Kids complain about aches and pains all the time. Their neck hurts because they’ve spent too much time hunched over a phone or tablet. Their back hurts because their backpack is too heavy. They’re sore from sports or dance or just being an active kid. Maybe it’s just growing pains.
And often, there really is a simple explanation.
But when pain keeps coming back, becomes more intense, or starts interfering with everyday life, it’s worth getting curious about why.
After all, the body functions as a system. When something isn’t moving or aligning as it should, other parts of the body may adapt to compensate. Muscles work differently. Posture changes. Different joints take on different loads. Over time, a problem that begins in one place can contribute to discomfort somewhere else.
And those relationships can go in more than one direction.
It’s something we regularly see with temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Problems with the bite or jaw joints cause changes in muscle activity, head position, posture, and movement. Ultimately, these can contribute to pain beyond the jaw itself.
But problems elsewhere in the musculoskeletal system can also change how the body holds and moves itself. Those changes can change the demands placed on the head, neck, jaw muscles, and TM joints.
This is one reason why, when we talk about TMD, we shouldn’t act as though the effects stop at the shoulders. The entire body is potentially involved.
In fact, pain conditions themselves often overlap. “Why?” is something that researchers continue to work on, exploring everything from shared biological vulnerabilities to how different parts of the nervous system communicate and process pain.
Which brings us back to those childhood aches and pains — and to new research in the Journal of Pain, which looked at whether spinal pain at age 11 might say anything about the likelihood of painful TMD and headaches later, in young adulthood.
The researchers drew their data from the Danish National Birth Cohort, where more than 9600 participants at age 11 had provided information about pain in their neck, middle back, and lower back. Years later, at age 18 or older, they were screened for painful TMD and headaches.
Analysis of the data showed that those who reported moderate to severe and/or frequent neck pain in childhood had 85% higher odds of painful TMD in young adulthood compared to those for whom spinal pain hadn’t been an issue.
With middle-back pain, the odds were 74% higher. Those who had experienced more significant low-back pain had more than double the odds of later painful TMD. The researchers found similar associations with headaches.
As the researchers put it:
These findings suggest that preadolescent spinal pain may represent an early indicator of vulnerability to later pain conditions and may help identify individuals at increased likelihood of developing p[ainful]-TMD and headache in young adulthood.
Now, this doesn’t mean that every 11-year-old with an aching back is fated to develop painful TMD or headaches in adulthood. Nor does the study show that one condition causes the other.
What it does suggest is that significant spinal pain at that age may be an early sign of a broader vulnerability to pain that becomes more apparent over time. All of which brings us back to the importance of looking beyond just the spot that hurts.
When someone comes to us with persistent jaw pain, we certainly want to understand what’s happening with the TMJs and bite. But we also want to know about muscle function, head and neck position, posture and alignment, headaches, pain elsewhere in the body, and the history of how those symptoms developed.
Sometimes the jaw is only one part of a much larger functional picture. And perhaps that’s one of the most useful messages from this new research, particularly for parents.
Sometimes a sore neck really is the result of too much time hunched over a screen. A sore back really can come from a heavy backpack, yesterday’s soccer game, or just an unusually active day.
But when pain keeps coming back, becomes more intense, or interferes with a child’s everyday life, it’s a sign to investigate further. As this research suggests, persistent pain may tell us something about more than what’s hurting today.