in a situation like this though, you are incredibly uncomfortable and it can be frustrating!

I know that I've said it many times that I am always appreciative of these issues when they happen.. and especially when they go away. They teach me to appreciate a bit more of my body and how important it is to take care of it when we can.

What about you, have you had some minor health issues that help you take a bit of a step back and appreciate things? Let me know in the comments!