Jaw alignment, Trigeminal nerve, Substance P with Dr. Dwight Jennings DDS

44 years experience in jaw orthopedics, dental medicine, and functional jaw orthodontics....let's welcome Dr. Dwight Jennings DDS to the podcast.  In this episode we are talking all about jaw alignment, the trigeminal nerve, substance P and what that means for our overall health. Can jaw alignment be the potential answer for non dental related issues? Find out in this episode.

Timestamps to help you navigate this episode:
(0:00) Intro

(3:32) Who is Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS?

(7:44) Autoimmune, asthma & jaw alignment

(11:08) Trigeminal nerve

(13:36) Substance P

(16:56) Children and modern orthodontics vs. Dr. Jennings' approach

(25:25) Sponsor: Snap Supplements 25% OFF using code LUNDEN25

(28:01) Wisdom teeth removal and jaw alignment

(37:04) The connection between bite and condition

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 3:32 Who is Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS?
• 7:44 Autoimmune, asthma & jaw alignment
• 11:08 Trigeminal nerve
• 13:36 Substance P
• 16:56 Children and modern orthodontics vs. Dr. Jennings' approach
• 25:25 Sponsor: Snap Supplements 25% OFF using code LUNDEN25
• 28:01 Wisdom teeth removal and jaw alignment
• 37:04 The connection between bite and condition

Transcript

Lunden Souza: [00:00:00] Welcome to Self Love and Sweat the podcast, the place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections, break down barriers, and do what sets your soul on fire. I'm your host Lunden Souza.

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Lunden Souza: [00:01:52] That's lifelikelunden.com/calendar Go get yours for free and enjoy this episode. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we have such a wonderful guest. One I'm just so excited to not only let you guys hear and learn from, but also from my end to just really to have a conversation with and learn more about this particular topic. So we have Dr. Dwight Jennings with us today, and he is an expert in jaw alignment and jaw orthopedics. And I was first introduced to Dr. Jennings through a friend of mine who is a patient of yours who was experiencing something that in in most models of the world wouldn't pertain to what we think of when it comes to jaw alignment or dentistry or whatever. And so down the rabbit hole I went as my friend was your patient and just kind of shared a lot of the work that you'd been doing. I watched a lot of interviews and different fun things that you've done, and this is a space that I think and we were talking kind of off the air before we started that most people are not really thinking about or guided or taught, let's say, if you will, to think about when it comes to our overall health, this jaw, orthopedics and jaw alignment. So thank you so much for being here, Dr. Jennings. I'll let you kind of introduce yourself a little bit more and then we'll start the conversation with, Yeah, overall health when it comes to jaw alignment and what that means and potentially looks like for us.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:03:32] Sure. So I'm a general dentist who limited my practice 35 plus years ago to jaw orthopedics, dental medicine and pain management. So I've been doing precision jaw alignment for over 40 years and I've come across a vast amount of medical literature explaining. That explains why it's really important for a lot of aspects of health, both mental, physical pain, digestion, immune function, just a lot of different areas. It has a very strong impact due to a peculiar way that the human developed the jaw alignment sensors. What they call trigeminal proprioceptors are the only sensory cell bodies in the brain. All of our sensory cell bodies for our eyes, ears and skin are out in the ganglion. But your jaw alignment sensors are in the brain and they're postured in the brain immediately adjacent to your sympathetic ganglion. So when there's bite dysfunction, it tends to put the body into fight or flight stress mode and it tends to push up a neurotransmitter called substance P something that most people haven't heard about, that most physicians don't know much about because there's no pharmaceutical remedy for it. But substance. P is implicated as a primary driver in a very large amount of diseases. And what it basically does is it depolarizes cell membranes and lowers the voltage potential on cells. So cells fire too easily. So as your bite goes off and your substance P levels go up, then that would account for why most people get allergies, asthma, autoimmune disorders and hypersensitivity syndromes. So my patients generally present with a hypersensitivity to noise and to light and hot and cold and the food and the drugs and the stress.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:05:34] And as you become more hyper reactive, then you lose homeostasis and people vacillate, oscillate and get a lot more often than other people. So that's my. The nature of our practice and where I've been digging around for a long time and we've come up with just a lot of very important information. Substance P is implicated as to a primary driver in most forms of cancer. It's a major regulator of skin integrity, so it's typically involved in eczema, severe psoriasis, acne, you know, ruscombe. It is considered primary driver in most mood disorders anger, violence, addiction, depression, anxiety said that. So they're likely not going to get very far on opioid addiction if the medical community doesn't look at bites. Bites have been degenerating on humans very aggressively for the last 200 years. They think it's due to soft diets and every generation on studies around the world show that the average generation is significantly worse than their parents. So we're degrading at a very rapid rate. And as bites degenerates, so is the health in general of the human condition. And I think that's a reason that we're just seeing a lot more degenerative disorders and chronic illness that they're not really getting to the basis of why a lot of people are sick. So this is a very common disorder. 50% of the population that's clicking and popping bites are typically most often the reason why people get into headaches. That's also a very common condition. As you open up cell membranes, it makes you vulnerable to viral infiltration. So we're going to see a lot more pandemics and epidemics as the human condition worsens.

Lunden Souza: [00:07:44] Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So much good stuff. And I think overall, what I'm hearing is virtually nothing about teeth, what they look like structure. It's like you're dealing with stuff that we typically would not go to a dentist or potentially seek this type of treatment for. And I think you said, yeah, autoimmune asthma. I know you do a lot of work with like Parkinson's. You mentioned like just maybe on a light end of the spectrum or it could mean be really annoying, like you said, sensitivity to light or sound or things like that. So when your patients come to you, have they been like Googling the heck out of solutions for their issues and then like stumbled upon, you know, you luckily, thankfully, do they do you work with other doctors that know like, hey, this might be a jaw thing and I know the jaw guy, you know what I mean? How do people get to you? Because like I said, we're not taught to think those things as being like maybe the domino that knocks down other dominoes, maybe headaches. When you said headaches, I'm kind of like, okay, my jaw is close to my head. I can see how like even just like your bite can influence maybe your head or a headache. But all the other things you mentioned are very left field, I think, for a lot of us. So how do your patients find you and are you are they like, oh my gosh, so grateful, right? I never thought this would be the solution. And here I am at the door of the solution, if you will.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:09:12] Right. So, yeah, so a lot of get referred in because my patient base, they're pretty educated, but we do get doctors referring to us and a lot of people do find me on the Internet. We like movement disorders. There's literature. What's basically missing is that dentistry. Amazon doesn't use artificial intelligence very well. Know that in artificial intelligence, we. We should be searching the literature for causation. And most doctors just go through the 1 or 2 things that they know. They they throw their one remedy at it and nobody's doing a broad search. And so when they start doing a broad search, then they'll come across some of the literature that I've posted and stuff. Um, but, you know, like I had a patient I treated once and she referred in her daughter. Her daughter had had a constant cough for two years. She had seen 40 doctors. They had tried steroids, inhalers, antibiotics, nothing. And when I examined her, we found that her 12 year molar had come in and crossbite. And when we put a mouthpiece in her, the cough stopped before she walked out of the office. Right. And so cough the irritability of and the propensity to need to cough is a substance P phenomenon. And so it was a. Um, as an asthma, asthma as a substance p condition. But the medical community and the dental community just don't ever go there. Your dentist isn't taught how to assess jaw alignment. All primitive humans built end on end tip to tip and most modern man has overbites. And there's biomechanical reasons why we need the bite. Tip to tip. There's reasons why we need to hit on the back teeth first.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:11:08] Hitting on the front teeth first makes you compress your jaw joints. That makes your temporalis muscle on the side of your head work harder and that neurologically excites your trigeminal nerve. Your trigeminal nerve has 100 times more dense pain fibers than any other nerve in your body. So when this nerve gets excited, it puts a massive neurological load on the brain and brain function. It has a massive load on your reticular formation, your brain stem, your reptilian brain, and that's your center of sensory integration. So as bites go off, it affects strength, endurance, reactivity, time. You just get into sensory processing disorders, people lose balance, equilibrium, vertigo, lots of musculoskeletal things occur. The Japanese have done 40 years of research on bite destruction in animals, and every time they shorten the teeth on one side on an animal, they all get scoliosis. So the the jaw alignment has a major influence on muscle tone in the back or muscle tone throughout the whole body. They just had a lady come in. She has got TMJ pain and her husband is a retired physician and he happened to see that there was a connection between the the. When he's looking up for a TMJ doctor, you notice there's a connection between TMJ and Parkinson's. And so she comes in with right side body stiffness rigidity, which is the primary reason for her Parkinson's diagnosis. But her left joint was severely compressed, which would normally account for that. So she most likely does not have Parkinson's and has been under many years of levodopa therapy improperly.

Lunden Souza: [00:12:52] Mhm. Mhm. Do you. I guess I know you've been doing this for a while and. Yeah. Like you said, people are becoming more and more educated and reaching out for solutions that allow for what you just said. Like, hey, maybe it wasn't just Parkinson's, maybe it was this. Do you encounter like, Yeah. Pushback because of that controversy, because of the way that you see this modality of healing? Like I know that that's not stopping you, but like, what have you noticed when you're kind of hopefully at some point it won't be stirring the pot, right? That people will look in these directions. But you're a little stir in the pot, right? So like, what are people's reactions to that? Dr. Jennings Yeah.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:13:36] So most people are pretty disbelieving and they don't want to look at the literature, right? And when you show them the literature, when you when you present them with, there's like there's there's a half dozen articles on bite therapy for movement disorders, whether that's Tourette's, dystonia, torticollis, scoliosis, Parkinson's, you know, there's medical literature on all this. But yeah, most people are fairly disbelieving because they haven't looked at the literature. Yeah, it's just a very like if you look at substance. P Which isn't on anybody's radar, right? Under the National Library of Medicine, there's 26,000 plus articles on substance.

Lunden Souza: [00:14:26] P Let's talk about that a little bit. Let's do like the substance. P 101 for Beginners version.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:14:35] The substance P is a neuropeptide 11 amino acid. And so it'd be like serotonin, dopamine, right? But there's no pharmaceutical to block it. So it, it, it destabilizes cell membranes. And so it's a major neurosecretory modulator. But when you depolarize cell membranes in, your hormones secrete differently. So typically with by dysfunction, you see an elevated people go into estrogen dominance, right? So there's a lot of gynecological dysfunctions that you see. Um, but, but substance. P You know, when it gets secreted by pain fibers, it will make cells fire too easily. So that makes cells, if they fire too much and too easily, they'll die off. Um, and so you get neurodegenerative disorders, but it's mostly the hypersensitivity that causes the main problem.

Lunden Souza: [00:15:33] Got it. So they're super sensitive and then they're firing off, maybe like for lack of better terms, just like doing the most over exhausting. And then you have this degeneration. Is that what I'm hearing?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:15:44] That's true. Yeah. So so you get all kinds of hypersensitivity disorders and pain. That's a hypersensitivity, right? Like in fibromyalgia, people react when there's nothing wrong with them. They know they get pain throughout the body that's elevated. So when you destabilize cell membranes, there's a calcium influx. It throws up calcium metabolism, get osteoporosis, osteopenia, calcium influx, and you get mitochondrial dysfunction, you get chronic fatigue. So there's a lot of lot of things that start happening when the sensory system of the body gets disturbed and medicine is missing. A sensory theory of illness, too much sensory input will make you sick. Whether that's too much noise, too much light, too much hot, too much cold. And again, due to the high sensory density within the trigeminal nerve, it has a major effect on brain function and the maintaining homeostasis for the human body.

Lunden Souza: [00:16:45] Mhm. Mhm.

Lunden Souza: [00:16:47] I Do you have kids? Do you have kids?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:16:56] Beg your pardon?

Lunden Souza: [00:16:57] Do you have kids?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:16:58] I do. I have to.

Lunden Souza: [00:16:59] Yeah. Okay. So the reason why I ask is because, like, when I think of jaw by an alignment and things like that, I remember like being a kid and getting braces, and I had, like, these two teeth were growing, like, things over the top. And I never smiled until like, after I got like, you can see the, the journey of my school photos of like, what my teeth might have looked like based on if I was smiling or not. But I remember I got like teeth pulled. I had an expander. I had like phases of dentistry and orthodontistry. I remember, I mean, I was young, so it's like my memory is what it is now. But I remember like the dentist saying that a certain amount of teeth should be or the orthodontist a certain amount of teeth should be showing when I smile. So that's why he was like widening the bite. And then for those of you listening, you didn't see me. But when Dr. Jennings was talking about where your bite should be, I was like doing the teeth on Teeth one and kind of moving my jaw and mouth around. But the only time I ever heard about, like, jaw alignment or things like that as a kid was like aesthetically through orthodontistry or orthodontics because my teeth were super crooked. Do you get your kids braces? Do you think that modern orthodontistry I don't know if I'm saying that right, but the modern orthodontics is like contributing to maybe some of the. Things you're seeing that maybe you're having to clean up a little bit. Does that make sense?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:18:18] Yes.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:18:19] So orthodontics is is. Structure to give you pretty teeth, but they aren't really taught how to functionally assess jaw position. That is when you go to your dentist. Your dentist. Also never, for the most part, never checks to see where your jaw needs to be or wants to be in space for. For about 10% of the population, their jaw wants to be into an underbite. That jaw wants to be so far forward that it puts them into an underbite. And so in those cases, when you're treating them, you have to advance the upper front six teeth to such a point that you can get them to biting tip on tip. Orthodontists are taught that you should have a slight overbite, and that slight overbite is there because that's what most humans that's average. That's what we think is normal. But functionally, it's not ideal in most cases. Most people you can find that out. But if you just throw a like a popsicle stick between somebody's teeth and have them in an Oakland wide and close and that popsicle stick and see where they go, that's usually very accurate at determining where it is that a person's jaw wants to be or needs to be when they just bite on that popsicle stick. But we're basically looking at the arc of opening and closing on a side where the jaw swings in space and you want that jaw to be able to swing close naturally without having to either advance or retreat. In most cases, that jaw is being pulled back. Most people have overbites when they go to talk, their jaw jumps forward. Another criteria is that a person should bite and talk on the same trajectory. And so people that most people these days are born with the back teeth, not quite tall enough, so they have to pull the jaw back to get back to pitch. But when they go to talk, it'll jump forward. So there's a hypermobility, which.

Lunden Souza: [00:20:12] Okay. And should we? Is the idea that we don't want to do that, like we want to have a job placement, that's where we might rest and also how we might be talking like so that you're not needing to, I don't know, change positions. Does that make sense.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:20:26] Exactly. You're trying to get.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:20:28] In function out of the jaw, trying to get it. So it has to do the least amount of work to calm it down.

Lunden Souza: [00:20:34] And people probably never realize that they're doing it right. I can't imagine someone their whole life like, okay, shut jaw. I now move forward because we're talking. It's just like movement that your your body just does because that's how it's adapted to functioning with what you got, right?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:20:52] That's true. Yeah. People born, raised never they never think about it. But when you bring that jaw forward and decompress the jaw joint, the cartilage re-inflates and so in about a day or two with appliances, they automatically are habituated forward. They automatically the joint gets decompressed, it re-inflates inside. And so you get stuck forward, which then takes a lot of stress off the joint and off the jaw posturing muscles and the nervous system.

Lunden Souza: [00:21:26] Yeah. So interesting. You mentioned that one particular client that had issues with coughing and then after, you know, a little Dr. Jennings magic, if you will, they were able to leave in that particular first visit with results. Is that common with people that you work with? I would imagine. I mean, yeah, you probably have variety, but is it more common than people would think that you get these like quick results? And are you surprised, like, do you still have those moments or are you just kind of like, No, this is awesome and I know it works.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:22:02] I do get those. There's actually on YouTube, there's a lot of videos of putting someone in a person's mouth and immediately stopping their movement disorders. So you can see tremors, dystonia, Tourette's immediately going away by just rewatching the lights. But in probably about maybe 50, 60% of the cases, you get an immediate result. There's another 30% that takes a while to to back them back down, to get the neuroplasticity shifts and stuff. And then there's a 10% that you have to work pretty hard to to get them to respond, whether you're dealing with migraines or the jaw nerve or trigeminal nerve, which is sensory to your face and teeth controls, brain blood flow. And so anytime people have a vascular insufficiency problem, which is 85% of strokes, tias and all that, the neurological community never, ever thinks about the trigeminal. I've never had a case in which they've sent them to their dentist or sent them to a jaw specialist to check out the biggest or why they might be getting transient ischemic attacks, fainting spells, cognitive dysfunction. Um.

Lunden Souza: [00:23:16] Why do you think they're not focusing on this?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:23:21] If they sent the the patient to the average dentist, the dentist wouldn't know what they were talking about. And so there's not a good body of dentists for them to be able to rely on to refer to. And the dental community hasn't stepped up. The dental community hasn't noted their important role. Orthodontists are taught to straighten teeth, not to align Jaws. So the orthodontic community has not stepped up either. They're doing a little bit better these days since they're starting to look at airway and airway requires you. But again, they're just bringing the jaws forward randomly and arbitrarily and structurally without looking at function. They're not they're not doing it precisely. So you're going to see a lot of these airway cases where they bring the jaws forward, that they're still leaving them structurally impaired. A lot of the jaw surgeries are the change in structure without going back and assessing function to see if they did it precisely to see if the body can accommodate to their changes.

Lunden Souza: [00:24:20] Yeah. And like, it's kind of like giving them maybe a one size fits all approach, I don't know, exercise or any program, but then not really taking the time to be like, Okay, is this working? How do you uniquely like function in life and in the world and how do we need to make some of those changes and adjustments? Do you think that's better than nothing, or do you think that the precision is like the whole point?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:24:44] Probably in most cases better than nothing. So like on young children, you're talking about the ortho angle. If you bring the jaw forward on young children, as the jaw comes forward, it bends back into the socket again. So you end up making the jaws longer. So both of my kids had pretty significant overbites. We started their treatment at a fairly young age and it elongated their jaw enough that they were both able to keep their wisdom teeth.

Lunden Souza: [00:25:12] Oh, okay.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:25:13] Right. So that's part of the problem. As the lower jaw gets jammed back into the skull, it curls forward and it shortens the length of the lower jaw. So you see a lot more need for wisdom tooth extraction.

Lunden Souza: [00:25:25] Yeah, I'm using. I'm like thinking about my wisdom teeth and kind of the structure that you mentioned within the jaw, that curvature and why it makes sense that you wouldn't be able to welcome in those teeth and you would need them to get removed and changed. I had only because I'm curious. I had my wisdom teeth out. I only had three. I never had four in my early 20s. Um, do you think that, um, jaw alignment is better than having people consider wisdom teeth removal, or do you think wisdom teeth removal is just like cool with the way things are? Or do you feel like some structural realignment could help us not need to do that? Hey, really quick, I want to interrupt the podcast for just a minute to tell you about one of my favorite supplements for hair, skin, nails, digestive and gut health, and that is snap supplements, super greens with collagen. Now, if you're following me on social media, you've probably seen me post about this a bunch because honestly, this product tastes amazing and it's jam packed with nutrients, like I said, to support healthy hair, skin and nails. It helps support detoxification, a healthy immune system. And there's even probiotics in there for a healthy gut. It's non-GMO, no sugar added, soy free, grass fed collagen. And every scoop is going to give you a seven grams of protein. And this is why I love it, because it's not like a protein shake. It's just a scoop of powder. It tastes amazing. I put it in water, or if I want more hydration, I'll put it in coconut water and mix it up. And it's like having a nice, refreshing beverage that's packed with a bunch of super greens and protein. So what I'm super excited about is that for listening to the podcast, you'll get this discount here nowhere else, but for listening to the podcast. You can save 25% off on all your SNAP supplement purchases, including the super greens with collagen, and you do that by using Code  LUNDEN25 at checkout. That's LUNDEN25 for 25% off at checkout. You can shop on snap supplements or you can shop on my website lifelikelunden.com/supplements and you'll see there there's already an additional 10% taken off. But you because you're a podcast listener, you're going to get 25% off when you use the code. LUNDEN25 at checkout LUNDEN25 at checkout to get your snap supplements, super greens and collagen and all your snap supplements for 25% off. Now let's get back to the show. 

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:28:01] Yeah, I think structure alignment done at a young age would would prevent that. So though there's just you know, as humans we're getting genetically pretty impaired and compromised. Um. So there's going to be a number of people that even when you treat them young, there's going to be enough skeletal degradation in their genes that they still wouldn't be able to be able to keep their wisdom teeth.

Lunden Souza: [00:28:29] Yeah, I just remember that being a very intense process. And I just yeah, like I said, my whole life, my whole childhood, I should say, and still up into my early 20s, I just remember it like, let's pull this. Yes, like this. Let's open this up. Let's, you know, like, uh, yeah, just very interesting. And now learning all of this, it's just cool to know that this avenue could lead to relief in certain areas. I was watching. Yeah, because. And I'll put a lot of links in the description and the show notes of this episode, but there's a lot of great stuff and interviews that you have on like just a simple Google search and people have done Facebook lives with you and then in your office and you've been on cool podcasts and done a lot of yeah, a lot of things like that. And I heard you say something about smell restoration and the jaw, and I just thought that was so interesting. And I know there are so many, you know, unique, specific, maybe ailments of rabbit holes we could go down. But that one was so interesting to me because I know that our sense of smell is also contributing to our taste. And so this could be like a whole new world of like sensory experience opening up for somebody. And I just think that's so wonderful. So what in I guess it's a trigeminal nerve and substance P thing, but what specifically and what adjustments have you seen to help people Like I can't imagine, you know, I really can't imagine even just where I'm at now in Sedona, like just walking outside and experiencing just like this, the natural smell it can be. So, yeah, underappreciated. So what happens there in jaw alignment and smell?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:30:14] So most doctors and dentists aren't aware that we have two noses. Our olfactory first cranial nerve everybody's pretty much aware of. But the chemoreceptors in our nose are part of our nerve. And so multiple chemical sensitivity is going to be a bit dysfunction in most cases. All right. But but the the trigeminal nerve where it innervates tissues affects how tissues grow. So the research is that over stimulating the trigeminal nerve will alter how the skin grows on the surface of your eyeball. But it wouldn't affect just the surface of the eyeball. It it would affect the tissues throughout the eyeball because that's the sensory to the whole eyeball. And so there's going to be a bi component to most eye diseases. Right. But and so the same thing on smell the sensory innervation to the nerve to the skin would affect ability to smell. So COVID is pretty much all about substance. P Right. And there's a couple literature articles I'd be glad to send anybody that goes into explaining that. But Substance P opens up cell membranes and allows viral infiltration. And so the what's going to be happening in COVID is people have elevated substance P before they contract COVID and due to bite issues or other things, they're going to still have elevated substance P after the COVID acute phase passes. And so they're going to get a lot of lingering substance related disorders. It's like when people have bad bites and they get into a whiplash injury or trauma, they can't they can't heal from that trauma due to the constant micro trauma from the bite and the chronically elevated substance use substance. P controls the collagen matrix, so the quality of college it controls wound healing, stem cell differentiation, it would control brain repair. And so there's just a lot of inability to repair and recover. If your substance p levels are too elevated.

Lunden Souza: [00:32:16] Are you working with patients who have had COVID and lingering effects and work with their. Yeah, substance P levels and their jaw realignment? And how has that been going and in your practice?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:32:31] Very well yeah we've done.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:32:35] That's a brings me back to where substance P my interest in substance P came from was a lady I was treating for a whiplash injury. She had an auto accident and she has having migraines and we put her into appliances in a year into treatment. She confided in me that she had had six seizures a year all of her life until we put in our mouthpieces. And she got an entire year without a seizure. And I ran that by some a physician that I was working with at that time on chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. And he says, Oh, you changed your substance P levels. And that's what we started looking at over 25 years ago. So we found that we can dramatically impact substance P levels systemically with our bite therapy.

Lunden Souza: [00:33:22] Nice.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:33:23] Nice.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:33:24] You can get a lot of people with post-COVID symptoms resolved. You can get those P levels lower. Quest is the only lab company that runs a substance test. And there are not proper, by their own admission, that what they put on there is normal levels. My suspicion is that substance P levels should be less than 250 microliters rather than their 1720, which they stayed on the test.

Lunden Souza: [00:33:53] Okay. So we could go to Quest and do the test, but then follow your normal, let's say, parameters or regulations versus what you might see in the the outcome of your test. Cool. Good to know. Yeah, I'm a big fan of doing yeah, outside labs and things like that and I know Quest so yeah, I'll make sure I put that there in the show notes, too. Um, okay, so 25 years ago, let's go back. Substance. P Like all this learning excitement where you're at now, were you expecting things to be where they're at now? Do you think the things should be moving forward? Are you like, you know, between that moment you just described and what really like, let's say, unlocked the door for you? Like what You know, how do you feel about that now?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:34:43] That's a it's a very slow process, educating the medical and dental communities. You know, our pharmaceutical approach is just doesn't lend itself to tell them you have a structural approach. It's it's a hard, tough road to educate the profession. There is there is some big changes in the wind, I think with the shift in looking at airway and but and there's a there's the oral systemic link that they're now looking at. They found a high correlation between oral diseases and a number of other diseases. You know, whether heart disease or cancer or rectal cancer and all those things. And so it's going to be substance P that links those. They don't know that yet, but there are a number of people that are looking at the oral systemic link that I think will accelerate the focusing on this aspect of it. But by and large, neither the biological dentist nor the holistic dentists are doing precise jaw orthopedics and they're looking at dental materials and looking at root canals and looking at cavitations. But they're not they haven't integrated precision jaw orthopedics as a part of their regimen, and that's going to make a major be a major power shift in what they can do for the public, for the holistic and biological when they understand precision orthopedics.

Lunden Souza: [00:36:13] Mhm.

Lunden Souza: [00:36:14] And I remember when my friend. Yeah. Working with you the the appliance, let's say if you will, that you worked on with him and your patients. From my understanding, it's something that you like, invented and crafted and kind of figured out on your own. And then I remember being in your office and then you go back and you take the thing and you, like, make the little tweaks and come back like. What's that trial and error been like? How did you have, like, like, you know, to be like, hey, you know what? Something doesn't exist out here that's doing this. I know what it needs to be doing, so I'm going to create it and I'm going to like figure out how to tweak it and make it very precise. What was what's that journey been like of creating the solution for your clients or your your patients?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:37:04] So when you. Finally realize that there is a connection between a bite and a condition. Then you work really hard and making sure you get rid of that condition. And that's driven me to come up with some creative appliances that aren't commonly used because we know that we should be able to impact a condition. And so, yeah, so the appliances that I use in my practice are a little unique, and we're currently in the process of starting to teach that process. We're offering upcoming classes in dental neurology and appliance fabrication, medical history and integration, and trying to train a large number of dentists and dental medicine.

Lunden Souza: [00:37:53] Cool. Cool. Yeah. I mean, we have to spread the word or make that ripple exist beyond ourselves. And I would say, despite things moving, let's say a little bit snail ish, if you will, and feeling like it's a little bit hard to nudge the medical space into a direction that you think is, you know, a powerful direction, Um, what's one thing you know for sure that you've like, like you left your stamp, you left your mark. No matter how slow things might move. Like. Like you're proud. Stamp Is there something where you're like, Yeah, that's cool, That's good. And I'm proud of that.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:38:35] Yeah.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:38:35] We have over 100 cases of grand mal seizures that have resolved without therapy. And so we have a very large, very, very confident that we can reverse seizures in most cases. And I think that's one area that that really, you know, that the alternative is to put them on anti-seizure medication, which is impairs cognitive function, you know, slows down the brain function.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:39:03] Side effects.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:39:04] Of medication. And so this is one that area that's that we've very well established in the recently we're looking at on the other side of what we're just now exploring is we're looking at a link between bites and Alzheimer's. And so the research is pretty clear that the nucleus in the brain is primarily impacted in Alzheimer's is immediately adjacent to your jaw alignment nucleus. And so we think that there may be a connection as to how jaw line is impacting that nucleus function.

Lunden Souza: [00:39:44] And just because I'm curious with what you know now in that particular arena, is there like a too late point when it comes to Alzheimer's that you're noticing? Like is the sooner the better with some of these interventions better? Or like how because I know people listening are you know, and I want to talk about that next. But there's a lot of people who are like, maybe, okay, I know someone or myself has this or this or this like. How do we get realistically excited about that solution?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:40:15] Yeah, so that's a really forefront, I think. So there is some literature in which bite therapy has impacted Alzheimer's, but the person that did that research wasn't aware of the neural connections, and so they just said that they got a little better and wouldn't understood why. And they didn't weren't doing them to a precise degree that we would be doing. So that's that's that's part of the problem. When you look at the research, they weren't doing the jaw therapy with precision. You know, all dentists have their own. Model of what they think is ideal occlusion. And it's not. Often not functionally ideal. So you have to read a lot of studies with a little bit of grain of salt and and read into them that they could have been better. Bite therapy is only 50%. The research is bite therapy is only about 50% effective for tinnitus. And most likely it's because I think the lack of degree of precision that they're doing in their bite therapy.

Lunden Souza: [00:41:18] Nice. Cool.

Lunden Souza: [00:41:20] And for people listening that are having those aha moments or the Oh my gosh, that's me or someone I know or um, yeah, the wheels are turning because like I said, it's like something that people might not have ever thought about before until now. Where do they start? Do they do you have a particular video that you've done in specific that you would recommend that like, hey, this is a good place to go? Do you recommend that they go to their current dentist and start throwing around substance? P and trigeminal nerve? I mean, I don't want them, you know, people I think get excited. And then I remember I used to work at a supplement store and then it would be like Dr. Oz said, this was the thing. And they'd come pounding down. You know, they needed this. So like, what are our first steps to understanding if potentially jaw alignment And and this restructuring we're talking about, this precision restructuring could potentially be a solution. And like, where do they start? And also like are you the only person that does this or are there other people in other places? You know what I mean? Like so that people can start to like get connected if they need to or feel like it's helpful for them.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:42:26] There's a fair amount of.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:42:27] Neurology that I know that's not common knowledge, but there's the International College of Craniomandibular Orthopedics iccmo.org is a Iccmo is a good place to start. There's practitioners that they do know how to do precision orthopedics and so that would be a good place to see if there's a practitioner.

Lunden Souza: [00:42:49] To reach out and have someone that's like speaking your language already. Because I remember when I was going through hormonal confusion and I would go to my regular doctor saying things that I heard when I was learning in other spaces. It was sometimes frustrating being the person being like, Wait, but I heard this and I learned this. And then you go to where you think you're supposed to find solutions and answers and they're just like, I don't know what you're talking about. I never learned that. So thank you for that solution so that people can go and maybe dig a little deeper. And I know I can think of some great videos of yours that I've watched on Facebook and YouTube and stuff too, that I'll link in the show notes so that people can continue to learn and grow and be curious about something. I think that's one thing I know for sure about a lot of the, let's say, rugs I've lifted up and whatever when it comes to health and wellness is just like, stay curious, stay excited about the possibilities because sometimes, you know, I'm sure you've probably had customers or patients who come in who you just feel like frustrated and like, I've tried all the things and whatever. And so, yeah, I'll definitely be sharing all the good stuff so people can learn more. Is there anything else you want to share that we didn't cover or that you think is important for our listeners to hear today? Dr. Jennings I think.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:43:59] One other thing that that's. That bugs me is that nobody even screens patients with psychosis for bite issues. So in the last five years, there's a lot of medical literature linking substance p to mood disorders of all types. And it's like, yeah, we have this single psychotherapy approach to mood disorders that's. That's needs to be modified. They need to open it up and again, use a little more artificial intelligent approach and look and really as to what could be causing the mood disorders. Just a vast amount of medical dysfunction that's we get into our pigeonhole approach. And then dentists. I'm pretty critical of my dental profession in that they haven't expanded their understanding. Tmj is very poorly. Trained or taught in dental school. And it's becoming such a major problem with modern humans. It's it's a very significant problem these days for most students.

Lunden Souza: [00:45:23] Yeah. It seems like you're very passionate about things that oftentimes people feel trapped in and you're like, wait, this is not the the end or the way we've been treating it is not the most efficient. And you said, Yeah, it bugs you. It bugs me too, now that I know more. Um, I think it's so promising what you shared, and I think it's cool to have a broader range of solutions for mental health, as you mentioned, and not feeling like we're pigeonholed into. Yeah. One modality if you will. And I know from my personal journey with mental health, it's, it's nice to have options. It's nice to have options of solutions and not just feel like you're running and trying it. Okay, let me try one more time. Boom, up against the wall. You know, it's nice to know that research is being done in more areas than I probably could imagine to help support people who have struggled like I have because, um, it's nice to know there are. Yeah, a variety of solutions that can be explored. And in that curiosity space, I think with mental health, that's what what's helped me a lot. Um, I feel like we could do a whole episode on, on jaw alignment and mental health and mood and things like that. But what do you feel like is the most promising there in terms of mood disorders? Like overall, is it specifically with anxiety or depression or things that you're like really honing in on? Like, what are you I don't know, Like what's the exciting cutting edge area that you're excited about in that kind of space?

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:47:00] Yeah, we've had some.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:47:01] Really good responses on anxiety and depression. If you just look at the literature, there's massive amounts of literature Now on substance, P being a major modulator of depression. Um, the locus ceruleus your sympathetic ganglion in the brain is immediately adjacent to your jaw proprioceptors your jaw alignment sensor nucleus. And so when the bite goes off, it puts you into sympathetic anxiety, hypervigilance, state. I had a 1618 year old girl. Severe anxiety, severe depression. She was doing counseling every two weeks, multiple medications. Her jaw joints were severely back into her ear space. And when we put her into appliances within a month, she was totally relieved. So you just get radical transformation and having jaw joints severely compressed is not that uncommon these days. It's but, you know, the first sign of bite dysfunction is typically a lot of ear infections in infancy, and then it morphs and you get other problems as you age. They'll get more allergies, asthma, respiratory problems. They get more anaphylaxis reaction. As you get older, you'll get more headaches, musculoskeletal problems. As you get older, you get more autoimmune disorders. So it typically transforms more with every generation. And in the elderly, you'll see more neurodegeneration. Mum is putting a major load on the body that typically leads to very high medical utilization. As I Kaiser started showing people with jaw function had on average over four times as much medical health care costs as other people. And so it really pushes up health care costs and a lot of areas due to the hypersensitivity and overreacted. Substance conduct controls, gut motility. So you'll see intermittent constipation, diarrhea. We're quite effective at reversing Crohn's and IBS symptoms when there's a problem with them. So there's just.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:49:15] Very broad.

Lunden Souza: [00:49:16] Application.

Lunden Souza: [00:49:17] Yeah, case study after case study after like aha moment or like you said, like, okay, mood. And then it was digestive stuff. And so I just present with.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:49:28] Complex cases, right. Medical history. They'll they'll a real case when they show up they have you know they'll they'll check 20 different things wrong with it. They just have very high medical involvement.

Lunden Souza: [00:49:42] Yeah. Yeah. And it's part of the a key player I think when I after our conversation I just feel like it's like a whole new world, you know, like Aladdin and Jasmine. You're just like, on this. Yeah, it's cool. And I that's what I love and what my goal is with this podcast and even just my own curiosity journey is to like lift up the rugs, lift up the rugs. We didn't even know we needed to lift up. And like you said, this jaw com, this jaw dysfunction is common. It's right. It's nothing like, oh my gosh, now there's something else wrong with me that I need to fix. It's just like being curious and getting to know a little bit more. And now knowing after listening today that there are cool modalities and solutions that maybe are not super mainstream yet, but that people can kind of get started. So, Dr. Jennings, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it so much. We've learned a ton, and I know this is going to be like the domino that knocks down other dominoes for listeners to like. Yeah, learn and discover even more on this topic. So thank you so much for your time today.

Dr. Dwight Jennings, DDS: [00:50:43] It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Lunden Souza: [00:50:45] Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Self-love and Sweat, the podcast. Hey, do me a favor. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, give us a review. This really helps a lot and share this with a friend. I'm only one person and with your help we can really spread the message of self-love and sweat and change more lives all around the world. I'm Lunden Souza reminding you that you deserve a life full of passion, presence and purpose, fueled by self-love and sweat. This podcast is a Hitspot Austria production.