When your cute three-year-old says all of her teeth hurt, you may wonder how that could be true.
A toddler presents with many issues. After her first visit, her dad said that she did very well but still has toe walking and all of her teeth still hurt.
Since the gums and teeth looked fine, I felt the fascial web might be in play. This matrix connects every cell of the body including all of the tooth pulp chambers plus all of the periodontal ligaments between the teeth and the jaw bones. Fascial strain can compress free nerve endings to cause pain.
In this hypothesis I found that her neck fascia was straining hard into her mandibular teeth and to a lesser extent into her maxillary teeth. While I was holding the back of her neck, dad held over her lower teeth. We gradually helped the body release this fascial strain.
We repeated this technique for the upper teeth, and went back and forth until the jaws were quiet. I will check these tissues on the next visit for any residual strain and see what she reports.
Dentists are foreign to this way of thinking. We never learned this concept in school, and I have never seen it taught in any continuing dental education.
To go one step further, I found that the toe walking fascial strain was pulling into her neck and on to her teeth. While I was holding the back of her neck, dad held her feet as the fascia released.
It is time for health professionals to open to this new concept. With an understanding of how the fascial web functions, a practitioner can look at patients in a different light.
"I know of no part of the body that equals the fascia as a hunting ground. All nerves go to and terminate in that great system, the fascia. By its action we live and by its failure we die. The soul of man, with all the streams of pure living water, seems to dwell in the fascia of his body."
Dr. Andrew Still, the Father of Osteopathy
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