Yahoo News 'I have the same condition as Zoe Ball and had to blend my food for two years'
A woman has spoken about an agonising condition she lives with everyday, leaving her with a 'locked jaw'.
Lauren Bolton has had jaw pain for the past 15 years and was only able to eat a blended diet of soups and shakes for almost two years. The 30-year-old lives with the condition temporomandibular joint disease (TMJ), affecting the movement of her jaw, ears, and temple and leaves her in excruciating pain.
BBC Radio 2 presenter Zoe Ball has opened up about her experiences with TMJ, saying she wakes up most mornings with headaches and tension with jaw clenching. The 54-year-old presenter also announced she was stepping down from her breakfast show after six years at the helm.
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For Lauren, strangers have donated £95,000 for her to have a surgery to replace her jaw joint as the joint is too far damaged. She has already undergone two surgeries costing £30,000 to burn off the inflamed tissue, meant to enable her to work and eat again, SWNS reports.
Lauren, who works in business development, from Helmshore said: "I think it is amazing Zoe is sharing [what she's going through]. To have someone on a platform speak out about it and the sacrifices you've got to make.
"She's had to come away from her role. I'm sure that wasn't an easy decision."
At the age of 15, Lauren first started to get jaw pain and initially dismissed it for anxiety and stress of her upcoming exams and from grinding her teeth. The teenager was given a set of jaw exercise and given painkillers but Lauren's agony became progressively worse, saying "my jaw was locked."
A decade later when Lauren was 25, she was finally given a scan which showed a disc was displaced. Doctors tried "washing out" the joint space and giving her Botox but it got so bad Lauren was put on a blended diet.
She also had to give up her job as a therapist during this ordeal. She said: "I thought it was going to be a temporary thing.
"It was just short of two years that I was on a blended diet. I lost weight. I was five-and-a-half stone at my lowest. I said to the doctors - 'I'm not able to eat. I'm living on a soups and stuff'. They said 'drink Maccies milkshakes every day'.
"I was so upset."
Lauren decided to go private to get an answer and was finally told she had temporomandibular joint disease in 2023, calling the diagnosis "a relief" However, this treatment came with a £95,000 cost to replace the TMJ jaw joint.
To afford this, Lauren and her parents, Denise, 56, and dad Paul, 53, put out a fundraiser and managed to raise £65k and were given the rest by an anonymous donator. Her then surgeon recommended she have some operations to fix her pain first - as a replacement jaw joint will likely only last 10 to 15 years.
In May 2024, Lauren underwent a procedure to burn off all the inflamed tissue and to put the displaced discs back in the right place.
For a magic five months, Lauren's pain was manageable. She said: "I started to live my life again. I'm eating."
However, this was short-lived as things took a turn for the worst and in November, Lauren started to notice her pain was increasing again and she had a surgery to inject platelet-rich plasma into the joint. Unfortunately Lauren is still struggling with pain and will now look at the operation for jaw joint replacement in the new year.
Fortunately though, she is off her blended diet and was able to enjoy an Italian meal for her 30th birthday. Lauren said: "I had seafood pasta.
"We had a 'fakemas' recently. I've already had my Christmas dinner - I couldn't eat it last year. This is more than just my story - temporomandibular joint disorders are not well understood or well managed and the long-term results are horrendous.
"It is heartbreaking to think so many other people are living the way I have been forced to."
