Dr. Robert Brown

Holistic Frustration

February 7, 2015 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

In my book, WHY? The Question That Could Save Your Life, some of the many factors faced by those practicing alternative medicine are explained. I have been treating TMD, temporomandibular dysfunction, some call it TMJ, for over 35 years. Over those years I have found that by not using drugs, but by changing lifestyles and diets, the results are infinitely more rewarding.

When I began this practice, dentistry placed almost all of the blame for TMD on the teeth and spent multiple appointments studying the occlusion and “correcting” it. There was some work on reducing stress and learning what drugs could be prescribed to lessen symptoms, but little or no time was spent studying the whole patient.

I have had patients referred to me that were taking as many as 25 different prescriptive drugs and were worse off than ever. For patients such as these, I refer them to a professor of pharmacology who reviews the medicines and often finds several to be interfering with one another, and others given only to counteract the side effects of another. In one case a woman in her 60s was on 25 medications. It took us over two years to get her off several of the medications. Upon completion of her treatment, she looked at least ten years younger and returned to a vital, active lifestyle.

Though this number of medications for one person is not the norm, I do regularly see patients with five to eight prescriptions, many of which could have been avoided. In some cases these drugs can be responsible for side effects that can take months or even years to repair. Just yesterday, a new patient related that his doctor told him that his x-rays revealed he had arthritis, but not to be concerned. It’s just part of aging and there are medications that can help a lot.

This is where I become frustrated! Many drugs can be avoided with diet and lifestyle changes. When I treat a patient, I consider the whole person, I don’t just give them a mail order “night guard” and send them on their way. One of the challenges that I face when discussing diet or habit changes is that “it’s too hard to do.” The poisons found in processed foods are going to guarantee misery in the future. The medical and the pharmaceutical industry have them convinced they can make up for their abuse with an easy-to-take, little pill.

In my book I use the example of Dickens’s, “A Christmas Carol,” changing the ghost into ‘The Ghost of a Bad Diet Future.’ Have you ever wondered why some elder people are bedridden while other people the same age and even older, are still working, enjoying golf, travelling and their grandkids? With that in mind, what is harder; living a shorter life with a miserable end, or eating healthy food and getting exercise?

Often the anti-inflammatory drugs used for arthritis and many other types of inflammation can be replaced with an anti-inflammatory diet, which not only takes away the inflammation, but supplies the body with nutrients that prevent other serious diseases, aids in faster healing, and prevents dementia.

OSA: IT MUST BE DIAGNOSED & TREATED

January 9, 2015 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

Many of us are unaware that we might suffer from OSA (obstructive sleep apnea). Many know they have OSA and have sought help only to be given a CPAP that they can’t tolerate. Until recent years, physicians believed that the only standard of care for OSA was the CPAP. Extensive research has concluded that an oral appliance can be just as effective. Just think, no more mask and forced air and you don’t have to take an extra bag for the CPAP when you travel, just something the size of a can of tuna.

To emphasize how absolutely vital the situation is, here are just a few of the dangers untreated OSA can cause: Almost a 500% increase in developing cancer, a 600% increase in heart disease, a 300% increase in auto accidents as well as a 500% increase in the accident being very serious. In my practice I am beginning to see the loss of one’s driver’s license as a result of non-treatment. Although these are scary facts, we should not lose sight of how much better the quality of our life can be—from a healthier body and brain, to the elimination of a major source of chronic inflammation—when OSA is properly treated. The body must have deep sleep in order to restore the immune system and to prevent inflammation.

Unfortunately there are many dentists that offer oral appliances for OSA as a small part of a complex dental practice. Many do not have the training and experience necessary to supply the patient the most comprehensive service. Proper design and adjustment of the appliance can be quite time consuming which can be difficult to fit into a busy schedule, not to mention the extensive training necessary to be a qualified provider, providing adequate care.

At Advanced Oral Diagnoses and Treatment Center, located in Danville, we specialize in Dental Sleep Medicine and TMJ dysfunction only. These two conditions are many times associated with each other and it can benefit the patient greatly to be treated by an expert in both fields.

A properly designed and adjusted oral appliance has made a huge difference for me and for hundreds of my patients. Our office uses a very specialized computer called an acoustic pharyngometer. With this device, both the patient and I can see the location of the obstruction and watch it altered as the lower jaw is repositioned both forward and vertically. The increased air flow is right there for the patient to see. The appliance is then made to these exact specifications.

Once delivered, the oral device may require some adjustment to insure ultimate comfort and function. Once the patient is happy with the results, I highly recommend a follow up sleep study, which can be done at home, to verify that the OSA is being effectively treated and the user is getting proper sleep.

Your initial appointment is complimentary, allowing you to get all the answers you need to choose the best treatment option for your condition. Advanced Oral Diagnosis and Treatment Center is located in Danville. Dental Sleep Medicine and TMJ treatment are our specialties. Please feel free to contact us at 925-837-8408 and visit our website at www.aodtc.com for more information.

Healthcare Providers Must Change!

December 8, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

When one completes medical school, upon graduation he or she should never feel they have all the knowledge they need, but just enough to be able to learn. Science has not touched the incredibly vast amount of information we have yet to learn.

In my research in Physiology I find it impossible to keep up with the new findings that will, someday, make many present medical practices obsolete. I have just begun working with a group involved in the study of the effects of electromagnetic fields on cellular and neurological communication. Not only could this work help explain the mystery of acupuncture, but may possibly open up entirely new fields of medicine and a greater understanding of many mysteries, such as autoimmune diseases and mental disorders.

In November’s Alive article the importance of cellular communication was suggested as part of a healthy immune system. Three physiologists received the Nobel Prize, just last year, for their discoveries in cellular communication. The work I mentioned on electromagnetic effects on cellular communication dovetails right in.

One more example of these new findings is that there are more functions of the Thyroid Gland than we knew. It also is a large contributor to the immune system. I am not trying to confuse you with too much information. I am just trying to demonstrate that the era of giving a blood test followed by a prescription to mask the condition will someday disappear. We are learning to identify some of the underlying factors which cause symptoms that “modern medicine” has been calling diseases only treatable by drugs such as: Crohn’s disease, Lupus, Fibromyalgia, and many more.

The best acupuncturists can feel your radial pulse and diagnose malfunctioning organs and diseases. Is this due to their incredible sensitivity to electromagnetic fields? No one has been able to explain it yet.

There are trillions of cellular activities going on at any one time in your body; far more complex than any industry, and we all understand the effects poor communication can have on any industry, easily resulting in its death. If our cells aren’t supplied with the nutrients they need or are subjected to toxins or invaders, their ability to function at all, including communicate, can be severely jeopardized. Some drugs have actually been found to interfere with cellular communication, which explains some of the serious side effects.

Now that you have some knowledge of how complex the process of keeping you well is, maybe you’ll have more reason to discipline your eating habits and lifestyle. Complex carbohydrates help cellular communication, while simple carbohydrates interfere, actually creating increased inflammatory responses requiring the need for even better communication. In my TMJ practice, to the extent that the patient is proactive in changing their lifestyle and dietary habits that created the problem, the results are remarkable. I recently dismissed a lady in her fifties that exclaimed she had not felt so good since her twenties. She was emphatic in stating she would never go back to her old ways. By the way, these patients will never have to worry about their weight.

If you belong to an organization that would enjoy learning about these remarkable practices, please feel free to contact me at info@aodtc.com or 925 837-8048.

Have a beautiful and healthy Holliday Season.

Your Own Departmant of Defense: Your Immune System

November 6, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

Just for comparison, let’s pretend that we are building a supersonic fighter. When several of the parts come in they don’t meet specifications. Due to a lack of titanium several were made of aluminum. Even with no knowledge of engineering, we all know this plane would fail. But isn’t that the way we have been building our bodies? Due to our own actions, to the medical industry and to our lack of leadership, the specifications for an adequate immune system cannot be met, thus our defense is down.

Wait, there is help! The Drug Cavalry is coming, just in time, to hide our deficiencies and cover the symptoms. Now, with their special drug, our plane is able to fly with aluminum parts. We can even get AMA and FDA approval that the “standard of care” was followed and those parts are fine, although, with a serious challenge, those parts are more like paper.

What can we do to make up for this disaster? The purpose of this series of articles on the immune system is to help find an answer. The immune system is so complex that we are only just beginning to discover its many intricate and interrelated activities. Just last year the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was given for the discovery of how cells communicate allowing cellular cooperation in the destruction of invaders.

What can you do to help these heroes, aka your cells, keep defending your body? Give them the supplies they need. Even if you follow all guidelines for ideal nutrition, you could easily be missing critical minerals that are necessary in order to provide your immune system with what it needs.

Over 75 years ago a health agency for our government warned our country that, due to farming methods, the soils were being seriously depleted of essential minerals. So far, science has found that we need Copper, Zink, Magnesium, Selenium, Iodine and Iron. The reason I say “so far,” is that we need more research.

When given rare earth minerals, the life span of laboratory animals greatly increases. Certain areas of our planet have human societies with incredible health and longevity. In these areas they get the minerals naturally because their crops are irrigated with glacier water or their diet includes ocean products, such as seaweed. We have idiot regulators in California that will not allow glacier dust to be brought into the state because it contains asbestos, a substance found in the soil throughout our state. I bought Canadian Glacier Dust in Oregon which contained 76 minerals and my vegetables grew faster and bigger and were bug resistant.

There are several very good supplement companies that provide these minerals in a chelated form, but nothing is as good as the colloidal form found in vegetables. It should be so obvious to all of us that even with all the incredible advances in industry and science, the USA is one of the world’s leaders in degenerative diseases.

As I explain in my book Why?, to have the best chance for a wonderful, healthy, still active and youthful life when others your age, and younger, are in rest homes or passed on, you must be proactive. The more you can educate yourself on the subjects of nutrition, exercise, stress control and happiness, the better chance you have. You can bet big Pharma will do everything it can to keep from losing customers. Their loyal followers will try to convince you that it’s easier to take drugs to feel good than to go to all that trouble of careful shopping and food preparation.

On my website, www.drbrownwhy.com, there will be regular blogs on new findings and health tips I come across in my research for my next book. I have also made myself available for talks to groups and organizations.

Our Magnificent Immune System: How Can we Save it?

October 9, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

Whether or not you’re Godly or Atheist, I think we can all agree that man did not create man. One thing man did create was arrogance. In a chapter in my book, Why?, entitled “Left Brain vs. Right Brain Thinking”, I attempt to explain why this defect has become such an obstacle to progress in healthcare. Put arrogance, politics, and greed together and you have what it takes to change what should be health care into disease care.

The purpose of health care should be to strengthen and to promote excellent health, not to interfere with it. One of the wonderful results of these practices was reported in the JAMA that up to 225,000 deaths per year were from “iatrogenic causes” (results of the treatment by physicians).

Let’s take a look at one example of deliberate deceit created by the medical industry: the creation of phony names for diseases of the immune system. This industry would have us believe that Arthritis, Crohn’s Disease, Scleroderma, Lupus, Psoriasis, Asthma, Addison’s Disease, and many, many more, so called diseases, are all separate entities and must be treated by the current “standard of care”. This standard usually includes a number of specific drugs, all having side effects.

I have had many patients in my practice who suffer from osteoarthritis who have been told by their rheumatologist that diet has nothing to do with their arthritis and drugs were the only way to help them. Over 50 years ago Dr. Colon Dong wrote a book entitled, New Hope for the Arthritic, which clearly demonstrated that diet was an incredible tool in the treatment of this disease.

I highly recommend a relatively new book, The Code of Life, by Dr. Ronald P. Drucker. In this book Dr. Drucker describes the complexity of the immune system and how easily it can be damaged by our habits and life styles. One hugely significant factor is the unavailability of the nutrients necessary to maintain this magnificent guardian of our well being. Our farming methods do not replace the depletion of important minerals in the soil; and then add a diet of processed foods, which further deplete our food of nutrients; and one wonders how we survive. Actually, a lot are not surviving, but that makes for a very healthy pharmaceutical industry and full, profitable hospitals.

It has become quite clear that those of us who want not only good health, but a vital livelihood, really must become proactive in our pursuit of knowledge and demand that we have access to the essential phytonutrients we need. I would like to see a sign at my farmers market stating that the soil in their farm has had mineral replacement and with what minerals. What is really important to understand is how delicate the immune system is, making it vulnerable to something as simple as taking antacids for acid reflux. Once part of this system is hurt, a domino effect can occur, making the immune system unable to respond to even a simple challenge.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if part of our public education, K through 12, included learning about that incredible gift we were given, our body? It would be so much more difficult for the medical, big pharm and political complex to deceive the public into believing them.

The second addition of my book on this subject, Why? is now available. Please visit my website at drbrownwhy.com. In this site I will attempt to keep you informed of new developments in alternative medicine. I am also making myself available for talks on health.

OSA Must be Dealt With

September 14, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

Untreated and undiagnosed Sleep Apnea is not only a major cause of death, it can greatly affect the quality of life, even for children.

It has taken far too long for obstructive sleep apnea, a.k.a. OSA, to be recognized as an extremely severe threat to health and sometimes the lives of others, as well as the effect it can have on the quality of one’s life and well being. In fact, the realization of the severity of this problem has not yet occurred in many health care practices, as evidenced by the lack of a thorough review and Q&A of a patient’s health history and symptoms. A simple questionnaire could be given to every patient indicating the need for a sleep study. This questionnaire is the first step that each and every medical and dental practice should take towards a basic standard of care.

Insurance companies have become aware of the risk of driving with sleep deprivation to the point that an accident may not be covered when caused by untreated OSA.

The anti-snoring devices you see so often on TV, or are provided by dentists that don’t have thorough training in sleep apnea, should be illegal because they rarely help with OSA and cover only one symptom—snoring. I compare this to putting a Band-Aid over a skin cancer, or pulling out the battery to stop the beeping of a smoke detector when there is a roaring fire. The snoring is a warning signal. By stopping the snoring and not knowing if the apnea is being effectively treated, this person’s life may be put in jeopardy.

Here are just a few of the statistics associated with this dysfunction:
– Untreated OSA subjects are 12 times more likely to have an auto accident.
– Tired driving is the #1 cause of accidents, more than DUI.
– 36% of fatal accidents involved sleep deprivation.
– Death caused by any disease; regardless of age, weight, sex or smoking; is 46% more likely to occur in patients with untreated OSA – a study of 6,400 subjects.
– Recent research at Stanford and USC revealed a strong relationship between OSA, dementia and Alzheimer’s. 70% of these dementia and Alzheimer’s patients had OSA.
– There is a strong correlation between the severity of cognitive impairment and the severity of sleep apnea.
– 500% increase in cancer deaths when OSA is involved.
– Nearly 80% of nocturnal strokes are associated with OSA
– OSA contributes to myocardial infarction more than hypertension and smoking together, causing 23.3 x increase in the odds (smoking 11.1 x and hypertension 7.8 x).

To me, what is far more important is that when I help my patients to overcome this problem, their health improves. They enjoy their day and even their work, without being over-tired, and their spouse can, once again return to the bedroom. I could go on for pages with frightening statistics. I hope that by listing just a handful of them it may help you see the extreme importance of a condition that is yet to get the recognition it deserves.

Earlier I mentioned a short questionnaire that is quite successful at making a tentative diagnosis of OSA, rating the probability of someone having OSA. It is much more than just how bad you snore. You may not snore at all and still have OSA. One of these tests is called the ARES test. If you would like us to email you a test, just ask us to at info@aodtc.com. Depending on how you, or your loved one scores, it may help give you the extra nudge you need to take action today. My staff can help you find the best place for a sleep study, even if it is in the comfort of your own home.

Once OSA is diagnosed our office specializes in dental sleep medicine and appliances to correct OSA. We work closely with medical sleep specialists to give our patients optimal care.

Are You Laughing Enough?

August 10, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

Probably not. The major cause of this jaw dysfunction, as my jaw TMJ/TMD practice has experienced, is STRESS. We are living in very stressful times. The economy is slowly recovering and family life has been disrupted by both parents having to work to make ends meet. To make matters worse, kids with time intensive extracurricular activities like sports, cause family sit down dinners to be a rare occurrence. When can we reduce stress and finally enjoy life?

To communicate and to laugh together? In order to recognize unconstructive habits or lifestyle changes that can help, it’s important to understand the mechanisms by which stress affects the body and what can be done about it.

Controlling our bodily functions, without our knowledge, is the Autonomic Nervous System. This system is made up of two opposite systems: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. As the Autonomic Nervous system receives stimuli from the external environment it automatically responds by activating a body process using the sympathetic system, or inhibiting responses using the parasympathetic system. Many of us are aware of the “fight or flight” reaction that the sympathetic system prepares as a response to stress or an emergency situation, including clenching and grinding of teeth.

The parasympathetic system controls the bodily processes during ordinary life, including the speeding up and slowing down of heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and simulating proper digestion—all of which allow us to restore and build tissues, heal, and reproduce.

What most of us also know, but lose sight of, is what we can do to have some measure of control over these functions. When possible, we must take a break from the “Rat Race”. Understanding that our digestion cannot take place properly with stress dominating our minds, on every possible occasion we must take time to sit down, relax, eat nutritiously and find something to laugh about. Choose another time for business. Sitting down to eat dinner with the whole family is invaluable. Turn off the TV and get to know each other. I was blessed with a wife that could make a room full of people laugh and, as I look back, I can’t think of a dinner without laughter. True laughter stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system which takes away many of the effects of stress and allows proper digestion to occur. It is also hard to clench or grind teeth while laughing.

Some might wonder why I got off on this tangent when my goal is to deal with TMJ/TMD problems. I regularly get my patients pain free quite quickly, but, to make it a lasting change, dietary and lifestyle changes are sometimes required. At my practice the goal is to help our patients understand the cause of the problem that brought them to me and, hopefully, guide them in the elimination of that cause.

The opposite of stress is thought by most to be relaxation. I would like to propose that the opposite of stress is happiness. Not the “happiness” of a new car or a promotion, etc., but the happiness that comes from internal serenity. That kind of happiness is “Rat Race” free and truly free as well. Some time ago I came upon a book by Matthieu Ricard entitled Happiness. This book explains why we have the emotions we enjoy or suffer from, what causes them and their underlying purpose. If you are ready to find real happiness and enjoyment in your life, this is a must read.

Dentinstry Must Not be Limited to the Oral Cavity

July 6, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

A famous writer, Maurice Meaterlinck, who wrote around the turn of the 19th century, made a statement that applies profoundly to the attitude of the medical establishment to Alternative Medicine. “Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds to guard the past.”

For decades the policy of dentistry has been that it is to be limited to the mouth and associated structures. Those of us applying alternative medicine in our dental practices are under the constant ridicule of mediocre minds, many of whom are the law makers regulating what our license allows us to do in both medicine and dentistry. While they desperately try to hold back progressive practitioners under their rule of having to be “Evidence Based” or within the “Standard of Care,” innocent victims go without possible life saving, or at least quality-of-life saving, care.

Some examples of progressive attitudes are:

• Periodontal Disease: Very often this symptom is a sign of what is going on in the rest of your body. In addition to cleaning the pockets, and dentally treating the gum disease, lifestyle and diet changes are often in order as well as a possible referral for medical testing.

• Tooth Decay: If your diet and lifestyle is rotting your teeth what else is suffering? The sugar causing the decay also causes cancer, type-two diabetes and heart disease.

• Crooked Teeth: Many times caused by inability to breathe through the nose, resulting in oral and facial muscle malfunction and growth changes. Now that we know the danger of chronic inflammation why are we allowing it to persist in the sinuses?

• TMJ Dysfunction: Ninety percent of my TMJ patients are women. Shouldn’t we be looking into hormone imbalance as a potential cause for many of the symptoms? In the past most TMJ treatment consisted of splints, physical therapy, possible medications with occasional surgery. By simply treating the TMJ dentally without a thorough diagnosis you may miss what is causing the patient to clench and grind in the first place.

• Myofacial Pain Dysfunction: Another possible hormone problem, medication side effects, as well as a manifestation of stress, can all be causes. Just treating the teeth rarely brings a cure.

• TMJ Osteoarthritis or Rheumatoid Arthritis. Again the “Standard of Care” is that these are incurable and must be treated with medications. Arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease and can be successfully arrested with diet and lifestyle changes. Having to treat one’s mouth separately from the rest of the body is ludicrous.

As many of my readers know I recently finished a book entitled WHY? The question that could save your life. I wrote it so that the average person could understand the challenges of achieving optimal health and healthcare. Recently, the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Rothman, Schekman and Sudhof which confirmed the scientific finding outlined in the book The Code of Life, published in 2008 by Dr. Ronald Drucker. Dr. Drucker goes into the details of what makes the body work and how to make it work better.

For those of you interested in what the establishment is doing to hold back medical progress, what causes many diseases and what you can do to prevent them, I consider this a “must read.” I kept my book simple to encourage the average person to read it and live a better life.

More doctors are becoming more holistic as the truly scientific evidence, not pharmaceutically backed “doctored” research, becomes available. Many of our leading universities are also coming around. There is hope that those of us who want optimal health care will not have to look far to find this type of care giver.

HEADACHES

June 7, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

I have great news. I just finished writing a book about what it takes to achieve optimal health and how to demand optimal healthcare. The book entitled WHY, The Question that Could Save Your Life, is now available on Amazon. In it I spend some time describing two factors that interfere with the above goals of optimal health/healthcare, the legal demand that doctors must follow the “Standard of Care,” and the institutional demand that a doctor is expected to use “Evidence Based” procedures in his/her practice. If these rules were used universally we would still be living in caves and could never consider the everyday conveniences that we enjoy.

Headaches are a significant portion of what I help to resolve at my TMJ and myofacial pain practice. One of the problems with the current accepted methods of treatment is the overdependence on drugs, not only to treat the symptoms, but as a diagnostic tool.

In a course on headache diagnosis that I recently completed, the protocols for interviewing the patient were quite thorough with over 40 questions to ask the patient regarding everything from family history to social history, associated symptoms, etc. A key factor that was left out was a description of the patient’s eating and exercise habits

The proposed blood tests were extensive, but left out the C-Reactive protein test, a test that detects the existence of systemic inflammation. The test for low Vitamin D was left out as well. There were also no suggestions for saliva or urine tests for hormone imbalance and/or heavy metals.

One of the chief concerns I wrote about in my book is that giving a medication to take away a symptom can actually result in allowing the underlying cause of that symptom to continue, thus possibly resulting in a potentially easily cured disease to become incurable or to cause irreparable damage.

What is vitally important is that chronic inflammation must not be allowed to persist. When the body is crying out for attention using a symptom such as a headache, a rash, excessive fatigue, etc., never say ‘shut up’ and ‘take this’. Instead, listen to your body’s plea and look for why it is crying out. Once the disease is diagnosed, for the ultimate treatment, a lot more WHY’s must be answered if the disease is to be permanently eliminated and the damage to be repaired. Too often, once the symptoms are gone, the patient then thinks they are “home free.” However, the real cure finds the root of the cause: what was wrong in the first place that made this malady occur.

When I hear a patient say, “my arthritis” or “my headaches,” it makes me wonder if the patient has accepted these ailments as an unchangeable part of their life. I myself used to have arthritis and was given several drugs like Celebrex to mask it. It wasn’t until I fought back by correcting my diet and adopting a regular exercise program that I eliminated this form of inflammation completely.

Many rheumatologists are taught in their training that arthritis is incurable and diet has little to do with it. My patients relate this belief to me regularly. The pharmaceutical industry wants everyone to think this way. Take some time to look up the side effects of many of their wonderful drugs for arthritis. It’s not a pretty picture.

I am aware that this article is on headaches, not arthritis, but in my practice many patients are suffering from both and the same holistic approach is necessary to end these problems. You must get to the very root of the cause. Most of the time this requires changes in lifestyles, habits and diet along with nutritional, and sometimes hormonal, supplementation to make up for the damage.

Hormones Rule

May 8, 2014 by Dr. Robert Brown Leave a Comment

I recently attended a most interesting and informative medical meeting. It was like going into the future of medicine and seeing what the best doctors will be doing in the next 20 years.

The course was given buy the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine and was on the subject of Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement. One might ask why a dentist is going to an advanced medical course on hormone replacement. As you may be aware, most of my practice deals with pain, muscle malfunction, arthritis and sleep disorders. Many, if not most, of these problems can either be caused or made worse by hormone imbalance, or can lead to that imbalance.

There was an overwhelming amount of information which will take months to review, but I did come back with some pearls that explain how to handle not only some of my most challenging cases, but how to achieve my goal of finding the deep underlying cause of my patient’s symptoms. The ideal plan is to permanently resolve the malady and possibly avoid having the symptoms return or show up somewhere else in the body.

In my article last fall I pointed out that inflammation has been found to be the world’s number one cause of death. Chronic inflammation can alter the chemistry of the part of the body with which it is associated. For example, a chronic bladder infection can potentially lead to bladder cancer by reducing the oxygen in that area. Cancer thrives on anoxia. (Previous articles that I have written can be accessed on aliveeastbay.com.)

Chronic pain, caused by inflammation, can stress the adrenal glands. Many of you know the multiple effects of imbalanced cortisol and adrenaline, not to mention the many other hormones these glands produce. These glands can not only be compromised by chronic inflammation, but can also be negatively affected by the emotional problems associated with that pain and fatigue. The hormone imbalances that result then potentially influence the neurotransmitters in the brain. As you can see it really gets complex, challenging even the famous Dr. House of the television series.

It becomes very clear that giving a prescription for pain or tension may make the patient happy today, only to suffer more tomorrow. My hope is that medicine in the future will not only correct the cause of the symptom, but address the side effects that came about as a result of endocrine and/or neurological disturbances created by the trauma or disease.

In my practice, learning more about hormones allows me to be aware of the need to refer to other practitioners in order to help expedite the healing process through the stimulation the body’s own defenses. It becomes quite clear that merely attempting to handle a TMJ or fatigue problem by the traditional dental procedures, without attempting to make a complete diagnosis of the condition, could actually exacerbate the true cause and worsen the symptoms.

Let’s take a look at three very well known hormones; Estrogen, Progesterone and Cortisol. Imbalances in any of these can cause mood swings, anger, stress, headaches, muscle cramps, clenching and grinding of the teeth and more. My new patient, initial medical/dental history has many questions that do not relate to dentistry and regular medical problems. In the course on hormones a lot of time was taken teaching us about little signs and symptoms that are unique to these imbalances and how to recognize them.

When signs of these imbalances are found I let my patients know I can help a little and many times a lot, but I may need help from other professionals. The need for a patient to change their diet and/or lifestyle may become of extreme importance in these cases.

No longer should practitioners in any field of medicine or dentistry limit what they notice to merely that field. As professionals we have an obligation to attempt to be aware of signs and symptoms that are being revealed as we treat a patient. That patient’s body may be crying out for help in the form of a symptom such as pain or inflammation. We ought to listen the body crying out, rather than saying, “shut up and take this.” Listen! Then work on a diagnosis or refer to someone who can.

The other day I had a patient tell me that she was actually thankful that she had developed TMJ issues. Without having found my practice because of her TMJ dysfunction she wouldn’t feel so well overall. She said that my commitment to her treatment has changed her life. The gratification coming from this compliment is priceless to me.

It is possible to enjoy life again.

For more information about my center, please visit www.aodtc.com.