His jaw clicked for five years. ChatGPT fixed it in 60 seconds.

For five years, a man known on Reddit as u/User2000ss lived with a constant, painful click in his jaw that he attributed to a boxing injury. He saw doctors, underwent MRIs, and tried self-massage, but nothing worked. Then, on a whim, he described his symptoms to ChatGPT.

The AI suggested a possible cause: a displaced disc in his temporomandibular joint (TMJ) and recommended a simple physical therapy exercise to retrain the jaw muscles. The result was instantaneous.

"I followed the instructions for maybe a minute max and suddenly… no click," he wrote in a now-famous 2023 Reddit post. "After five years of just living with it, this AI gave me a fix in a minute. Unreal."

Man finches from pain while rubbing his jawCanva

His story quickly went viral, but not just because of his own success. The real surprise was how many other people it helped. The comment section filled with stunned users who had suffered for years from the same issue, only to find immediate relief from the same one-minute trick.

“Hahaha... wtf... You just fixed mine too,” wrote u/Calm_Opportunist. “It's cracked and clicked ever since. It just stopped because of this...”

Another user, u/PigleythePig, added, “Same! I’ve had this click in my jaw since I was 20. 17 years later and there’s a super simple fix. What the hell?”

A doctor holds a skullCanva

The Science Behind the Hack

The technique itself is straightforward: sit up straight, place your tongue on the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth, and slowly open your mouth until just before the click, repeating ten times. According to a Redditor who identified as a dentist, the exercise helps manipulate a key muscle.

“What you all are doing is manipulating your medial pterygoid muscle,” explained u/jwilson02. “Think of it like a kneecap that is very unstable and you are using your hand to hold it in place while you extend your leg.”

Hands massage a woman's jaw.Canva

The exercise wasn't an AI invention; similar routines are recommended by ENT clinics and the NHS. But for thousands of people, that information was effectively inaccessible. The AI's true power wasn't creating a new cure, but in bridging the information gap. As user u/Metakit pointed out, AI can be a powerful tool for people with chronic but non-urgent conditions who often get lost in the healthcare system.

“An LLM can be useful in this respect… but it’s a far cry from genuinely innovating medical interventions,” he wrote.

Gif of a human doctor checking a patient

Giphy

The Bigger Picture

While the fix didn't work for everyone, and anyone with persistent symptoms should still consult a doctor, the story highlights a profound shift. For countless people who had given up hope, this small success showed how accessible AI can connect them with life-changing information that was previously out of reach.

This article originally appeared earlier this year.