Dear Subscriber,
Ever have a toothache? I have been blessed NOT to have such until a few weeks ago. I think you know that I was put away, and in a place where the food is pretty bad and the medical/dental care even worse. For a problem tooth, the treatment would be simple - pull it.
The day before I came home, I developed a great sensitivity in a upper premolar. It was strange. It did not hurt at rest, though I knew it was there. However, any chewing led to significant discomfort. No swelling, which would be expected in an infection.
Well, amongst the many blessings I received in my sojourn, the timing of this was just another blessing. Knowing I was coming home, I decided not to take it up with the tooth pulling dentist at my place of detainment. Right after coming home, I saw a dentist, got an x-ray, and he thought the tooth was infected at the root. He, did recommended pulling the tooth and referred me to Robert Jarvis, DDS, an oral surgeon in Marin county to whom I had referred many infected dental cases.
I was so fortunate to get in to Dr. Jarvis quickly as the sensitivity was increasing. He was not convinced that there was an infection at the root, and asked the office biological dentist, Brian Smith, DDS, to check in on it. Dr. Smith checked my bite and felt the afflicted upper tooth was hitting its lower counterpart significantly abnormally. He ground off a tiny amount from a restoration on the tooth (effectively lowering it minimally). And, incredibly, the sensitivity was instantly 90% reduced. By evening, I had virtually no sense of anything abnormal, including chewing with that tooth.
This was so impressive, I thought it important to share with you. An abnormal bite can cause a lot of systemic dysfunction, from TMJ to throwing off the entire vertebral alignment. In my case, as a result of years of life, my main chewing teeth – back molars – had worn down so that the teeth in front of the molars, the premolars, were hitting first, and abnormally. So that particular premolar was taking a lot of stress, a beating, so to speak. Dr. Smith recommended paring it down so that it would not hit first, and bingo – a home run, and a perfectly viable tooth was saved, at least to this point.
Most of you know that I have been deeply involved in dental issues, as a problem in a tooth can cause distant medical systemic disease. But not all toothaches are infection as I can now personally testify. If you have a pain in a particular tooth on chewing, or TMJ (temporal mandibular joint) issues, you might want to consider checking with a biological dentist like Dr. Smith and get your bite checked. A few minutes of adjusting your bite might do a miracle.
To Your Excellent Health,
Robert Jay Rowen, MD
Thanks Steve for the comment on tooth structure
https://www.tmjsleepapnea.com/about-the-doctors/
Shout out to my TMJ specialist - one of the most highly trained and wonderful to work with.
Fluoroquinolone poisoning (by antibiotics) bc of the fluoride and mercury toxicity can also cause severe TMJ symptoms, as was the case for me.
He said the worst cases he sees are bc people are given fluoridated drugs to “treat” boss loss - on an xray, will look thicker but is actually more brittle as fluoride causes bone destruction.