Dr. Yolin Quoted Below 12-01-2008 (Printer Friendly Version)
When you think of your teeth, you may not realize just how critical they are to your health. In fact, in recent years, the media buzzed about studies showing brushing and flossing can prevent heart problems. But now there’s even more reason to look to your teeth (or more specifically, your “bite”) for signs of your health….Because about half the programming for how your brain runs your body, comes from your dental system. From the embryo stage, your dental system is formed from the same neural tube cells (which monitor and control body functions) and neural crest cells (which gather information from the body) that form your brain, your pituitary gland (controls hormones) and your nervous system. But while the health of your teeth is important, your “bite” has even more to say about the state of your mind AND your health.
How Your “Bite” Affects Your Brain and Body To find out just how important your “bite” is, we talked to Dr. Herbert S. Yolin, DDS. Dr. Yolin is a dentist whose practice goes way beyond conventional dentistry. He treats each patient as a whole person, observing to see how their teeth, jaw and bite affect their overall well-being. The Weston A. Price Foundation (WAP) is a non-profit organization established in 1999 by Sally Fallon to educate the public on the link between nutrient-dense whole foods and human health. If you are familiar with what WAP teaches you will have a better understanding of the type of dentistry that Dr. Yolin practices. Dr. Yolin told us, “Dr. Weston A. Price discovered that each generation that eats processed foods experiences a narrowing of the skull. He predicted that in four generations of eating processed foods, we’d have diseases we’ve never heard of. While physicians are seeing health epidemics in adults and children, as a dentist I became aware of certain health conditions reflected in my patient’s mouths. “Not satisfied with the typical (unsuccessful) approach for treating TMJ and migraines, I sought better answers. Specifically I wanted to improve the ‘jaw-to-skull relationship,’” says Dr. Yolin. The jaw-to-skull relationship determines your bite. It is the relationship of your lower jaw to the rest of your skull, which dictates how your teeth mesh together. There are 68 different muscles in your head and neck, according to Dr. Yolin. In his work, he focuses on loosening these muscles. Tight muscles often come from clenching or bruxing (grinding teeth) due to stress and a “bad bite” (or jaw to skull relationship). Dr. Yolin says clenching in response to stress (or other incidents) can begin as early as infancy and continues until adulthood, often during sleep. In the old days of dentistry, braces and tooth extractions were done to deal with jaws too small for the amount of teeth in someone’s mouth. These small jaws were the result of narrowing of the skull. Today, some dentists recognize the importance of widening the jaw, rather than extracting teeth. Still, too many dentists only focus on a beautiful smile. Dr. Yolin sees a lot of patients, who’ve had braces, tooth extractions or even teeth that have been ground down in height. These patients seem to experience a high incidence of systemic problems, like neuromuscular issues, IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), frozen shoulder and ADD. What these folks have in common is very tight jaw muscles and short (in height) teeth (especially short back teeth). A typical scenario for these patients is that they can be healthy ONLY if they keep stress to a minimum and rigorously follow a stringent health regime (healthy food, plenty of sleep, exercise and other routines to stay healthy). Once they stop any of their health routines, even for a short time, these folks tend to experience a backslide in their health. When asked how your bite could be so critical to your health, Dr. Yolin explained that your nervous system has a very important sense, different from the six senses we are familiar with.
This sense is called proprioception. Proprioception is the how the body can tell the relationship of one thing to another. Without proprioception, drivers would not be able to keep their eyes on the road, while steering with their hands and working the pedals with their feet. “The most delicate proprioception is between your upper and lower jaw,” says Dr. Yolin, “this means that if your jaw-to-skull ratio is off, you get negative stimuli to the brain, which can result in immune suppression, neuromuscular problems and mental deficiency. Much of this has to do with the way the nerves (specifically your dental nerve and vagus nerve) communicate from your brain through your body.” Faulty dental proprioception or dental distress syndrome (DDS) often results in symptoms like:
In fact, according to Dr. Yolin, immune system problems show up in the mouth first. It’s not unusual for Dr. Yolin to send people to their doctor for a physical or blood sugar level test.
Correcting the Jaw to Skull Relationship When Dr. Yolin first meets with a patient, he does a consultation to understand their total health picture. From there, he determines the best place to start for their specific situation. His approach to dentistry is unique and three-fold: energy medicine, jaw to skull correction and nutrition. Dr. Yolin checks his patient’s jaw to skull ratio and if he sees tight jaw muscles and signs that their bite is off, he will start with energy medicine in the form of a cold laser. While medical lasers cut away tissue for surgery, the cold laser uses a very low level of energy that is healing. Using the cold laser actually puts energy back into your body. Dr. Yolin believes strongly that healthy nutrition, like The Body Ecology Diet, is critical to achieve and maintain good health. The work he does with the cold laser can actually help patients receive more nutrients at the cellular level. “When the cell is sick, explains Dr. Yolin, “it’s shut down due to cytokines that are produced. The cold laser re-polarizes mitochondria in the DNA and shuts down the cytokines. Cellular energy re-awakens, the cell membrane opens up and we can get nutrients back into the cell.” With the cold laser, Dr. Yolin can also loosen tight muscles in a patient’s head and neck, increasing blood flow to the brain. This often brings instant relief to the patient and also allows Dr. Yolin to determine the optimum jaw to skull relationship, a critical component of successful treatment. From here, he consults with them on correcting their bite. Phase one often begins with Dr. Yolin creating “Miracle Bite Tabs™”, which, along with the cold laser, have helped patients with conditions like chronic fatigue, migraines and fibromyalgia feel better AND sleep better. The reason this works, Dr. Yolin says, is because “people clench and grind around their front teeth, which sends fight or flight signals to their adrenals. This leads to adrenal fatigue (link to: article on adrenal fatigue…can’t see any that are up right now).” “Miracle Bite Tabs™ are actually ‘proprioceptive guides,’ changing feedback to the brain through your back teeth. This balances your autonomic nervous system by reducing your adrenal response (sympathetic nervous system - fight or flight) and stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).” After seeing results with a teenaged patient with Asperger’s, Dr. Yolin has recently started doing research on how his work can help with the recovery of autism. In his experience, children with autism have complex jaw to skull and teeth issues that could benefit from using the cold laser and his other techniques. He has also had excellent results with chronic fatigue, migraines, fibromyalgia and ADD. Because of his mission to help people regain overall health, Dr. Yolin has started teaching dentists to use his techniques. He also teaches his patients about energy medicine with the cold laser, even selling personal use lasers to help patients maintain their health.
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