LEADING CAUSES OF DEATH: ROOTED IN A STRUCTURALLY IMPAIRED MOUTH
By Felix Liao, DDS, MAGD, ABGD, MIABDM Edited by Ronald Peters, MD Oral diseases and disorders in and of themselves affects health and well-being throughout life. – US Surgeon General’s Report 2000 Comments by Dr. Peters Snoring is very common; about 25% of women and 45% of men have habitual snoring. It is the most common symptom of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Twenty-six percent of people between the ages of 30 and 70 suffer from sleep apnea. ‘Witnessed breathing pauses during sleep’ and ‘excessive daytime sleepiness’ are the most common symptoms. If you have chronic snoring that is loud enough to wake a bed partner, talk to your doctor. People with sleep apnea are four times more likely to have a stroke and they are vulnerable to a wide range of medical problems including anxiety and low back pain. CPAP machines are unpopular with poor compliance; this new oral appliance is much easier and revolutionizes treatment. Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a medical diagnosis based on a sleep test score, and its usual treatment is a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask. Apnea means absence of breathing for 10 seconds or longer, and the obstruction is rooted in the choked airway inside a structurally impaired mouth.
Fifty percent of high blood pressure, 30% of heart attacks, 60% of strokes, and 25 % of heart failures have obstructive sleep apnea as an underlying problem, reported a 2003 study in the Journal of American College of Cardiology. In 2006, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine stated that “Oral Appliances are a simpler alternative to CPAP… with robust studies demonstrating their efficacy.”
A structurally impaired mouth can choke your overall health – but a structurally sound mouth is a natural solution for a host of medical, dental, and mood symptoms.
A healthy mouth is much more than healthy teeth. Dental schools train dentists to be good tooth doctors. But what if you have jaw clicking/popping, snoring, mouth breathing, sleep apnea, teeth grinding, aches and pains in your head-jaws-neck-shoulders?
Impaired Mouth Syndrome
An Impaired Mouth can eat, drink, talk, smile, but it harms whole body health by interfering with ABCDES: alignment, breathing, circulation, digestion, energy, and sleep.
Impaired Mouth Syndrome creates a variety of medical, dental, and mood symptoms.
Good form means good function, so poor infrastructure means poorer health. The mouth is strategically located above the digestive tract, below the brain case, and atop the spine. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation must first free the tongue from the throat. Similarly, a good night’s sleep depends on the tongue not obstructing the airway.
Your body pays a heavy price for living with an impaired mouth and sleeping with a choked airway: recurring pains and fatigue, premature aging, and oxygen deficiency that can kill teeth, heart, brain, and life quality alike.
A choked airway inside an Impaired Mouth also contributes to America’s leading causes of death, in addition to all the fats, salt, and sugar in Americans’ highly processed diet, in my opinion.
Big as the mouth is to total health, do you have a mouth doctor? Many patients live with seemingly diverse symptoms without knowing they have Impaired Mouth Syndrome.
By connecting a few dots, we can see that a structurally Impaired Mouth is the culprit:
- The jaws are too small when teeth are crowded and when teeth are extracted for braces.
- The space between the jaws is the home-office of the tongue. What happens when the tongue’s office space is too small?
- What happens to sleep, energy, and medical-dental health when the tongue is forced into the throat? Chronic oxygen deficiency means premature degeneration. It’s time to put a structurally sound mouth back in healthcare.
Airway-centered Mouth Doctor: A New Breed
An Airway-centered Mouth Doctor™ (AMD) is a dentist with additional training to evaluate your mouth structure in relation to your total health. An AMD has the necessary knowledge and skills to redevelop a structurally impaired mouth using a painless oral sleep appliance (mouthpiece).
You can redevelop deficient jaws and a choked airway for better sleep and total health. The mouth is the gateway into the body and a major health driver. Most people know that eating healthy is key to staying healthy. But what happens when your mouth is structurally deficient and/or misaligned, i.e., structurally impaired?
- Redevelop deficient jaws and a choked airway for better sleep and total health.
- Reduce/eliminate pain and fatigue by aligning head, jaws, and spine.
- Achieve breakthrough results by finding and fixing a structurally impaired mouth.
Why a Mouth Doctor?
The mouth is much more than just teeth. These patients needed a mouth doctor long ago: RK, whose key issues were:- “Anxiety most of my life,
- ongoing dental sensitivity and bone loss under my teeth, which gives me more anxiety,
- history with dentist who had “not been helpful.”
- “low back pain after extraction of failed root-canaled tooth,
- swelling persisting under jaw months after said extraction,
- pain in my right neck, shoulder, and arm, and
- uneven gait creeping up on me over the years.”
- “10+ years of chronic fatigue (sometimes non-functional),
- jaw pain neck, back, and knees x 10 years.
- poor vision with lots of floaters.
- terrible sleep, waking up with jaw aches in morning,
- sleep interrupted 2-5 times each night,
- every day is a struggle from feeing winded and fatigued, and
- Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome (TMJ) since age 16.
- solutions to CPAP mask dependence,
- reliance on anxiety medication,
- inability to lose the 15 pounds overweight,
- rosacea,
- pain in low back, neck, and head,
- daytime sleepiness averaging 5 days a week,
- fatigue always,
- 3 episodes in 3 years of choked airway while eating, needing Heimlich maneuver, and
- “I now need to drink to wash down my food.”
Breakthrough Outcome from Whole Health Thinking
The hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, and the jaw bones connect to skull and spine. Whole Health is common sense that (A) sees all parts of the body are connected and all systems seamlessly coordinated, and (B) delivers the care of health accordingly.
In Whole Health, teeth grinding is one frame in a movie called Airway Obstruction During Sleep. Snoring, jaw clicking, chronic pain and fatigue, and one dental trouble after another can be leading indicators of bigger health troubles ahead.
These symptoms are “footprints” at a crime scene that invariably leads to an impaired mouth with a pinched airway as the first domino tipping over many others.
Why do so many children grow up with bunched-up teeth needing braces? Why do so many adults end up with sleep apnea and Alzheimer’s disease nowadays? Why are heart disease and cancer still leading killers despite all the “wars” declared and money thrown?
Impaired Mouth Syndrome has been missing on the radars of doctors, dentists, and insurers and employers. What can you do before they wake up?
Holistic Mouth: A Natural Solution for Impaired Mouth Syndrome
A good night’s sleep can heal many health troubles, as long as your airway is not choked. A Holistic Mouth is structurally fit to support airway and sleep. A DNA appliance is an essential part of an individualized Whole Health wellness program to turn your impaired mouth into a holistic mouth, and to restart your total health starting with good sleep and oxygen for your heart, brain, and teeth. The process is as simple:- Make an appointment for an initial evaluation to connect your symptoms with a new mix of Whole Health solutions.
- Have a custom-designed DNA appliance designed and fitted by your Mouth Doctor using data from baseline records including a 3D CT scan, photos, and dental models.
- Wear your DNA appliance 14 hours a day, including during sleep, and wake up feeling better and better over time — painlessly, predictably, regardless of age.
- Your Mouth Doctor will work with like-minded doctors and therapists to help your body run more efficiently and effectively — with your cooperation, of course.