STRANGE INJURIES

BIZARRE injuries your body can inflict on itself. This week: Yawning can dislocate your jaw YAWNING is a surprisingly common cause of a dislocated jaw. A study on the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in 2015 found yawning was responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the 94 jaw dislocations examined.

In 2011, a 16year-old student from Northampton, Holly Thompson, dislocated her jaw while yawning deeply during a politics class, which left her unable to close her mouth. ( Other common signs include pain, difficulty speaking and your upper and lower teeth no longer aligning.) Holly’s friend tried to close it for her, but this only caused more pain.

‘Everyone burst out laughing. It was awful,’ she recalled.

Holly was taken to A&E at Northampton General Hospital after the jaw-lock (or temporomandibular joint dislocation) occurred. The doctors prised her jaw back into place by forcing 26 wooden splints into her mouth, in order to lever the jaw back into its sockets.