Whole Body Dentistry: The Tooth Body Connection

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Good morning, good morning, Dr. Willie Richardson. How are you, sir?

Willie Richardson DDS

I’m easy, Dr. Marlene. Good to see you again.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Good to see you, good to see you. So before we get started I want you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your background and the uniqueness, everything that is unique about you. You’re not just the dentist down the street.

Willie Richardson DDS

Yeah, I practically what I call whole body dentistry and basically what that it is, is a method of looking at the body by way of looking at the stomatognathic system, which is the mouth and all structures, muscle teeth, TMJ teeth and everything. Little bit of my background, I’m a dentist for over 40 years. I’m a graduate University of Maryland 1974. So almost for over 40 years. So and I thoroughly enjoy what I do. I’ve been at my current location since 1979. I’ve been at the same location in West Baltimore. So and I do a different variety of things. I do general dentistry in general, but also when I’m evaluating someone, I’m also evaluating body function as well by way of the oral cavity. That’s a little bit of what I do.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

And that by itself is unique. We all go to the dentist, we go to the dentist a minimum of twice a year, but we never hear anything about wholistic dentistry. So tell us exactly what is whole body dentistry.

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, well, sometimes saying wholistic dentistry is kind of a misnomer. There are many wholistic practitioners, their primary concentration is on materials where they don’t use mercury fillings and they do some other things and they may use some natural antibiotic and things like that. But whole body dentistry is a little bit different. I call it wholistic dental concept. Basically it’s understanding the relationship between the mouth all the structure, the oral cavity and the rest of the body. That’s basically what it is. Other words, there are many things that’s happen in the body as a result of what’s going on in the dentia, in the oral cavity. So it makes a big, big difference. That’s basically what it is. It’s more of a philosophy is how I started. The philosophy is simply this. We look at the whole person when we examine them out, we also look at the whole person. Not only do you take medical history, you also take chief complaints and other complaints that they may have and some of those complaints sometimes are related to dental structure, but the patient may not know that, nor do their physician know that.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow, wow, you’re absolutely right. Recently there’s a lot of material out there now and research done where dental problems cause so many other problems. So tell me how are the teeth connected to certain body functions?

Willie Richardson DDS

That’s a great, great question. And that’s really the key. Well, the body is connect… The teeth are connected to body function by we have the trigeminal nerve. The trigeminal nerve is the fifth cranial nerve and the thing that’s unique about that nerve, where it enters the brain, it’s activated through the reticular activating system into cerebellum and the cerebellum is a part of the brain that control motor movement and that’s the key. So what happened is the teeth helped balance the body by way of its motor function, okay? And signals that arrive in the brain from the teeth sometimes are signals that are incorrect, meaning that it’s telling the brain that a muscle in your leg for example is out of balance. So tighten that muscle up. So the muscle tightens, but the brain keep receiving the incorrect signal. So the muscle become tighten over time. It causes other issues as well. And just to give you an example, some issues I’ve seen issues that involve but it’s been diagnosed medically as core circulation, but it’s simply that a muscle is so tight in the calf the leg that it actually strangles the blood flow and so once the muscular problem is corrected, the symptoms of the poor circulation goes away or symptoms of blood clots in the leg go away.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Makes a lot of sense, makes a lot of sense. Strategically makes a lot of sense. Tell us a little bit about what is muscle dysfunction.

Willie Richardson DDS

Muscle dysfunction simply means that, well everyone knows that muscles contract and relax, muscles contract and relax and that’s how they create function, but what happened if a muscle contract but yet it doesn’t relax and it stay contracted over a period of time and it keeps receiving signals to contract more, contract more, contract more. When that happened, because muscles attached across joints, it can cause joint dysfunction as well, such as deterioration in the joints. So sometimes that what happened is, if a also is tighten off enough and over periods of time, the cartilage and the bone structure can begin to change creating what medical doctor may call osteoarthritis, for example, because for example, in the knee, they may say, “Well, you have bone or bone.” But that’s not all the time because of just wear and tear, normal wear and tear from just whatever job you’re doing or whatever you’re doing. It’s also from constant muscle contracture. And there’s a reason physiologically for that. When muscles contract over a period of time, what happened is a constant force will cause osteoblasts to become osteoclast. And basically what that is osteoblasts a bone building cell, but osteoclastic cells are bone eating cells. And basically we see that in dentistry when we are doing, when we put braces on someone’s teeth, by the way, we are able to move a tooth through bone. How does that work? When we exert ounces of pressure on a tooth, that’s constant, what happened is, it causes a bone on one side of the tooth to resorpt, but it also caused bone to be deposited on a negative side of the tooth. 

In other words, where there’s positive pressure, bone cells will come together form osteoclastic cells. And those cells will become bone eating where the same thing happening of which change for example, in the knee, because of the tightness of the muscle across the joint, those bone cells can fuse and actually become bone eating cells as well as the cartilage in the teeth can form counterblast of the cells that form cartilage or chondroclast of the bone, the cells that actually eats away cartilage. So when that cartilage under pressure, it can be eaten away. Now the cartilage and the bones are designed to take pressure but it has to be intermittent, but when it becomes a constant pressure over time, those cells confuse and become destructive cells. Just to kind of give you an idea of how that would work. So muscle dysfunction creates anything, a very common example of muscle dysfunction is the chronic headache. What people call tension headaches and so forth, right? Well, most headaches in the muscles, they’re really not in the head by stretch of any means. They’re usually in the muscles and the only muscles in the head that usually exhibit headache characteristics are the muscles of mastication, such as the the lateral pterygoid, medial pterygoid muscles and so forth. And those muscles do a number of different things in the head of itself, but also because of dysfunction in the mouth, you can get spasm in your neck muscle, spasm in your shoulder muscle, as well as the back muscles that can refer pain to the head. So when headaches occur, depending on which part of the head where the pain occurs, we’ll tell you which muscles are involved.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow, that is very interesting. And we chatted a little bit about PEMF and PEMF I typically use that in my office for people coming in with headaches and tension headaches and muscle tightness. And it reduces… One of the number one things with PMF is reduction of inflammation. So that actually kind of goes a little bit hand in hand. 

Willie Richardson DDS

Could you explain for the audience, could you explain PEMF and sort of the average person understand that what’s PEMF.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

It’s pulse electromagnetic fields.

Willie Richardson DDS

Yes.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

And in our body we have electricity and we also have a magnetic field. This is how life goes on and how the body functions. When we do an EKG, we’re measuring the electricity in the heart and by the mirror electromagnetic force of our body we stimulate the cells and the mitochondria ATP, which is life itself. So by using this external force of pulse electromagnetic field we excite the cells. So the cells become more, be able to produce more ATP. The cell walls are repaired. So then you have nutrients coming in and toxins leaving. It’s almost like the here in Maryland today is gonna be a little bit nice day. So we open our windows, we get the stale air out, we get a little bit of fresh air in. So that’s the concept of PMF for the audience . Thank you.

Willie Richardson DDS

I got it. So I can understand how that will work, because what happened is when muscles are contracted over periods of time, what happened? You give an accumulation of lactic acid, which is inflammatory and not only that, the cells get depleted of the ATP. In other words, they can no longer produce energy as much because it’s been used up. So when you go in with the pulse, what that will do is actually begin to get rid of the inflammation, break that up, and it stimulates more ATP formation. Is that right?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yeah, that is exactly it.

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, you good?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

You got it. You totally got it. So we were talking about dentistry and how it can create, or create conditions or help eliminate conditions and diseases. Tell us a little bit about that.

Willie Richardson DDS

Well, there’s so many things that involved with the teeth and how different body function occur. Let’s talk a little bit about headaches. I mentioned that a minute ago, for example, if someone suffers from chronic constant frontal headaches, where you have headaches across the forehead, frontal headaches, well, usually that’s coming from the neck, but you might say, “Well, if the neck is in spasm, why is the neck and spasm? “And why does it keep reoccurring?” Sometimes because a person can have traumatic occlusion to the anterior teeth. The anterior teeth of the front teeth, okay? When the upper front teeth and sizes are traumatized, it tightens the neck muscles and they can be traumatized by a number of ways. One way can be tongue, and that’s where a person, when they swallow, they put excessive pressure against the back of the upper front teeth. When that happens, those muscles in the neck can contract. And the reason being, because the trigeminal nerves that innovates those teeth actually sends signals to the brain saying that you’re out of the muscle, tell the brain that the muscles out balance, but it’s not the muscle, it’s the tooth out balance. It’s like, if I’m on my computer keyboard and I wanna type something. Let’s say I wanna type B-O-Y boy, right? If I put my finger on the B and I never take it off the B, guess what happen? B it keeps showing up on my screen. It’s almost like the signal was going to the brain, tightening the muscle, and the muscle gets tight and tighter. When the muscle goes to the spasm, you interpret that as headache. So that’s why you have front headaches and anything can happen with muscles and the shoulders and so forth. The headaches will be more on the side. If it’s lower in the shoulder, it can be down even in the cheekbone. And if the muscles are involved, that’s in the skull, for example, like the pterygoid muscle or the master muscles, those muscles go into spasm can refer pain behind the eyes and also into the sinus. So that’s an example. In many chronic sinus condition, by the way, is simple, can be a muscular problem that causes a mucus membrane to swab the sinus, causing the nose to stop up, and the person can’t breathe as well as causing excessive mucus production, because muscles act as irritants to other body part, especially mucus line organs and tissues or glandular tissues.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

That is very, very interesting. You were definitely not, like I said before, not the dentist down the street. This is like I’ve learned so much in just few minutes. Now, tell us why is dental history so important in a medical evaluation?

Willie Richardson DDS

Well, dental history is important in medical evaluation, ’cause sometime when you can determine the onset of something, sometime it can be followed by a dental procedure. I give an example, matter of fact, it’s about maybe four weeks ago, someone called me their knee had started hurting for example. And I said, “Well, how long you been having knee problem?” He said, “It really just thought about a week ago.” And said, “You ever had that problem before?” They said, “No.” I said, “Let me ask you a question. “Did you have a tooth taken out?” They said, “Yeah, I had to have a tooth pull.” I said, “Was in the back, on the same side that the knee is on?” They said, “yes.” I said, “It could be that you may have a traumatic bite “where the pressure that goes “toward your teeth have shifted and that can cause tightness “of the muscles in the thigh, “which attached across the knee joint, “which can act cause knee pain.” And so that person has not been in yet, but anyway that just came to mind. But other things happen as that. I always say this, one of the things as a dentist, we actually create and eliminate more health problems than any other profession, not knowing that we did so. I’m gonna say that again, because I think it’s important. We, as dentists create and eliminate more health problem than any other profession of an example. For example, if someone let’s say a teenager come in, let’s say they’re 18, 19 years old. And they have a toothache and we take out the first molar, we call the six-year molar, by the way. The molars that come into the mouth, you get one of six, 12 and 18. 18-year old molar we call the wisdom tooth, right? As nickname. 

But anyway, when you take out the first molar, what happen? You get a shifting of the teeth and where the second molar would have a tendency to drift forward and kind of lay down on the jaw. The bicuspids may drift back, but over a period of time, it may be 10, 15 years because of the occlusion. When that tooth is not replaced they get trauma to the bicuspids teeth, when bicuspids teeth are traumatized over time, it causes excessive tightness in the thigh muscles that attaches across a knee joint and can cause knee deterioration in the joint itself. That’s just an example, okay? I think also not only is the dental history important for dentistry but also important for medical people, because some of the onset problem that people may have, may have a dental connection. I’ll give you another dental connection that may seem extreme. For example, there are some young young women at the age of say 12, 13, 14, when menses first start, some of ’em have a chronic problem of excessive cycle with a cycle still on a long time, so forth. And sometime that can actually be a dental issue, okay? It can be a dental issue because what happened is as the 12-year molar erupts into the mouth, it can have a molar eruption where it doesn’t come in correcting imbalance. And the imbalance in the area can create spasms in the lower back muscle where the person may not notice the back muscle. But what happened is it can act as a irritant to the uterus and act as a irritant. It can cause excessive flow and so forth. That’s another example. And there are many, many, many example we could talk all day about the different types thing.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

That is like so interesting because in my office, I generally do chiropractic and I’m more concerned about the musculoskeletal system. I never asked dental questions. So this is good knowledge. Give us a few more examples because I’m sure that, our audio actually would find this very interesting because this is stuff that you don’t hear anywhere else.

Willie Richardson DDS

As a chiropractor, I’m sure you get mini stiff neck and stiff backs and so forth, right?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yes.

Willie Richardson DDS

You may notice that even with someone coming, they have chronic stiff neck and you can do adjustment they get better and they may subside and you notice that it keeps coming back. If that condition keeps coming back, where you may wanna look at the dental apparatus, because there could be a problem with an the teeth causing that condition. For example, some of the things that might do that, if you were to look at a person and they had say an open bite, where you look and they bite their teeth together like this, and you see spade where the front teeth can’t come ’em together, they may be maybe a tongue thruster. If they’re tongue thrusters, they can actually create spasm in the neck muscles, okay? It could be a situation where they’ve lost all their back teeth and all the teeth they have are just the front teeth that can also create spasm in the neck muscles. It could be that someone, just a dentist, just put in maybe a bridge in the front of the mouth and the bridge has a traumatic occlusion, that could create problems in the neck muscles. And when you create a problem in the neck muscle over time, you’re gonna get changed in the cervical spine. That’s gonna be the bone and cartilage in those areas, well, creating pinch nerve. Another example, for example, carpal tunnel symptoms by large believe it or not, are not caused by repetitive motion they’re actually caused by trauma to the teeth. Repetitive motion add a basic condition, but it doesn’t cause it. The teeth actually causes the neck muscle becomes spastic. When the neck muscle becomes spastic, it can cause a pinch of the nerve X in the vertebrae cervical spine to the hands, creating numbness and so forth. So usually as a dentist, if someone say has carpal tunnel symptoms, I can usually evaluate their mouth and I can tell them which hand is worse and also I can tell on not only which hands are worse, I can tell them which fingers are worse based on a general evaluation.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow, I’m certainly gonna be sending my husband to see you because he has probably nine of his original teeth left because, as a child he was asthmatic and he used a lot of steroids, so it destroy his teeth. And he has chronic back pain and neck pain and chiropractic doesn’t seem to really be helping. So that definitely is something interesting that chiropractors would actually find useful and also medical doctors should find some of this information useful.

Willie Richardson DDS

Absolutely, yeah.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

So but do you have any other, anything else to share with us?

Willie Richardson DDS

I can talk all day . Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about asthma, you husband had asthma as the child, right?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yes.

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, well, one of the things I can do in children that have asthma, if they have their primary teeth already in place, I can do some things orally to those teeth they can have the asthma symptoms aside. I’ve had patients that a few asthmatic pain kids who will go to the hospital once, twice a month and be able to get them. So within a week or two weeks that they don’t even need to go anymore, okay? So asthma itself can have a direct relation to the vertical dimension of occlusion. And basically what that means is that the teeth are not erupting into the mouth properly. And the reason the teeth don’t erupt properly can be a number of different reasons. One of the reasons that teeth don’t erupt properly is fetal sleeping, fetal sleeping can be detrimental, not only in kids, but also in adults. And that’s another whole topic in itself in terms of how fetal sleeping can affect back pain, neck pains, and so forth, okay? So the mouth play a very intricate role in a number of things that happens in the body anywhere you have mucusy organ. And of course with asthma for example we know that, in the lungs have mucus gland tissues and so forth, and that can actually cause asthma. One of the things that parents who have children with asthma if a child don’t like what it is that you’re saying, do you realize they can actually trigger an asthma attack? You say, “If they can trigger asthma, how do they do that?” All they have to do is frown and hold their teeth tight, and guess what happened? They can actually trigger an attack, okay? Just to give an example. One of the things that happened also with asthma many people know that some children outgrow and some don’t. So if some children outgrow asthma and some don’t, why is that? Interesting question, isn’t it? Well, the answer is it could be caused by fetal sleeping because if someone sleeps in… And most people know what fetal sleep is, and you sleep in wound like a baby, or you really ball up in knot.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Willie Richardson DDS

When you ball up in a knot, what happens? Is your jaws stay in a clenched position. If the teeth are clenched, especially during sleep, what happens is the teeth cannot erupt to their proper height.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow.

Willie Richardson DDS

The teeth are too short, when the teeth is too means that you don’t have the correct vertical dimension of occlusion and what happened is, you get signals go to the brain to tell the muscles are tighten to create balance, but the imbalances in the teeth and not in the muscle itself.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Very true.

Willie Richardson DDS

So that’s basically, that’s one of the things that can happen.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

That is very interesting. You mentioned that you’re writing a book. Tell us a little bit about what is going into this book and what is the motivation? 

Willie Richardson DDS

The motivation is just to be able to… I’ve been blessed as a dentist to be in this profession and I really, really enjoy what it is that I do, but also there’s just so many misnomers in medicine and other areas that have a dental connection and people just don’t know. And the professional people don’t know as well. So I call the book, “Whole Body Dentistry The Body Connection.” “Whole Body Dentistry The Body Connection.” And I’m away from finishing but even though I’ve written maybe 100 pages or so. But I have a long way to go. And there’s some basic concepts that need to be explored. One of the concepts is understanding that everything in the body basically works under three categories and the three categories are, everything in the body is either biological, psychological, or structural. Of course, talking about the dental component, we’re talking about structural relationship. And each of those components impact the body. Everything is biological, so if you’re talking about nutrition, you’re talking about what? Biological. If you’re talking about what’s going in mind that actually triggers certain other things you’re talking about psychological. And by the way, all those categories over erupt, see sometime what happens even with structural problem. If you have adequate nutrition that can also counteract some of the fact of what’s going on structurally as well. So everything overlaps you really can’t separate the body into bits and pieces. Everything works as a whole, okay. A wholistic concept template. This is actually a lecture that I’ve done for professional lectures and so forth. Let me just explain this little thing here. This is a… I get that coming. That’s supposed to be at iceberg. Can you see that on the screen?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yes.

Willie Richardson DDS

That’s an iceberg and the whole significant thing here is that iceberg the part that we see above the water is always as very small compared to the part below the water, but teeth kinda working that way. The thing that we see when we look at the teeth, we’re looking at the smile, the chewing and so forth, but then the bulk of what teeth does is below the surface where you can’t see it. So either you gonna know what they do or you don’t, okay? So that’s below the surface. Let me slide down to another thing. Wholistic dentistry is really an approach in the diagnosed and treatment of different diseases of the body by using the systematic stomatognathic system, just as the oral cavity and associated structures, as an adjunctive diagnostic aid and treating pains and other symptom of the body from head to feet, okay? They’re actually foot problem believe it or not, they can be actually caused by problems in the mouth. For example, if someone has a condition where they get up, and they have like pain on the bottom of the foot, or they get foot cramps, it can be that the lower incisor teeth are actually being traumatized. You can have a tilted third molar that can create heel pain, for example, which mimics heel spurs, for example, can actually be a dental problem. So sometime before you do the surgery may want to have a dental evaluation by someone who understands how to do that, okay? So that’s basically what that is. 

And of course a head, we know about headaches and things like that, but there are other things give an extreme example of what can happen in the head as a result of dental issues can be something called a pseudo tumor, where you have growth behind the eye, get this tumor grow behind the eyeballs and medically called a pseudo tumor, but it actually can be caused by psychological stress combined with certain oral situation where there’s a certain relationship between certain teeth can actually cause a condition. So this is a little diagram that kinda shows the relationship between the body and the psychologist means that mind what’s going on, in the mind and so forth, many times when someone feels bad, for example, there’s a whole cascade of things that happen. If for example you may not be feeling too good because of what’s going on psychologically with you. Believe it or not, that can affect the Somatic nervous system, which is your mouth and your occlusion and so forth. And there are many things that happen to the body that medically, that have been said to be ideology unknown, but yet it can be a condition where what’s going on, in the mind is combining with what’s going on in the face, creating different problems in the body, okay? And what I mean by that, for example, if a person is kind not feeling so good, they feel sad. 

You ever walk by someone that look like they’re sad, you can kinda tell it on their face. One of the things that happen when you hold your, or when you frown for example, your teeth will have a tendency to come together and if you have significant imbalances in the mouth that can affect different body parts, okay? That’s why some person can say, “I got an instant headache.” I’m sure you probably heard that expression as, “Such and such came by me and I got an instant headache.” But they don’t realize it was their attitude toward that person that actually caused a headache by way of what they did with their facial muscles when they use their facial muscles to frown, that actually also helped the teeth to come together into occluded position where thereby triggering different problems, okay? So this is just a dynamic little bit of what I mean, I call it Psycho/Soma Union, where what’s going on in your mind affects your mood, okay? When you mood is affected or affect your homeowner response and so forth you can even go into the fight or flight response based on what’s going on in your mind. And also create other different hormone change in the body itself. So what’s going to mind can affect your mood, which can affect your stress level, which can affect your facial expression. And facial expression is really a form of learn behavior and that affects your muscles by the way. Because facial expression is determined by the facial muscle by which is by the seventh cranial nerve control those muscles, by the way. But also the fifth cranial nerve is also involved with the teeth and also pick up that sensation as well. So I intend to give a lectures more, but let me kinda stop there and see if you may have a question or two and I’ll keep going.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

So far so good. This is in great valuable information, and I’m sure our audience would agree, so continue.

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, so anyway, the way the mind and the body come together, I called the body the Soma and it’s called Psycho, just the mind but headaches, sinus problem and migraines can be a result of these things. Face spasm, much too far. Spasm in the face, neck, shoulders, back, thigh, legs and feet. Short range symptom may be headache, migraine, sinus problems, okay. But what about long range problems? Long range problem can be many different forms of arthritis, including things like osteoarthritis, even rheumatoid arthritis can have some influence, even though that’s also involved with bacteria called Mycoplasm, that could be involved with that. But other words the body can be affected from head to feet by what’s going on in the mind also and what’s going on with your dentition, okay? So this is kinda summarize what I’m trying to say here. What’s going to mind can affect your mood and your stress level, which affects facial expression, which affects the stomatognathic system is the all structure. That’s the teeth, the TM joint, so forth, and that itself causes stress and they can affect your posture and the body as well. Now, how does that affect your posture? For example, if you see someone that’s kinda having a bad day and they’re kinda a low mood, you may notice their postures kinda slumped over, right? Well, that could be because of what’s going on up, in their mind, that’s causing their mood to be changed, causing stress level, facial expression be changed so forth, so that can affect the whole body in itself. 

So when we look at a category as a body function, everything falls in psychological biological structure. And I think I said this before, everything kinda overlaps as I show in the triangle here. And this right here is kind of another summary in terms of what actually happened. Your stress is psychological and physiological. I’m gonna say it again. Stress is psychological and physiological, okay? Psychological, I think everybody probably know what psychological stress is. What you thinking in your mind can actually put you in stress. Whatever you’re doing, but not only that, physiologically of course, stress can be, for example, repetitive emotion, if you’re doing a particular task, for example, but those things can actually trigger distress pain cycle. And when those things trigger the stress pain cycle, it can create trigger areas in different muscles. Why is the that? Because physiological stress and psychological stress actually impact your muscular system, okay? It affects your posture, it can cause gas strategies and ulcer. What I mean by that? As a matter of fact, just recently, I had a patient that had a problem with what’s been diagnosed as a possible ulcer. They weren’t sure ’cause did the scope and they can’t really find anything. What happened? I examined her from a dental perspective. What I found out was that she had spasm in her right shoulder. When you have spasm the right shoulder that can actually affect the stomach, depending on which muscle involved in the shoulder. And it was in the shoulder blade, if you’re going behind the back and the shoulder blade, that muscle was so sore and triggering so much discomfort. 

It was being referred to her stomach just as you get a frontal headache, for example, the pain is in your neck, it’s not in the head but the shoulder muscle can also refer pain to your stomach and that’s why she would having the problem. She would actually throw up and everything. So long story short. What we did do, we found out what was going on. We made a spin and what that is a mouthpiece that you can wear to reposition your jaw. And not only that, we did a couple trigger point injection with using local anesthetic, just like a nerve blocking doing a dental procedure and what happened the symptoms led up, and it’s been more and more control. The person’s improved 75, 80%. They’ve only had a couple of episodes of that, okay? Just give you another example. Things like Phantom pain, chest pain, there are many people that end up in the emergency room with chest pain that seem to be a heart attack and they do all the tests, everything they can’t find anything. Well, sometime what happened is when the left shoulder go into spasm they can refer pain to the chest wall. When pain goes to the chest wall can be interpreted as a heart attack. And of course you’ll wanna always evaluate that first, by the way, you wanna make sure that’s not that, and get the evaluation done, EKG and so on. But anyway, so sometime it’s called Phantom pain medically, but in actuality, it’s actually triggered by muscular true. And that can be caused by teeth in the mouth, especially in the molar region. And if you had chest pain in the left chest wall, that would be caused by problem on the right occlusion, the right by the right side of the face, okay? And if you had gastric problem, like I was just describing that would be caused by the teeth on the left side of the face, which affects the right shoulder, okay? Let’s give you a couple example there. So let stop there and you may want to ask me a couple question there and I’ll keep going.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

I don’t have any questions this, like you said is great information. So-

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, so let’s look at a couple other things. This is just an example of a good occlusion. Occlusion means how the teeth come together. So this is a good example of that. The thing about the stomatognathic system, when we talk that’s the oral cavity and the structures, it’s not just the bite of the teeth. Occlusion is actually neuromuscular. It’s a neuromuscular situation. In other words, when you look at this balanced bite here, which is pretty balanced, when you look at that, that’s a neuromuscular function as well. There are signals that are going through by way of the trigeminal nerve into the brain that says, “Muscles your balance.” And why? Because the teeth are balance, okay? Also the temporomandibular joint, the TMJ, we call it. Many people heard the word TMJ. That just means temporomandibular joint. When you have TMJ, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a condition, okay? Even though it’s kinda used in that way, TMJ just means temporomandibular joint. Now, whether you have a dysfunction in that joint, that’s another issue. Basically what happened through the process of proprioception, and proprioception is a nerve and pulse that come from the periodontal ligaments around the teeth. Also, there’s a dual mechanism around the teeth and also it’s in the TM joint. When you lose a tooth, for example, the TM joints become primary. Whereas when the teeth are there, the teeth are primary and the TM joint a secondary, okay? So facial expression also affects the stomatognathic system. If you’re frowning, for example, it makes it much easier to clench your teeth and if you have imbalanced, that can actually be an issue as well. I won’t get into that too much, but just shows you how the arch is together. How one tooth is supported by the other. I’m show a couple things with you. 

Now here’s an example, compromise dental arch. What I mean by compromise? Something is happened with things don’t look like… That bite doesn’t look like the previous bite, does it? This was created by sucking the finger. This problem was created by sucking the finger. So if you look at this, this person’s gonna have problems in the back of the mouth, because what happened here is that the teeth are out of balance. You don’t have to be a dentist that tell that’s out balance. So now if this person say, for example, let’s say they came in because they had asthmatic problem. And by the way, this person did have asthmatic problem. If they had asthmatic problem, one of the things I would do when I look at the mouth and what physicians do, they’ll look at the mouth, they look at the tongue and they look at the throat and they never see the teeth, okay? I would look at it as something doesn’t look quite right. You wouldn’t have to be a dentist to tell that’s not quite right, right? The other thing about this person, this person also would eventually have back pain if they don’t already have that. Another thing that’s very, very interesting, this person with asthmatic symptom. And they told me that when they would get a asthma attack, what they would do put the finger in the mouth, they suck on the finger in the asthmatic attack go away. Why is that? The reason is because when they put the finger in the mouth, the teeth was separated a little bit. So the teeth were not in occlusion. That was the reason, okay? They should give you some example there.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Wow. 

Willie Richardson DDS

This right here is an example of a cross bite , a cross bite meaning that these teeth… Can you see my arrow as well? That I’m using?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yeah, I can see that.

Willie Richardson DDS

These teeth here on the wrong side of the bottom teeth. They’re on the outside. Here’s another example. If you look at this one, the back teeth here on the wrong side of the top teeth, okay? That’s a cross bite. A cross bite can create some situation. Now, if I was in looking at this person, this person may have a tendency to have problem with. This is the left side of the face. They would have a tendency to have problem in the right shoulder and the right chest wall, okay? They would also have a tendency to have problem in the left leg, by the way. The way the body works things that occur in the upper body on the right side is affected by the lower body on the left side, okay? A little bit can, if you were to take an X and put it across your body, things in the upper body on the right side would be correspond to things in the lower body on the left side and vice versa, okay? Just to show you the kinda havoc that people can have with dental issues. You can see this film here. This is an x-ray of this guy here. You can see that where the teeth look real bad, you can see that, you don’t have to be a dentist to see that. But here, this is what I wanna show here. When you look at this, this is a severe imbalance. This severe imbalance creates problem here. And because these teeth are drifted, these teeth are in traumatic occlusion here. This person has knee issues here, and this would be the right knee, by the way, it helps affect the right knee. And also they’re having some issues in left knee, but it’s primarily because of their bite. But the other thing is they have what we call bike glass, meaning that their teeth are not as tall they’re supposed to be. They would also have lower back pain. Now this tooth here, if you can use your imagination, but then if this tooth is supposed to be on top of this one and it’s leaning up far, you can tell that their bite is really off, isn’t? Their bite is actually overflowed where their jaws closed up a lot.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, this is an example of this young lady. This was years ago when I took this picture, by the way. This person had knee pain, right? Where she’s showing you here.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yeah.

Willie Richardson DDS

This knee pain was directly caused by this tooth here. And by the way, if I’m evaluating someone generally speaking and looking at their occlusion, I can usually tell if they have pain, in their knees using the steps. I can usually tell whether or not pain is more severe going up steps or down steps by the way, okay? So one of the ways in which medically, you can evaluate something. If you are having some problem with say, something the upper right chest wall, one of the things that would help you determine whether or not, could a dental situation be involved at all, you can ask them, “Do you have any problem with the left leg?” Just ask them about the opposite side. So as a chiropractor here, for example, if you are evaluating the neck, for example, you may ask them if they have any problem with their feet. Why is that important? Because the anterior teeth, the upper one, the top teeth controls the neck muscles, but guess what? The lower teeth control muscle all the way down your calf that goes under your foo, okay? So if they’re traumatizing the lower, they can have those two symptoms. Just to kind give an example, right? Let me go through a few more. Wholistic signs and symptoms as they relate to dentistry. Sensitive teeth, many people have sensitive teeth. I know that most people think that when they have sensitive teeth, they’re gonna use some kind of toothpaste to decrease their sensitivity, which is true. That does help, but it doesn’t eliminate the problem. You your sensitive teeth there, because either they got cavities. If there have no cavities, there’s no gum disease there. 

Then they really mean that the tooth is traumatized. What does that mean? Traumatized mean that the teeth are touching in such a way that the forces that are generated are not favorable to the Pre On ligament or to the nerves and the teeth or the teeth become very sensitive. I can have someone with a sensitive tooth, for example, that doesn’t have a decay. You take an x-ray and everything, no decay problem. And you find out that it’s traumatized when you correct the trauma, the sensitivity goes away. How long would you think that’ll take to go away? Well, usually in a few seconds , okay? It goes away in a few seconds. It doesn’t take a day or something like that, but it actually decreases. Tori formation. Those are bone knots that occur in the bottom of the jaw, can be indicator that the person is a clenching, for example, if a person clenches, they may develop a tori, the roof of the mouth, right? In the along the midline and also in the demandable on the side of the back teeth Why is that? Because the nature is trying to prevent you from breaking your own jaw. So it will grow extra bone in a roof of your mouth to keep your suture line from parting, as well as grow extra bone in the lower jaw to keep you from actually separating the symptoms of the mandible from the body the mandible, okay? Give an example. I remember they explained that by saying, “Well, it’s none specific bone growth.” Now, when I look at that, for me, it’s very specific bone growth, okay? Nonspecific grown bone growth that mean that there are some cells left over, that were trapped when the joints were forming and that’s why they grow. But that’s not the reason. The reason they grow is because of actually stress to the bone where the body’s trying to protect itself. 

I know in the animal king horses, for example, if they have a crooked puff, for example, when they run over time, they will start to develop ocelots, which are actually extra bone formation because that bone is not in a favorable position. So nature tries to protect it by growing extra bone, okay? Other things you’ll see if a person has a poor bite, we about that a little while ago, dentures patient with no pain where there’s no teeth present, you can have pain in your face, in your gum, and you don’t have a tooth there, but yet you get toothaches, okay? That in itself can also be signals from the TM joint itself can actually cause that. Facial neurology, for example, can be a problem. Bruxism, clenching and grinding. That’s where people grind their teeth, or they just clench. More people are clenches than they are grinders. Grinders are people that really make noise in their sleep. Clenches are people that just hold their teeth together and one of the signs of symptoms they will have, if you hold your teeth together and you sleep, what happened during the night? Your nose will stop up and you can’t breathe. So then you end up breathing through your mouth and you end up with dry mouth. And when you get dry mouth, that accelerates gum disease, as well as cavities, for example, okay? Just give you a few other things that you can look for. Lactic acid, we talked a little bit about, and this is where your machine come in. They’re EM?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

PEMF, pulsed electromagnetic field. PEMF yes.

Willie Richardson DDS

PEMF, yeah. That’s where… Because what happened when muscles contracted for a long time, you get lactic acids accumulation and mild fasciitis where you get all these inflammation in the muscle. And that’s where that machine come in, really, really help makes difference. Now, I have not used that machine personally. I’m just really learning about it, but myofascial pain dysfunction is caused by inflammation of the muscle machine due to retention of lactic acid. So when you use that machine that actually breaks that up, improves circulation so forth, and that’s why you notice a difference. That’s my , And the problem become though, when that reoccurs, if it keeps reoccurring, then you want to look for dental issues, okay?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Willie Richardson DDS

Very good. And what I’ll do is… This is just a map of some trigger areas. I won’t get into that too much. This is where I just kinda mapped up this person. I’m gonna show you next here. These little red spots, those are trigger zone. And these triggers are the referring pain to different areas of the head. Okay, frontal headaches again comes from the neck. And this is the example of trigger point injection. Trigger point here actually relieve pain. This is actually on the front of the head, by the way, this point. Okay, this right here, this trigger point injection I was showing you here. See this right here was actually referring pain to right here. That referred pain was to that spot. And once it did that injection, guess what happened the pain? It stopped, okay? Because it wasn’t in where she… That’s where she feels the pain, but the pain was actually in her neck. Talk a little about this. This is a very common symptom is where you get a itch in the corner of your eye. Itch in the corner of your eye and keep reoccurring there. Physician may refer to that as allergies say, “Well, you got allergies.” I smile when I say that, “You got allergy.” But in actual allergy, that can be spasm from the pterygoid muscle. The pterygoid muscle, the lateral pterygoid muscle can actually prefer pain to the corner of the eye and a itch by the way, is a precursor of pain. Itch is really pain also, but it’s a low grade pain. 

So we interpret that as a itch, okay? I talked a little bit about asthma. I won’t get into all of that. Now this is the example of… This was an asthmatic patient, by the way. This is the example of where there’s a very bad bite. You don’t have to be a dentist’s child that doesn’t look quite right, right? But what happened with this person? This person was a chronic headache suffer, what they call migraines but actually they had a dental issue and they also had asthma as a kid. And long story short, this was corrected with braces, by the way. There’s another example of malfunctional occlusion, which everything is not balanced in such a way that the muscles of the body, especially in the neck, these two teeth here affects your neck muscles right here. And many, many others achievement results. This right here is what this person, I was able to relieve. I’m gonna go back a little bit and I think I’ll stop with this one. I’m gonna show you this again. See this cage. Look at how far these lower teeth come over the bottom. Notice you can’t see the bottom teeth when that person closed up. What I did here, I made up what I call some orthotics. Orthotics is like a plastic mouthpiece that I actually covered the teeth. When I covered the teeth, instead of her mouth being closed, like this where she’s so far down now, when she closed, she’s like this, can you see the different notice here? Where her mouth closed, you can still see the bottom teeth.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yeah.

Willie Richardson DDS

With the mouth closed you can see the bottom teeth. I’m gonna go back again and I can probably… I’m gonna show you this again. This is what they naturally looked at. Their migraines suffered with asthma, okay?

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Willie Richardson DDS

Right here, this is how that look. If you look at it from underneath, the teeth are not touching there, but you can see how the teeth are not quite a line. This is an example where I put this plastic mouthpiece in over teeth. And I actually submitted that in. I had them wear this and why did I have them wear this? So while I was able to control the symptom with their clients.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Okay,

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, let me just… And here’s an example again of this, I call a mandibular repositioning. This is her natural bite. This is a bite with the appliance in. But if you look at the front teeth, lower front teeth, you can tell that it’s quite a different with the teeth touching. There is a big difference here.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Yeah.

Willie Richardson DDS

And that made a big difference in her symptoms because it’s a mechanical issue. Everything in the body is gonna be either structural, biological, or psychological. So this is a structural problem that was creating medical condition, such as asthma asthma and headaches and so forth, okay? So it really wasn’t a medical problem. It was really a dental issue.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right.

Willie Richardson DDS

But physicians have to be able to look at that and basically know what to do. So even though you can, even though you can treat this, of course they use medication. It only placates the symptoms. So we never get to mess. Always say that headaches, give you a lot of information, ’cause what it does it lets you know that there’s something wrong. But if we don’t know how to interpret a headache and look where it’s coming from, then we don’t get the message. We just kill the messenger.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Right, well, absolutely.

Willie Richardson DDS

Okay, this is an example of fetal sleep. And I talked a little bit about this. This is fetal sleep when you ball up, in a knot like this, okay? And maybe we’ll get a chance to do some of this. Again, I know we are about out of time already, but this is situation where you got eruption disturbed, but the teeth don’t come through as well. And this was a asthmatic person by the way, this right here was really my daughter. I had her do that. So I could take a picture of her cause I wanted to talk about it. okay, so anyway guys, it’s not voodoo voodoo. It’s really about how the body works. So that’s what whole body dentistry is about, how the body works and also the tooth body connection. That’s what it’s about. So it’s not Voodoos really will. Okay, so why don’t I stop by Dennis Molly? Any questions before we all-

Marlene Mahipat, DC

No, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Dr. Willie, I know I’m coming to see you. And I’m bringing my husband to come see you because I am one of those that you have been using Sensodyne since I was in my twenties and I have no cavities my your I think is from over brushing is what they said. But I think it’s something that you need to take a look at and address. And I know you have patience. You gotta go, but if people wanna reach you, how can they reach you? Give us your website your address and so on and support. 

Willie Richardson DDS

I actually in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m gonna give out my phone number, 4104426900, 4104426900. As a website up is not complete there ’cause it was taken down, it’s wholisticdentalconcepts.com. wholisticdentalconcepts.com, spell with a W as you see on the top of the screen there, okay? Very good.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Look forward to coming and seeing you. And thank you, I know your patience are weight.

Willie Richardson DDS

Yes, yes, yes.

Marlene Mahipat, DC

Okay, thank you.