Yes. First experienced TMJ pain as a teenager and almost overdosed on painkillers while trying to get rid of it at 3AM. Still recurrs about 2-3 times per year, but I've now learned to feel it coming on much earlier and start loading up on codiene in advance.

I thought Botox helped?

AFAIK it’s most likely a connective tissue disorder as opposed to muscular. For this there is also little help and rarely diagnosed. But at least may help find answers for comorbidities that are often considered unrelated.

I've suffered since the age of 21, but the attacks are less frequent these days (I'm 35). I do not take any painkillers for it, even OTC. I have tried 6 or 7 "professionally-made" mouth guards, some of which cost thousands. None of them helped and would actually make it harder to sleep at night. I instead deal with it by using heat, massage (full body is key), exercise, and nutrition.

For the record, I am also blown away by how incompetent the medical and dental professions are at treating this. Tap your teeth on a piece of paper? Puh-leeze, that does nothing when your joints or muscles shift at different times of the day, and maybe 1 in 5 dentists actually know how to properly account for that based on my experience dealing with them over the years. And swear to god, if I hear another licensed and credentialed dentist describe my joint hypermobility as "your jaw is weird", I'm going to shit a brick.

I had severe pain in this exact location. When diagnosing, I was suggested to get my wisdom teeth removed. When they were removed the oral surgeon suggested I wear teeth guards when sleeping, because I had severe wear on my molars.

So I'm not sure which of those (or both?) were the cause, but since removing my wisdom teeth I have worn a teeth guard every night, and I don't have that pain anymore.

It’s been known about for at least 25 years, but there was some debate about the specifics. Thus they “described this layer in detail for the first time.”