Healing unhealthy/knotted muscle tissue?

I figured I'd ask on here and see if anybody knew anything. I grind my teeth a lot at night and have symptoms similar to TMJ disorder. A dentist specializing in this x-rayed my jaw joints and said nothing was wrong with them. He made me a mouth guard to sleep in and told me to exercise and work on stress management. I do at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise a day and I just bought a book that showed me a few stretches for my head/back/neck muscles. Shoulder rolls, shrugs, head roll, stuff like that. I do them every day now. I eat really, really well. Veggies, meat, fruits, rice (allergic to wheat) rarely any sugar at all. I also read about a lot of vitamins that can help with muscles or are linked to TMJ disorders so I've been taking them religiously for about a year now. Calcuim, magnesium, zinc, vitamin B, E, multivitamin are a few of them. I got deep tissue massage for about 6 months but it got too expensive with minimal results. The massage worked mainly on my trapezius, temporalis, and medial and lateral pterygoids. The lateral pterygoids were terrible to the point where tears would stream out of my eye on whichever side was being worked. It actually made me feel better but only until I sat up. Honestly, it was very painful. I suspect that I was only in less pain after that because it was relative to the pain of actually getting the massage.



So, that's what I'm working with. This stuff is very painful and I have been constantly in pain for the past 3 years. I've gotten away from researching online. The forums seem to be a bunch of depressed people with hopeless stories and most of the cures just seem to be scams that don't fix anything, feeding on desperate people. You never know what to trust and what is a line of crap. Problem with the internet I guess. I know this much. I grind my teeth a lot at night and I have no way to stop it. I chewed half way through my first mouth guard in 3 weeks. Having said that, I know my muscles and joints are in terrible shape and that's what I want to work on. My joints across my whole body click and a lot of my muscles buckle, especially my traps when I nod my head. Probably the worst are my sternocleidomastoids, which were never worked on at massage. I'm a little frustrated at this point. I feel like I take really good care of my body and I've done everything I can. There's no excuse for this going on but it still does. I think I need to try doing something with these muscles next. The massage people told me about knots and unhealthy tissue that doesn't get enough blood flow. They compared it to tennis arm. I'm pretty sure that's my problem but I don't know how to address it other than the massage that didn't work. Injections, weight training, something but I have no idea what to do. Can somebody that knows about muscle health point me in the right direction?Healing unhealthy/knotted muscle tissue?
Let's start out by my gently telling you that I think you have been mistreated.

And that you are going to be needing to take control of some of the issues. I'm only going to address one of the issues today, so I think I'll deal with the Sternocleidomastoid, since you brought it up.

Skip having it worked on. You can be far more effective by doing it yourself.

First site shows you how to do it.

Next, if it was in spasm, it could make tears show up in whichever side was being manipulated. And since it is involved with so many symptom sets, it needs, IMO, to be dealt with first. Then taking care of whatever is left, and that would be as another answer.

I suspect from some of the things you've said that you have referral pain, in which pains and symptoms show up far removed from a muscle that 'simply' goes from behind your ear to the chest. The second site shows areas of symptoms. Third site gives more detail. If there's a word used that you don't know, look it up. And the book you got, use it. It's probably not the one I would pick, but it's likely better than being dealt with in an ineffective fashion. Then you can learn to do self-massage of your masster, and the masseter stretch. But hey, that's the stuff of another answer. Oops, a website on that got in, I'll just leave it there.