by Felix Liao
This airway obstruction by the tongue causes cumulative oxygen deficiency day and night, as well as poor sleep year after year, until it leads to various symptoms throughout the body. You will learn what those symptoms are and discover the surprisingly broad range of whole-body benefits that Holistic Mouth Solutions can provide.
In addition, you have just stepped into the WholeHealth movement in health care that is enabling people to reclaim their natural health far more efficiently than ever. WholeHealth is a “wholistic” view that sees all parts of the body as interconnected and mutually supportive — without departmental lines, super egos, and special interests. In WholeHealth, symptoms are properly seen as reactions, and removing an impaired mouth as a health blocker can resolve many symptoms, minimize recurrence, and downstream costs.
Recognition: The Mouth as a Health-Problem Source
The body wants peace when it sleeps, not a tiger tongue blocking the throat. Deep sleep can heal almost anything, provided the airway is open to deliver oxygen on demand, which in turn cannot afford a six-foot tiger in a three-foot cage.
Few health professionals are aware that an impaired mouth structure (deep overbite, weak chin, sunken midface, narrow jaws, crowded teeth, double chin, tongue-tie, and so on) can be the source of many medical, dental, mood, and life-quality problems, and even fewer know how to solve them at the source. But that’s not their fault.
Odds are that the mouth was missing in their training and thus is missing in their thinking. Nonetheless, science is evolving and expanding the boundaries of the “old box.” This book introduces Holistic Mouth Solutions as an efficient answer to many symptoms that defy resolution by traditional care.
Holistic Mouth is a brand-new concept and a new solution made possible by the advent of digital imaging, sleep medicine, epigenetics, craniofacial orthopedics, and the integration of many health professionals’ expertise.
If you just can’t get well, despite trying various symptom-management attempts, Six-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage may be just what your health has been waiting for. It shows you how to start your health makeover with a wider airway for better sleep. You will see what happens to your overall health when that three-foot cage is redeveloped, resulting in a widened airway and huge upgrades in sleep quality. I will take you through my CSIs (chair-side investigations) that combine published evidence with case studies to illustrate crucial—and yet little-noticed—mind-body-mouth connections.
As a holistic dentist, I have a particular interest in the mouth’s many roles in our overall health. “Holistic” is rooted in the ancient Greek concept of holism, or the whole made of mind, body, and spirit. Holistic Mouth™ is a term I coined to call attention to the mouth’s pivotal role in our overall health.
Briefly, a Holistic Mouth has the necessary structural form to support basic health functions, including your ABCDES: alignment, breathing, circulation, digestion, energy, and sleep.
By contrast, an impaired mouth can eat, drink, talk, and even smile, but its deficient structure blocks ABCDES because it comes with a narrow airway, poor sleep, and premature degeneration from oxygen deficiency.
Green: breathing; Yellow: digestion; Red: circulation
As a family dentist, I help make teeth and gums healthy so that they can serve as a foundation of the Holistic Mouth.
As a Holistic Mouth doctor, I help to develop the mouth structures orthopedically and functionally to better support overall health. I connect the mouth with patients’ medical, dental, and mood complaints and identify how each patient’s diet, lifestyle, posture, habits, and overall health affect their sleep, airway, dental, and gum problems, and vice versa. I also refer patients to integrative health professionals as needed for the expertise beyond my scope of practice.
Better Sleep with Holistic Mouth? Definitely!
Holistic Mouth is a simple concept and a powerful solution. Better health comes naturally when the mouth has the right form (structures) to support ABCDES. Redeveloping deficient jaws with crowded teeth can liberate your tiger tongue, keeping it out of your airway so that you can sleep better.
An impaired mouth comes with a pinched airway from an underdeveloped cranio-dental-facial skeleton. “Development” here refers to a change in size and shape of a structure over time, such as a broader upper jaw (maxilla), lower jaw (mandible), and a wider airway inside the nose, behind the palate and the tongue, or all the above.
The good news? Impaired mouth structure in adults can now be redeveloped to mitigate snoring, sleep apnea, teeth grinding, aches and pains, and related medical and dental problems. This is done by signaling stem cells in and around the jaws and inside tooth sockets.
The mouth structure is a much bigger player in our total health and natural wellness than most patients and health professionals realize. Through these pages, you will learn:
How the medical, dental, and mental symptoms that appear to be difficult to treat can be caused by an impaired mouth structure that has gone undiagnosed
How to recognize an impaired mouth as the owner of your own body
What can be done to restore Holistic Mouth and how seemingly unrelated symptoms go away naturally.
Unlike any book before it, Six-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage shows you—and your health professionals—precisely how to succeed at accomplishing a natural health upgrade by Holistic Mouth. This book is my answer to these frequent questions many health-conscious people like you have: “Why do I still suffer fatigue, aches and pains, depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, etc. despite faithful diet and exercise, yoga, meditation, supplements, flossing, and oil pulling?” or simply “Why don’t I ever feel better?! I know something is not right, but my medical and dental checkups don’t find anything wrong.”
Recognizing and treating an impaired mouth structure that you never knew you had may very well be the start of a natural solution to those problems.
In summary, a Holistic Mouth is a health builder while an impaired mouth is a troublemaker. With a Holistic Mouth, whole-body health has a strong chance. With an impaired mouth, top-quality health remains out of reach.
Holistic Mouth: An Effective Solution
Turning an impaired mouth into a Holistic Mouth can be an effective solution for many symptoms in and around the mouth and often throughout the body. Consider Luke who, at age nine, had an overbite, a facial tic from Tourette syndrome, buck teeth, chronic mouth breathing, and low energy. All of this was interfering with his health and schooling. A year after starting treatment though, Luke was 100 percent free of his facial tic. Two and a half years later, he became a straight-A student taking advanced math and language-arts courses and playing tennis.
“I drove four hours each way [every other month] over these years,” says Luke’s dad on camera, “and I’m really proud that he’s doing so well.”
Luke says, “I feel I have lots of energy, and it’s easier to learn now, and I feel happier.”
When the tongue’s habitat is too small, it is forced into the throat, blocking the airway and causing stress from oxygen deficiency day and night. What if Luke were to graduate, go to work, and start a family without ever having his impaired mouth treated? Imagine the harmful effects it would have on his quality of life—not to mention his health-care costs!
Early recognition and treatment of an impaired mouth makes it possible to accomplish more with less effort, add years to your life, and bring life to your years.
And if your development years are behind you? Today, this is no longer a problem. Stem cells inside and around your jaws can be “switched on” to redevelop that size 3 cage to suit a size 6 tongue, which can spur a cascade of positive changes: the airway widens, sleep works, energy recovers, performance shines, facial radiance appears naturally, and, in turn, your overall health and well-being improve.
Holistic Mouth is a natural solution that can effectively release the body from the tyranny of persistent pain and the ravages of oxygen deficiency—without side effects—regardless of ag
e, as long as you have enough good teeth in the right places. This is the WholeHealth difference, and a recurring theme in this book.
Better yet, achieving Holistic Mouth is a new, natural solution that takes place while you sleep. Best of all, Holistic Mouth requires no medication, surgery, drilling, or injections in uncomplicated cases.
Filling Knowledge Gaps Instead of Cavities
You can have physical, mental-emotional, or dental problems, but they are usually treated separately even though they share the same physical address. I write Six-Foot Tiger, Three-Foot Cage to:
Fill a huge awareness gap: An impaired mouth is a barrier to total health and a frequently overlooked source of medical, dental, and mental health troubles
Focus attention on the mouth’s pivotal role in our overall health and natural wellness based on evidence and experience
Help readers see the WholeHealth logic and whole-body benefits of connecting their medical and dental symptoms with their sleep, airway, and mouth structure
Stimulate further research and training programs to help more patients achieve whole- health through Holistic Mouth, and vice versa
Join me on a surprising journey toward a huge improvement in your health by mouth, in the health of those you love, and if you are a health-care professional, in the health of your patients.
Holistic Mouth Bites
At the end of each chapter, I offer a few Holistic Mouth Bites—“take-away pearls” from the WholeHealth perspective, which sees the body not as a collection of parts for specialists to fix but as an integration of interconnected parts and systems.
Holistic Mouth Bites do not constitute medical or dental advice. They are simply conclusions that have made sense to me and worked for my patients. Although they have not been validated by formal studies, beware of opinions to the contrary offered by those with less or no clinical experience.
Until all the studies are in, one useful yardstick is your common sense. Asking yourself, “Does this make common sense?” is a good start.
Chapter One
Redeveloping an Impaired Mouth Benefits the Whole Body: The Case of Smithy
Different outcome requires different thinking.
– Thomas M. Rau, MD,
Medical Director, Paracelsus Klinik, Switzerland
Smithy, age thirty-six, came in initially for a toothache. Then she told me about her other symptoms that had been bothering her every day for years: pain in her mouth and gums, random gurgling sounds in her stomach, constant tiredness, and neck, shoulder, and wrist pain.
I suspected an impaired mouth and airway obstruction. Her Epworth Sleepiness Score (an accepted self-survey for sleep apnea) was 14—well above the threshold of 10, which suggests sleep apnea.(1) Her CT scan showed her airway was in the red zone—the danger zone—and thus susceptible to collapse during sleep.
After a detailed consultation, Smithy elected to start treatment using oral appliances to redevelop her jaws, bite, and airway to help her sleep better. Her instructions included wearing her appliances fourteen to sixteen hours a day, including when she slept but excluding office hours.
Four months later, Smithy reported a 50 percent drop in her neck, shoulder, and carpal-tunnel pain, a 60 percent drop in her stress-related mouth pain, a 70 percent drop in her stomach symptoms, and an 80 percent drop in fatigue.
Color Scale: Red means a narrow airway with high risk of collapse during sleep; white means a wide airway with low risk.
Seven months after starting a particular type of oral-appliance therapy, Smithy reported that her Epworth Sleepiness Score had dropped from 14 to 9 and that she was sleeping better and dreaming more (a sign of deep sleep).
Fourteen months later, her symptom score dropped 87 percent compared to pre-oral-appliance therapy. She admits that she works at a computer all day without good posture.
Symptoms
Before treatment
4 months later
14 months later
Pain in mouth and gums
10
4
0
Stomach gurgling
10
3
2
Always tired
10
2
0
Pain @ neck-shoulder-wrist
10
5
3
Symptom score
40
14
5
Smithy’s case shows that the mouth structure plays a role in symptoms inside, around, and beyond the mouth. Note that Smithy had immaculate oral hygiene. She was just stuck with a structurally impaired mouth.
An impaired mouth hurts overall health while a Holistic Mouth promotes total health. Redeveloping an impaired mouth into a Holistic Mouth can improve many symptoms naturally and unexpectedly. This is a consistent outcome in my experience.
The High Cost of Missing the Mouth
Behind most puzzling medical, dental, and mood symptoms lurk an impaired mouth and a pinched airway. The problem is that the mouth is missing from the radar of 99.9 percent of health professionals today, judging from the experience of my new patients. This oversight has left many patients going from doctor to doctor for answers, often with very costly consequences. Here are few examples.
“They insisted that nothing was wrong.” – G.A.’s Story
After she had gone to the emergency room complaining of dizziness and spent a whole day in testing at the adjoining hospital, G.A.’s health insurance carrier was handed a bill for over $11,000. “We didn’t find anything wrong,” said the doctors. “Here’s a referral to a neurologist.”
An amateur marathoner, G.A. was fit, trim, and happily semiretired in her mid-forties. Her best friend was a strong advocate of holistic health and referred her to me. The source of G.A.’s woes turned out to be a new filling. Her problem was solved for $350.
No one at her hospital ever looked in her mouth or asked about her dental history.
Even though the mouth and the body are connected, that’s not the case in American health care today. There is a division between medical versus dental in both clinical care and health insurance that does not exist in the body. Dentists do teeth, doctors do body and mind, and the mouth is left off the body. In practice, this division can and does result in “missing mouth syndrome”—with serious consequences.
A Mouthful of Dental Trouble Is Connected to a Chartful of Medical Issues
T.D. had retired from a military career and gone to work for the federal government. His presenting complaints included erectile dysfunction, declining memory, teeth grinding, and intolerance of sleeping with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) mask for sleep apnea. He had been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), which comes with a host of ripple effects. Among them is acid reflux, which had eroded the inside two-thirds of his teeth.
T.D.’s dentists fixed his teeth as needed, and his doctors treated his sleep apnea according to the standard of care, but he was still left with the medical and dental aftermath of OSA-related complications. Because of this, T.D. could not even start to redevelop his jaws and airway. He was stopped cold by the more than $20,000 it would cost to restore his twenty-three acid-dissolved teeth to proper form and function with crowns so that they would be fit to anchor oral appliances.
In the lower left image, you can see how stomach acid reflux has dissolved the inside of all teeth.
In my view, G.A., T.D., and all their attending doctors and dentists are victims of a health-care system that perpetuates medical, dental, and mental divisions that do not exist inside the body.
What Doctors Don’t Know Hurts Them Too
Recognition of the mouth’s role in total health is the first step toward effective solutions. My patients frequently ask me, “Why has no other doctor or dentist ever mentioned impaired mouth to me?” after learning that they had been stuck with an impaired mouth for years.
Many doctors of all specialties have admitted to me privately after my lec
tures on oral-systemic connections, “I try to look into my patients’ mouths, but honestly I don’t know what I am looking at.”
Doctors and dentists themselves can suffer from impaired mouths just like their patients because Holistic Mouth is not part of their curriculum. Here are three cases:
Dr. Y was a chiropractic doctor who had had neck pain and teeth grinding for as long as she could remember. Chiropractic adjustment would give short-term relief, but the pain always returned the next day. Within a half hour of putting on her bite-correction appliance, her pain was gone. Wearing it through the night, she actually feels refreshed now after sleeping.
Dr. X was a medical doctor who worked fourteen to sixteen hours a day, took lots of supplements, and lived with neck and shoulder pain. She could control her food choices and meal portions, but not her snoring, teeth grinding, jaw clenching, and the resulting head, neck, and jaw pain. Her health was a constant struggle, mostly because her craniofacial and jaw structures were orthopedically misaligned.
Dr. Z was an integrative medical doctor who found his three-tooth bridge on his pillow one morning—with roots attached! He had been medically diagnosed early with OSA, but his dentist did not know the connection between airway obstruction and teeth grinding, which I find to be a leading cause of tooth loss in patients with good oral hygiene. Dr. Z had lost twelve of his thirty-two teeth, and the remaining ones showed significant wear and tear.
Green on the color scale does not mean good but less than ideal. White is ideal. “Sleep bruising” is the medical term for teeth grinding, which, in my opinion, is an airway issue.