The Root of The Matter

Your Mouth, Your Health: Understanding Impaired Mouth Syndrome

• Dr. Rachaele Carver, D.M.D. Board-Certified, Biologic, Naturopathic Dentist

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How much do you know about your dental health and its impact on your overall wellness? Be prepared for a mind-blowing conversation with Dr. Felix Liao, a leading biological and holistic dentist with over two decades of research in the intriguing world of impaired mouth syndrome. This isn’t your average discussion about tooth decay or the importance of flossing. We delve into the surprising signs of impaired mouth syndrome, from teeth grinding and TMJ, to sensitive teeth and facial pain. Dr. Liao, an Amazon bestseller author, beautifully explains the connection between your mouth and the health of your brain and heart.

Dr. Liao doesn’t hold back in this podcast episode. His exploration of the limitations of traditional orthodontics and Invisalign, and the need for a three-dimensional diagnosis, will make you rethink everything you know about dental care. He shares his breakthrough research on the role of proper appliances in promoting growth and activating patient's stem cells. You'll also discover the powerful potential of Dr. Liao’s own epigenetic oral appliances and how they tackle the root cause of dental issues by expanding the jaw, moving it forward, and improving overall health.

Beyond the science and appliances, Dr. Liao turns the spotlight on the significance of diet in dental health. Prepare to be fascinated as he explains the importance of a bone-building diet in healing the gut and reducing nasal congestion and why some people struggle with nasal breathing. Tune in to learn how your dental health is a comprehensive reflection of your overall health and the power dentistry has in boosting wellness. By the end of this episode, you'll realize that the secret to a healthier you, might just be hidden in your mouth.

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To learn more about Dr. Liao's work, read his books, and find an Airway Mouth Doctor go to:

holisticmouthsolutions.com

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To learn more about holistic dentistry, check out Dr. Carver's website:

http://carverfamilydentistry.com


To contact Dr. Carver directly, email her at drcarver@carverfamilydentistry.com. 

Want to talk with someone at Dr. Carver's office?  Call her practice: 413-663-7372







Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

Rachaele:

Hello everyone, I'm Dr Rachel Carver and welcome back to another episode of the Root of the Matter podcast. I'm very excited today to have with me Dr Felix Liao, who actually taught me all about impaired oral cavity and how, even as adults, we can make a really big impact and alternatives to kind of CPAP and helping with a lot of other you know, other chronic issues that we have here. So let me just tell you a little bit about Dr Liao. He has written five amazing Amazon bestseller books. This is how I first learned about him back. I think it was late 2007.

Rachaele:

Right after your first book, six-foot tiger in a three foot cage, and I encourage everybody to pick that book up.

Rachaele:

It's great, you know, kind of written for the layperson, so very easy to understand, and it really lit up a lot of light bulbs for me as I was trying to kind of understand, trying to figure out how to, you know, create the best health for my patients, and knowing I was trying to do everything but there was still that missing piece and until I really understood the airway part, you know I really couldn't give complete health to my patients.

Rachaele:

So anyway, Dr Liao, his newest book, right, is just out relaunch your vitality. He has coined the term impaired mouth syndrome and the whole idea behind that is to try to reconnect an underdeveloped mouth with multiple medical and dental and mood issues. Right yeah, plus, he has his own epigenetic oral appliance and that, combined with the whole health integration, has led to multiple clinical breakthroughs, and he actually just received a lifetime achievement award that he received in Italy. So congratulations and thank you for coming on and helping to educate us. So why don't we start with you know? Tell us a little bit about how you, how you discovered this, how you came up with this amount impaired mouth syndrome.

Felix:

Yeah, sure. So I had been a biological or holistic dentist for probably 15, 20 years. And you know, after you've been on that journey for a while, you collect patients who has been around the block many times, seeing all kinds of doctors, got nowhere. And after you see a few hundreds of those, you start scratching your head and say, well geez, what's missing in all these patients? Right? So I was always interested in teeth grinding as an engineer who got to dental school. Like, oh, this does not make sense, why would the body destroy the hardest tissue it has?

Felix:

Alright, so along came a patient, along came the advent of conebeam CT scans that are now available in dental offices. Along came sleep medicine, and I discovered that teeth grinding is not a dental problem alone. Alright, it's one frame in a movie and the title of the movie is called their way of obstruction during sleep. So the takeaway is that you grind your teeth because your body is doing self-administered CPR to rescue you during your sleep because of airway obstruction. So that's kind of like, wow, that changed everything, right? So you're asleep. It's dark, it's warm, it's quiet, your conscious brain is shut off, right, so you can't think stressful thoughts. So what could be choking your airway, right?

Felix:

Well, that's how I came up with the term six foot tiger, three foot cage okay. So a lot of the patients that came to see me as a biological dentist they have clean checkups medically, they have clean checks up dentally. They exercise, they eat right, they do yoga, they have trees, they go to church, they meditate. You know like, okay, what's missing? Well, it's a three foot cage, right, the three foot cage represents the under-sized upper jaw and lower jaw, and together they offer a space between them that is the home office for the tongue. What happens when that space is too small? Your tongue is shoved into your throat. Okay, that's how teeth grinding became, because now your airway is choked and your body says something.

Felix:

Get rid of your arms before you die. Okay, and the teeth are in the way when you're trying to do CPR, because when you do CPR you shove your jaw forward.

Rachaele:

And a lot of people don't realize it, because their teeth may be perfectly straight, right, and so they go to a traditional dentist. And the dentist you know one we're not taught about this in dental school, right and so you know, a traditionally trained dentist is just gonna be like oh, let me give you a night guard, right, your grinding your teeth. We'll just throw the night guard in there, right?

Felix:

The night guard and cosmetic dentistry are like the two biggest no-no, because you completely miss the root cause of not only these dental problems but your medical problems. All right, so we all grow from the mouth. And I mean, think about, as an airway mouth doctor, the role of the mouth in whole body health. If you think about the babies you know every one of you who are mothers or parents you know that the baby is nothing but a mouth coming out of the birth canal. All right, it couldn't even open his eyes or lift his neck, but guess what it could suck for dear life. And that's where we grow from. All right, you repeat the cycles of feeding and sleeping, and feeding and sleeping until the kid can sit up and then, when they can grab things, guess what it does? It's hand to mouth, right? That's how our human brains are hardwired. So the mouth has a primal, primal relationship with the whole body. That dental, school, night guards and a cosmetic dentistry completely missed. That is feeding, breathing, sleeping, I would call it.

Felix:

I saw, I realized the need to kind of give a name to the mouth that works into a mouth that does not work. So an impaired mouth is like an impaired, drunk, drunk driving driver? Right, you can drive the car, but you are a road hazard to yourself and to everybody, right? Well, an impaired mouth is a health hazard, okay, it's not only to your teeth, but it's to your brain, to your heart, to your spine, to your pains and fatigue, and all of that, okay. And so what is a holistic mouth, then? Because we need to have some polar opposites. If you have impaired mouth, on one hand, you need to have a mouth that works. Well, people say well, my mouth works, I can eat, I can talk, I can maybe even smile and argue. Right, no, that's not what physiology is. Physiology of the mouth includes at least six job descriptions. Okay, so the six could include alignment, which is resist gravity. Okay, alignment and gravity. If you can't resist gravity, you're gonna have pain, and with pain comes fatigue over a long time. Okay.

Felix:

And the second one is breathing. All right, why can't breathe? Well, you're gonna die if you can't breathe. And if you could die, if you can breathe only partially, you die a slow and unpleasant death. Witness all the health care problems that doctors cannot fix. Okay.

Felix:

Third one is circulation. What are you circulating? Well, what comes through your mouth? All right, you're the food that you eat, the alcohol or sugar drinks that you swallow and the oxygen that you inhale or didn't inhale. That's what circulation is okay. And then digestion well, that's what the mouth does.

Felix:

The mouth actually provides energy to fuel the rest of the body's vital organs. Now, as such, shouldn't the mouth be considered the foremost vital organ? I mean, after all, it's the energy supplied to the heart, the brain and the muscles, right, okay. And then the next one is sleep. We cover energy already, so sleep is how the body repair itself from daily wear and tear, right? So this is a new way to look at the role of the mouth in whole body health, either in wellness or in illness and pain. So you, dentist, need to understand impair mouth syndrome. Medical doctors need to know impair mouth syndrome. Psychiatry, psychologists, mental health health professionals, holistic health coaches, indeed, all mothers and fathers who care, need to know about impair mouth syndrome, because whether your child grows up to his or her full genetic potential has everything to do with how the mouse is able to provide this child of yours with alignment, breathing, circulation, digestion and sleep so you mentioned grinding.

Rachaele:

What other? What's another sign of an impaired mouth syndrome?

Felix:

okay, so impaired mouth syndrome is defined as a vast set of medical, dental and mental emotional symptoms. Okay, so the mouse is to human, what roots are the plants? Because we grow from there. And when the foundation of a house is wrong, guess what happens to the deck, to the first floor, second floor, third floor. Okay, so the other symptoms that could in that impaired mouth syndrome very often shows just on the dental side, and then we'll go to the medical and mental emotional side.

Felix:

On the dental side, besides teeth grinding will be sensitive tea, broken tea, gum recession, tmj, like clicking jaw joint, locking jaw joint, headaches, facial pain and how about? Geez, my tooth hurts but nobody can find any throat. You don't have a cavity, or you had a root canal done and my tooth was killing me for the longest time and I still feel that right? Well, that's impaired mouth syndrome. And they don't. This is not the dentist fault. This is not taught in dental schools. All right. So this is the reason why dentists need to know impaired mouth syndrome, because when we went to dental school, the stuff we've learned were from dental school professors in whose mind the earth was flat. Well, I have news for you. The body is organized differently around the round earth.

Rachaele:

Yeah, okay, so this is a new point, yeah, and some of the other things that I would say, you know, is like a deep overbite, so meaning your upper teeth are only supposed to overlap your lower teeth maybe one to two millimeters.

Rachaele:

So if you have 50% or more overlap, that's a problem when we look at a person's profile right when you see we call like a weak chin right when the chin just kind of melts into the throat, you know another sign of improper jaw position. Or we see like the mid-face right Kind of something. A lot of times when we talk about in dental school we talk about the lower jaw and we're always about the lower jaw. When most people have maxillary, their upper jaw is not growing forward enough, right?

Rachaele:

And evolutionarily we're not growing forward and we're not expanding. I mean every kid that I see, every single person I see, needs expansion and forward advancement, ideally, you know it's just evolutionarily. With all that soft foods we're eating, all that process. You know the cavemen had the big square jaws right Because they're chewing on roots and fur stuff and using those muscles. You know we've got two-year-olds with their squeeze patches right, doing this all day long, and you know.

Rachaele:

I don't think people don't understand like tongue is the strongest muscle in the body, the cheeks, all those muscles when we are eating improperly, when we have, you know, any kind of thumb sucking habits or swallowing improper right that I see so many people who have what we call like an open bite, where the teeth instead of kind of the opposite of a deep bite, they might have an open bite, and when you ask the person to swallow right, you'll see their tongue extrude through the spaces. We call that like a tongue thrust issue right.

Rachaele:

And we see tongue ties A lot of times you know a pediatrician at birth can notice those little anterior tongue ties. It's obvious when the tip is tied. But most of us, a lot of us, have these posterior tongue ties right and so, as Dr Lea was saying, that tongue, if we cannot get that up into the roof of the mouth, create that. You know, that is kind of what grows our palate and if the tongue is impaired then you know we don't another way, we don't grow our jaws properly.

Rachaele:

So and then we also sometimes talk about the dark circles under the eyes, right that's another sign that we're not breathing. We may be mouth breathers. And as you say in all your books, you know the number one thing in all airway people say we've got to breathe through. I know that should be like the number one thing, that we teach our babies. I go back now and I look at my babies, my kids, their infant pictures, every single one of them. They have their mouths open. I was like oh man.

Felix:

They're watching TV or you look at them while you're driving. They're going like this Right.

Rachaele:

Mouth wide open.

Felix:

Yeah. So on the medical side, because you lack oxygen, you'll end up with, very commonly, anxiety, because you know if you, if you pull the necktie too tight, gets what happens you'll get anxious. Okay, so men, who you know need to relax, the first thing they do is they release their necktie right, Unbutton their collar right so you cannot have constriction in your throat. And you end up with constriction in your throat when you have a six foot tiger inside a set up and they're going to be out. Underdeveloped jaws and childhood. So I wrote a book called your Child's Best Face recently it just came out in January of this year. It talks about what it takes to grow the jaws right from birth and maybe even before birth, what mothers, what preparations mothers should do in order to end up with the best outcome at birth. And so the child starts out with a good, a great head start. I had a bunch of. I just had a Zoom consult yesterday with a new patient. He said oh, my Eastern European mother, new mothers are saying you know, be careful, once you get pregnant your teeth will rot, because you know, pregnancy just has that outcome. I said that's no longer true because part of the maternal preparation is a bone building diet. Part of the maternal preparation is to open up the airway and improve sleep, and so, as a result, I've had mothers who had given birth before coming to see me. This one mother in particular had been a mother of two. She said with my third pregnancy since I started, you know, coming under your care it was the easiest, and I have an easiest child birth and my food sensitivity has gone away. I can eat more foods than I could ever eat before, and so baby's healthy, all right. So there's a maternal preparation for all the new mothers out there that is worth paying attention to you if you want the best outcome. All right.

Felix:

And so when the child's face failed to grow, as Dr Rachel was saying just now, you not only end up with a deep overbite, which basically means that the jaw failed to grow vertically. Okay. So that home office for the tongue between the two jaws has three dimensions, like the room you're in now. Right, so that space has got width, height and front and back. So think of the space between the two jaws for the tongue as a accordion in a child. Okay, this accordion could stretch in all three dimensions. Okay, full genetic potential. And the best face comes from the gene expression that you inherit from your parents. Okay, so that there's room for all 16 keys to line up straight, naturally, okay, and that meaning that you don't need braces.

Felix:

I mean, how did our instances get here without braces and without clear liners, without pizza and ultra processed food? Right? So there's now a new book just released this week. It's called Ultra Processed People, and guess how they got there? They throw up eating chips. You know, foods are coming, a box stripped, like you said, the gooey pouches the babies are sucking on now, right, so the tongue thrust from the open bite in adults is because the tongue doesn't want to play dead clocking your way back there. So the tongue the thrust is actually the one with the hoods. It wants to fight its way out of Alcatraz and it will exert enough force so that the teeth will have to get wet. Okay, and do you?

Rachaele:

know, is that more common in from bobble feeding, that kind of tongue habit, or not necessarily?

Felix:

Okay. So I think the tongue thrust almost always has a hundred percent correlation with nasal obstruction, and the nasal obstruction is a result of eating foods that causes gut inflammation and then from their nasal congestion. So anytime you end up with a stuffy nose. So there is a Danish or Scandinavian researcher named Havel, igor Havel. He did a monkey experiment where they used silicone plugs to plug up the nose and the monkey has to breathe through the mouth and the face changed and then he reversed it and then the face returned to normal. So the good news is that, yeah, it's reversible. The bad news is that you cannot eat processed food. Okay, and this is a at least, you can't afford to. You can, to your own detriment, but if you want health and you already have a bunch of these symptoms that are now connected to impaired mouth syndrome, you can't just, you're not eligible to eat it. You can't afford it. Your system cannot. Maybe in the wallet you can, but not in terms of your health, energy and pain and inflammation.

Rachaele:

Back to one thing. You mentioned the three dimensions, and I think this is a very important thing to note and why I have a lot of issues with Invisalign and traditional orthodontics Absolutely. Because you'll go in and out.

Felix:

By the way, all your audience out there, Dr Rachel is really evolved. Okay that she recognizes a point that would go over 99.9% of other dentists out there. No disrespect intended. It's a sign that how, how evolved Dr Rachel is, she's 100% in the Earth's round world. So keep going Very curious, very curious.

Rachaele:

I wanted to know the why. So you know, sometimes you know, as those will say, you know, fix my crooked teeth and I had braces as a kid. But, just you know, throw me Invisalign, they'll do a scan and boom, but the scan shows the teeth and it ignores 90% of the issues. Right, and so this is very why do people have relapses? Your parents spent $10,000, or whatever it was, to get your teeth braces when you're a teenager and now here you are in your 20s and 30s, you know in your teeth, and the typical line was well, you didn't wear your retainers. Well, no, the actual problem was never corrected in the first place. Right, and that's why, if we can address and recognize you know, my first interview was Dr Ballinger, who is a pediatric dentist, and we talked a lot about when you recognize these signs at birth and early, we can, as Dr Lea was saying, we can help these kids epigenetically reach their potential by intervening with proper, you know habits and eating and breathing right, all these very, very important things.

Rachaele:

So when we do you know we'll get into it a little bit later and talk about Dr Lea's appliance but when we want to really understand and how to correct the deficiencies, we need to do diagnosis in three dimensions. Okay, Correct. Not just a regular X-ray and just an oral scan, that's. You know that's not going to cut it.

Felix:

Yes, yes, a point well made. So there's a difference in the dentist training. In dental school they get zero training, okay. So dentists who are even airway aware, you need to tip your head off to them because they took the trouble and paid the money and made the effort to learn this stuff. But the training that they get varies in degree or sophistication in the diagnostic capability.

Felix:

So Dr Rachel said I want to know why. Right, you want to go to that kind of dentist. Okay, you want to go to the dentist who can explain to you the why's. Because if you don't know why, then what the hell are you treating? All right, the reason why teeth relapse after braces is because the diagnosis was not complete when the orthodontics was done. Okay, they don't know what they're treating.

Felix:

Okay, so which one of the three dimensions of that oral cavity in that kid needs correction? Is it one, two or all three? Okay, so if you don't pay attention to that, trust me, it's going to regress, okay, and relapse. Here's the principle. T will not move if the forces on either side of it is balanced the tongue on the inside and the lips on the outside. So when you have stuffy nose and your mouth is apart. Your lips are weaker and your tongue is going to be stronger. And guess what? You're going to relapse. If you have tongue tie, you're going to swallow differently and your tongue is going to push against your lower front teeth instead of the palate, because the tongue tie anchors the tongue to the floor of the mouth instead of the roof of the mouth, and so when that happens, you're going to have the kind of like Jay Leno profile big chin and sunken midface in profile.

Felix:

So we now know how to explain nearly everything that goes wrong with dental facial development. And it is through treating thousands of these adult cases. And I kept asking myself what went wrong in this patient's downhill slide from top of health during their high school and college years to now. Are there signs on the downhill slide that we can pick up and maybe reverse course early? And the answer, after treating, like I said, thousands of adult cases, is yes. We now have cracked a code to a best face that is formed by a maxilla that's grown enough for all the teeth to mine up straight natural.

Felix:

Now they may not, for whatever reason, and then you can use clear trays. You don't need brackets and wires and all the painful experiences. To repeat it in the 2020s, and things have evolved, but not in the diagnostic software and the orthodontic care provider's head, because that part didn't change very much. The earth is still flat in 99.9%. What I'm talking about, that thinks has evolved, is that we now have clear trays as a way to deal with crowded teeth, as long as the jaws are grown sufficiently so that the lower jaw can fit into the upper jaw without having to compensate for the narrowness of the upper jaw, as long as the tongue tie is not a factor in the jaw and the facial development, and as long as there's no stuffy nose and as long as they eat a healthy diet Alright. So I name four things there, but they are sorely missing in health here today. So, as parents, you end up being a sitting duck. Okay, well, I got four kids with their knee braces. How much would it cost? Well, you don't have to be a sitting duck anymore. You can actually do the right things and raise these kids to the point where maybe you just need minor, minor corrections with clear aligners. Okay, because you would have had natures on your side, because you follow these whole health and epigenetic principles.

Felix:

By the way, we need to define epigenetics. Epigenetics means something that's in addition to the genes. So a couch potato who takes up swimming, running, dancing, weightlifting doesn't matter what sport you pick will become a different person, physically correct, after six months of this work. So it's the same person, same genes, but they look different, they feel different, they may make even different decisions because of how they feel. So the difference between the same person and yet two different presentation of a person is epigenetics. Epigenetics what's on top of your genes that influences your gene expression? We now know that that's caused by two things from CDC's definition of epigenetics.

Felix:

One is behavior, so couch potato versus active life. The other one is environment Okay. So how is the nasal environment? Okay, do you live with the stuff he knows and therefore your mouth breathes? How is your throat environment? So do you have a choke zone here so that you have to grind your teeth to compensate for this? So environment meaning structure and how you use your mouth. From behavior, the oral behavior. Where did that oral behavior come from? It came from your brain.

Felix:

So we had a change of people's software here, and that started from educating the doctors, the dentists, whose mind are still in what I call patchwork mode. All right, you got the symptom, I got the stroke. You got this pain, I got the surgery. You got that broken tooth. Okay, I did have this drill.

Felix:

We need to change our mindset and start thinking about okay, how do I put this patient in front of me back together so that every system starts coming? That should be our challenge and, regardless of your degree whether you're a social worker for people's mental health, whether you're physical therapist for their body health, or whether you're death or whether you're medical doctor, we need to ask what else is the patient doing inside my activity? Instead of showing everything, you are training, which is admittedly limited in dental soup, showing crowns, bridges, root canals, implants, veneers at the patient, nightguards and all that. Instead of that, it's a patient. You look at this question that is hard on your ego but very important to the patient, which is how do I put this patient back together?

Felix:

What other expertise, besides what I know, does this patient need? So my relationship with my patient is okay. You're my patient. Your problem is my problem. I'm not licensed to treat every problem you have, because that's the bureaucratic labeling of different doctors and licenses, but within that limitation, I will help you find the answer and send you to the right doctors with the right expertise to solve the other problems so that, in combination with the mouth, your whole body will come again. This is what we call whole health. And when you combine whole health with the good news that epigenetics can restart the growth and reconfiguration of your jaws, face and the three foot cage, voila, you're in luck.

Rachaele:

So this is so great. I'm sure people are thinking, okay, great, well, how do I do this? So I think back in 2018, I went down to visit Dr Leow and his practice to learn all about these devices. Traditionally, if you have sleep apnea, you're given a CPAP machine. That's still considered gold standard, but many of us can't tolerate that, and then we have a lot of problems if you're not cleaning a problem. There's a lot of issues that go along with the CPAP, and the CPAP, although it is providing oxygen, it's not the solution. It's another kind of bandaid. So the real problem is our jaws are not grown to their full potential. Most of the time, everything's protruded and the tongue's too big Can be other reasons too we can talk about a little bit. Your tongue can also be indicative of hypothyroidism. Again, that's where the whole health integration comes into play, where we need all this.

Rachaele:

So a lot of us think, okay, well, after age 12, that's it, I'm done growing, so I'm out of luck. But we know that I myself. Obviously Dr Leow has done it for thousands of patients, people well into their 60s. You can still expand people's mouth, and in his book he talks a little bit about stem cells. We know any kind of force that you put on any part of the body is going to induce movement, induce growth. So why don't you talk a little bit about the appliance and how we? Well, first we have to make the right diagnosis. Right, so we do a 3D diagnosis. So we need to see do we need to increase you vertically? How about horizontally? Or front to back, anterior, posterior? We need to know where the deficiencies exist. Right, yeah.

Rachaele:

And then we can create. So then we know how to create these appliances, which are going to explain a little bit about how these appliances work.

Felix:

Yeah, so well. Well summarized, the principal epigenetics comes from this research that says that one wider jaws don't have a bunch of problems that we call impaired mouth syndrome, because wider jaw come wider airway with wider maxilla. In particular it comes with higher cheekbones and that's better looking and the lower jaw can fit in without having to wiggle and compensate. Kind of like you get on an airplane and the seat is too small, or it's not too small for you, but it's way too small for the person sitting next to you. Now you have to suffer the consequence the whole flight long, right, okay, so there are consequences to underdevelopment. The great news is now that we have a way to activate the stem cells and get it to grow. So the research that I'm talking about built a jig for a bunch of rats so that when the rats closes, one jaw joint closes backwards and one jaw joint closes forward. So think of a steering wheel in a car that got twisted to one side. The side that goes forward, the jaw joint is not jammed. The side that goes backward, the jaw joint is jammed. Okay, so you have a building contrast within the same animal. What they found is that the jaw joint that is jammed, there is no DNA activity. Okay, it's measured by this mRNA messenger, rna protein that is measurable and an accurate indicator of DNA activity inside the nucleus of the cell. So the jam side has little or no activity. Guess what happened to the unjam side? It has lots. So what that tells me is that we can put the jaw lower jaw in a position different from where your bite is right now. So you guys can all do this pinky test, which I'll describe to you shortly, so that your jaw joint is not jammed. Okay, so once we put the patient in that position, we have to admit one thing that your old bite is bad for you. So if you change it, you have a potential of being freed from the prison of suffering that we call in perimouth syndrome.

Felix:

Okay, so how you figure out if you have jammed jaw joints is called a pinky test. So I can describe this to you and you can do it as I describe it. Okay, so I want you to take your pinky pad facing forward and put in your ear opening Slide pressure forward. Okay, so you put your pinky in your ear pad facing forward toward, in the direction of the nose. I want you to just open your mouth wide and bite into your back teeth.

Felix:

If you can feel the pushback on your pinky pad, you have jammed jaw joint, and so your genes are not getting expressed to their full potential. Now I want you to do the same test again Pinky pad in your ear. Okay, this time, instead of closing into your back teeth, I want you to open and close into your front teeth. Okay, 90%, 95% of you will not have that pushback. Okay, so when that happens, it tells me that your lower jaw has had to suffer from that airline seat where your passenger force itself into your space, and now you have to compensate, you have to share, okay. So this is an important point.

Rachaele:

Yeah, that's good, because you fixed me. I used to fail the pinky test, but this is an important thing for people to understand when you have people that have TMJ right.

Felix:

What is?

Rachaele:

causing the clicking and the popping and you're given a special guard or something. But that's because that jaw. I just saw a child the other day. She's 13 years old, a singer, and she started having a lot of pain.

Rachaele:

The first thing I did was that pinky test and I'm like, oh yep, your jaw is way too, far back right, and so I sent her to our pediatric dentist who's going to do all the magic that she does, but I mean, that's the whole idea is to really fix TMJ. Yes, we can give you a splint and maybe that symptomatically helps, but the real solution is to do the 3D diagnostics and move the jaw to the proper position, because most of us it's that upper jaw is not moving forward enough and that lower jaw is getting trapped. And this is another reason why in traditional ortho, when you take teeth out right it was traditionally called four on the floor. Oh, there's not room where just take teeth out. But when they take the teeth out, they shove everything backwards. Instead of expanding and bringing you forward, they're doing the exact opposite, and every single patient who has had that done in my practice has sleep apnea 100% without exception, and a whole lot more suffering.

Felix:

Yes, A lot more suffering of pain and fatigue and mood issues. So I mentioned earlier about cosmetic dentistry. Does the profession and their patients at the service. Here's the reason why what good is the most beautiful looking set of teeth doing in the morgue? All right. So you have straight white teeth, whether it's from braces or cosmetic dentistry, and the jaw is shut back and the dentist didn't diagnose that and just went ahead and collected the money and did the thing. And sure, the patient take nice photographs, okay. But the patient is also suffering from teeth grinding and impairments syndrome and TMJ pain and neck and shoulder and back pain and anxiety and mood.

Felix:

And what's wrong with me? How can? Nobody can fix this? Right? It's just low life quality and the men direct out this function is a huge part of this dysfunction, all right. So in women it's PMS, right? So kind of nobody talks about this thing. Instead they go find some other you know remedies or magic pills, right? Well, there's a root cause to everything, because the body never lies. The act with symptoms only when something is wrong and either you're going to cover up that wrong or you're going to treat the root cause. You make the choice by the doctors who are trained to recognize one the root cause of the TMJ, with the jammed jaw joint being shut way back, or extraction orthodontics, with the retraction of the T causing airway and TMJ problems and broxen problems, teeth grinding. Either you're in the know or you don't, and the only way you're going to know, as a dentist if you educate yourself on behalf of your patient and your own reputation.

Rachaele:

Yeah, and for me. Yeah, we want to do this podcast is to create the awareness, because you know, maybe you're done is, maybe doesn't know, but maybe you're the one who brings them the information. Absolutely so that they become aware and know that there are solutions beyond just. You know the CPAP machine and oral advancement device, because those are the two options. Now, right, we have CPAP and then we have an oral advancement device. So can you tell me, like what's the difference between these oral mandibular advancement devices versus your epigenetic appliance?

Felix:

Excellent question. I'm glad you asked that. So, mandibular advancement device it's the acronym is MAD. It only deal with the lower jaw. The idea is that the tongue is attached to the lower jaw and the airway obstruction is from the tongue. So, as we discussed earlier, if the jaw join the shelf way back, jamming against the skull bone, then the tongue is also in the throat. You just can't avoid, you cannot have one without the other. Okay. So if you have one, you have the other. So the difference between mandibular advancement device, which is a step in the right direction, okay. Instead of you having to grind your teeth, now you have an appliance that moves your jaw forward and release your airway obstruction. That's a step in the right direction.

Felix:

But why would you accept a 50% solution when there's a 100% solution? All right. And so the 100% solution is in the upper jaw. So here's what happens. The reason why your lower jaw had to jam against the ear bone, causing TMJ pain and airway obstruction, is because your upper jaw didn't grow enough. So we say that the upper is like a shoe, lower is like a foot, which one needs to be bigger. And what happens when the shoe is too small for the foot? Meaning the maxilla didn't grow enough for the lower jaw to fit into comfort. Well, the only answer is that the lower jaw cannot fit in and the heel is left hanging out, meaning that the tongue is in the throat, okay. So if you have crowded lower front teeth and just open your mouth, look in the bathroom mirror, put down your lower teeth, lower lip, and you will see crowded lower front teeth. I assure you your upper jaw did not grow enough. So some dentists are trained to recognize these and do something for you. Those are the dentists you want to go to see.

Felix:

If you have been petar mild syndrome and so where I'm different with my appliances, that we do at least three things, I'll just keep it short. It's more than that, but I'll just keep it short for layperson purposes. Number one we treat the root cause of the problem, which is the maxilla. Okay, the three foot cage at three dimensions. But where the lower jaw lands with the bite, it depends on where the upper jaw is. So if your upper jaw is set back into your head, we call that retrusion. It's the opposite of protrusion when your upper jaw is set back in your face because it failed to grow during your development of years when it should, as a result of eating processed food and standard American lifestyle and all that. Then your lower jaw is also set back, right, okay.

Felix:

So another way to look at the maxilla then it's the bone that goes from the corner of your eye to the corner of your mouth and ear to ear, including the cheekbones. You want that to grow, okay? And so we say that maxilla is kind of like the man in the ballroom dancing metaphor. All right, the lower jaw that moves is the female, and the male is the one that makes the signals to the one that looks good, the female dancer, and say okay, here's the move, okay, so the signal comes from the maxilla. So the maxilla leads. Man in ball follows. So to answer your question, why would you only want to treat the follower? Why don't you treat the lead Right? So I don't know about you. If I enter a boxing ring for a fight for my life, I don't want my dominant hand to be tied behind my back, and that's what MAD does. It's stepping the right direction, but it's not addressing the dominant call. So you need to follow up, right into your question.

Rachaele:

Yes, so with your device, what we're doing is I'm usually expanding in several directions, so again most of us are jarzant wide enough.

Rachaele:

So we will have these devices that kind of look like old fashioned retainers, you know, and they have little wires, they press against our teeth and they have a little, you know, a tool like a little key right, and we'll move it, you know, turn it maybe once a week, and the idea is we're expanding. So we're usually having to come horizontally and most of us are too narrow and it's also helping us move forward, which, again, when we move forward, then that that foot right that has some more space that can get up into the shoe, and so that's why I love this appliance, because now we're actually fixing the problem.

Rachaele:

We're not giving you a bandaid, which again like he said, the MAD is a step in the right direction, but long term, could that, you know? Could that alter the whole jaw joint, maybe? You know so this way we're creating and not only that, you know and these, you know, these aren't cheap, but we have to think about that how this dramatically affects your health. I mean, there are thousands of studies showing how sleep apnea increases your risk for dementia. Right for you know, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, you name it. If you are not getting proper oxygenation, then you are at risk for all of the major congenital disease and a shortened lifespan.

Rachaele:

So that's what you have to weigh when considering oh, that's an expensive appliance. Well, how much is it worth for your life to add that time in your life and how much is it gonna cost you when you have those illnesses?

Felix:

It's not the appliance. The appliance is an agent for change, Just like your diet, just like your how. You see the plus and minuses of this decision making process, right? So how much is your ED worth? How much is your memory worth? How much is your PMS? How much is your heart, coronary artery disease? How much is your next day, next morning's energy? Okay, how much is the back under your eyes? How much is your anxiety and depression and medication?

Felix:

Well, some people say, well, but my insurance pay for that. Well, if your insurance doesn't pay for healthy eating, does that mean that you'll eat processed food instead? Unfortunately, some people make that choice, but with that choice comes consequences. So your insurance is not your parent, your insurance is not your God. You have to decide your own destiny about. Okay, what would I want my next 10 years to feel like? What do I want my next five years to look like? Facially, I've had mothers who've given birth, who became pregnant after starting my appliance treatment and they've given birth, and five years later they look way more radiant when they came to me and they came to me after the braces came off and still was not satisfied. We have hundreds of these. Well, I shouldn't say hundreds. We have scores of these patients who just feel better all the way around, and I can tell you that we have enough data now to show that 70 to 80% of your medical dental mood symptoms can be improved or resolved that means gone completely by raking the three-foot cage.

Rachaele:

Well, I mean, it also has a major impact on the spine and our entire, you know entire spine.

Felix:

The head isn't lined up right.

Rachaele:

I mean so many people will come and they've got the neck and the shoulder, you know, and amazing how much the tongue tie can result in all that shoulder. But again, if the head and the neck is not properly aligned, you know you're starting with a handicap right. I think, in your book. You know you mentioned how there was a study show that at birth I think it was 88% of kids come out. You know babies are born with the cranial voice.

Felix:

Yeah, with the strain.

Rachaele:

So one of my other first interviews was talking to our craniofacial specialist, you know, and having that aligned because then you know what is a colicky baby right, and that's very common Everything's kind of out of alignment. You know a lot of kids who suck their thumb, that's a soothing mechanism that's growing right up into the palate, where the nervous system is right. My first daughter, you know she was we forced her out with suction cups, you know, and I didn't know at the time. And had I given her some you know, craniosacral, you know she would have had easier and she's more prone to anxiety now, you know. But she's done great. Both of my kids have had appliances to get them where they need to be. So again, as a parent, it's one of the best things you can do for your children's overall health.

Rachaele:

And the sooner you do it, you know, the better off the kids are. I have one question, though. So we talked about nasal congestion. You know, we know, nasal breathing is not only important for the development of the face, it's also really important for balancing of the nervous system, right. So we know, when we learn how to nasal breathe, we're turning on that parasympathetic nervous system which is our rest, digest repair, which is really important when we sleep, because that is when we're supposed to be doing all the cleanup, repairing our body. So for mouth breathing and we're in sympathetic all the time that we're just stressed all night long when we're supposed to be resting so we're not getting into that deep sleep which is so crucial. So you know. So that thing's like mouth taping, right, we can do this. Try to encourage Now, if you have three patients my husband one of them, who has this very weird habit it's not all the time, but he'll breathe through his nose, but then you know, first out his lips.

Rachaele:

And to me. I'm thinking there's some obstruction.

Rachaele:

I mean he doesn't have to do the jaw so he needs the appliance. And I'm a slacker, you know it was to treat our family last, but you know why. And I have another dear, dear friend who has the same thing and we've been treating him with the laser, also with the nightlays, to help with the you know, the collagen another way to kind of help with some of that problem. But what's going on in that in the upper airway that's making he can breathe in through the nose but some kind of you know pressure if he can't breathe back out through it.

Felix:

Okay. So as soon as we finish with this podcast, just go right to your bathroom mirror or whip out your smartphone and, where you are, I want you to just take a look at your own nasal inhale. So right above the realm part of your nostril is what we call the nasal valve. Okay, it's right where the bridge, it's right below the bridge of the nose. So look at yourself. When you do a big cocaine sniff breath with your lips together. Okay, when you do that, this should not collapse right there. See that Mine does not collapse. Okay, it doesn't love. People do. People who do is because their nasal valve collapse when they try to breathe through their nose. All right, so now they're in a panic mode, like you say, they had the mouth read, okay, so when the nose collapse, nasal valve collapses. It cannot exhale through the nose. That's why they puff.

Felix:

This is my theory. I don't have research proof on that, but it points out my, you know, key tenant principle that it's whole health first and appliance second. Okay, it could be done in combination, but the doctors like Dr Rachel who trained with me, we don't think appliance. We're not appliance pushers. All right, appliances is part of the tool we employ, but some other tools that we employ also includes what Changing what you eat and when you eat and how much you eat before you bed. You go to bed right, so you don't eat a big meal before you go to sleep. You're guaranteed you're gonna have much more acid reflect problems. You're gonna have more nasal problems. Okay, so doctors and patients are like me the whole education or reeducation on this piece on how to eat.

Felix:

But the nasal valve issue is and the lip taping goes like this Don't tape your lips until you can breathe through your nose, so you pass the nasal valve. It's called a coddle test. When you pass the coddle test, then you can tape. Okay, if you don't pass the coddle test, you're just punishing yourself. It's like, okay, I'm gonna waterboard you without the water, okay, yeah.

Rachaele:

So for that, like they do make little nasal cones right, Like the breathe right strips, I don't think those are powerful enough. They have cones that you can actually put up.

Felix:

That's true, that's true. But I don't know about you. I don't feel really comfortable putting any cone up my any cavity, nevermind.

Rachaele:

So with the appliance like so that's all part of the maxilla, correct? So by developing the maxilla. You're also working on that nasal passage as well.

Felix:

The most important advice I can give you is and this works really fast is stop eating processed food and start eating a bone building diet, because the bone building diet will heal the key gut and now decrease the nasal congestion. And now you can breathe through your nose, even before it was widened. So, this is really important.

Rachaele:

What he's saying is people do not connect a stuffy nose with what you're eating. But I would say the same membrane that is in your nose and in your mouth is what lines your entire digestive tract and I know if. I have gluten for dinner. I'm gonna wake up with a stuffy nose. No, doubt about it, because that inflames my gut, and this is that same tissue.

Rachaele:

So very, very important. If you have chronically stuffy nose, sinusitis, you really gotta look at that diet. So tell us a little bit more. What is a bone building diet?

Felix:

A few examples Green sample very simple, the best from the plant kingdom. Green smoothies the best from the animal kingdom. Bone broth Okay so, green smoothies you just get a high speed blender and throw in your favorite salad greens. I like a regular. Sometimes I'll vary it with a little spring mix, you know, kale, however you like it, and then you throw in some tomato, celery, carrots, seasonal fruits for a little sweetness and flavor. You have made your own VA juice at home, without all the extras and with all the bioflavonoids and vitamin C and fibers. And the best from nature, okay. So preferably you bi organic and that's not being contaminated with sprays okay. So that's the green smoothie side From the, the best of the animal kingdom. The bone broth is very simple. So in my book, six foot no, no license to thrive.

Felix:

I told the story of my own case where I bought a pair of turkey wings on sale for $3.02. Or a pair of turkey wings, okay. So I plug it into a crock pot and if you don't have it, go to targets $20. Maybe, with inflation, $25. Now, okay, you can just get one. And what I did was I throw, I washed the turkey wing, put them in the pot, throw some celery and carrots in there and plug it in overnight before I go to bed. The next morning I got bone broth and I got.

Felix:

My whole house smells wonderful, okay, so bone broth is just like that gelatin turkey soup that you take out of your fridge the day after Thanksgiving. Okay, we all make soup from turkey carcass, right, why? Because there's good value in there. Okay, it's good nutrition, it's cheap and it builds your bone and builds your leaky gut. So when you combine those two so bioflavonoids or vitamin C precursors, if you will, and this gelatin-like that is rich in collagen precursors If you combine them, you have the ingredients for making bone. And because you have those two ingredients in your gut, the gut cell says, oh, we can use that to do the brick and mortar repair. We're a leaky gut, right, the mortar is gone. Now we'll use a bone broth ingredient to fill that in, so the wall is solid again without being leaky.

Felix:

So this is a centerpiece, along with the features built into my appliance. It's not just the appliance, all right, because people who only use appliance and lead a you know trash eating lifestyle, they'll never work. They will hate the appliance because they don't have the ability to adapt to the changes brought on by the appliance. So when you change the jaw position, the body will say, oh, we can grow like we were teenagers all over again. But what are you going to grow it with? Trust process food so that you can become ultra- processed people? You know those fast food wrappers. They have a special property they last forever because water doesn't leak, oil doesn't leak. Okay, so it's perfect for fast food companies, right? But when you're done with eating, you throw that into trash or landfill or sidewalk or you know riverside parks. Guess what happens? Those things do not dissolve, they don't break down. Because of those properties, this man-made disaster that we are leaving for our offspring, our posterity. My granddaughter is going to have to deal with that. Yeah, yeah.

Rachaele:

Again a very important point that he's making. It's not just the appliance that's going to fix you, it's part of the recipe. So the bowl-billing diet, with those two things you talked about, you're getting the minerals and you're getting the fat-soluble vitamins, and the best quality fat-soluble ones come from animal protein. So it's a little more challenging if you're a vegetarian or vegan to get the high-quality fat-soluble vitamins that you need. But that combination, that's what we always talk about with all our patients, especially in kids. I want those kids on, like the cod liver oils, the bone broths, you know those. That's what we need to build their structure.

Rachaele:

So even if they have a certain appliance but they're not eating that diet and they're instead, you know, eating the little squeeze pouches. And I get it I mean, I'm a busy mom too and there's conveniences but you know, we have to just really think about what are those, what are the priorities? And things like bone broth, that is great. Anytime you make chicken with bones or beef, you know, save that bone, throw it in a crock pot or an insta pot, you know you turn the dial and you let it be, and it's absolutely amazing.

Rachaele:

Yeah, very inexpensive, biggest bang for your buck.

Felix:

Yeah, some of the insta pots now can make you bone broth in 20 minutes. I mean, you know, under pressure, under pressure, this is crazy. You can go to a drive-thru and wait longer.

Rachaele:

That's true.

Felix:

And not for you.

Rachaele:

That's, that's right, that's right.

Felix:

All right.

Rachaele:

So awesome. Well, we have had a lot to talk about. Is there any last little tidbit you'd like to leave all of our listeners with?

Felix:

Well, first of all, there's hope. You are no longer stuck inside a three-foot cage. You're no longer trapped in pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep apnea, teeth grinding and one dental trouble one health trouble after another. The jaws contributes to 70 to 80% of all your medical, dental and mental emotional problems. So you have to think about how you can regrow your jaw with the help of some properly trained, enlightened doctors who know about this thing that I call whole health epigenetics. They need to be whole body oriented. That means asking the hard question what does it take to put this patient back together? And you, as a sufferer, a suffering patient, you need to ask what do I need to change so that I don't keep having, you know, to be locked into the same old pattern and a downhill slide spiral? Okay, so the conclusion is that the takeaway, I should say, is that there's hope when you're with the right, properly trained.

Felix:

We call them airway mouth doctors, or AMDs for short. So just search AMD training website called holisticmouthsolutions. com one word and we'll help you find a dentist in your area, because doctors like Dr Rachel here is very few and far in between, and so you might have to recommend your own dentist, particularly if you'd love to stay with this dentist to just say, hey look, will you take this episode? I don't have to go to someone else and stay with you because I like you. So either they'll say yes or no. But patients would now has the power to basically, you know, give relaunch your vitality to the dentist because, trust me, they themselves suffer from these symptoms If they grow up in America and live in America and work in them. Okay, or, you know, give them your child's best face. Just, there are 90 page books, 72 slides. They read more like picture books and the paragraph would read more like captions. So in two hours you will get it and we'll help you find an answer from holisticmouthsolutions.

Rachaele:

Thank you I was going to ask. So that's a great website there and please, you know, go on to Amazon and check out Dr Felix Leo it's LIAO and check out some of his books again. They're very quick reads, excellent, excellent books, great to share with you know, with your children if you're a grandparent, you know aunts and uncles and with your doctors to. I think you know, part of my mission and reason for doing this podcast is to create awareness, not only for the public but also my colleagues, because I think we have such an opportunity to really crack into, you know, overall wellness dentist.

Rachaele:

We just in the head and neck in of itself, just looking in the mouth, we can determine so much of what's going on in the patient's body and we need to be kind of the point person to make those, make those connections and we have the power to make a major impact. So so I hope that you have learned something today and can share it with others and again, thank you for listening and I will see you on the next episode.