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Working for the Arizona Diamondbacks Was Nothing Like I Expected
I remember walking in on my first day and being struck by the bizarre activities I saw the players doing.
I saw professional baseball players, in full-uniform on their hands and knees blowing up balloons.
I saw athletic trainers playing around with lasers.
And I distinctly remember one player with his hands in two separate buckets. One was filled with dry rice and the other was filled with dry beans.
I was expecting a much more macho environment. I expected to see dumbbells being lifted and big, strong athletes grunting under a barbell.
Over the next few weeks, I came to learn the method behind the madness.
Their philosophy was rooted in the science taught by a small Physical Therapy clinic in Lincoln, Nebraska called the Postural Restoration Institute.
Their entire philosophy was centered around the idea that the body was different on the left and right side and a variety of predictable problems would arise as a result of these asymmetries.
These bizarre looking exercises were a part of their protocol.
I could tell you story after story about the literal miracles I watched these protocols produce. Many of these stories I’ve documented over the years.
In fact, here is my first encounter with this science myself:
What became clear to me in a relatively short amount of time was that this stuff really works.
What I believe PRI has done better than anyone else in history is describe how the human body actually works.
I am not tied to any one modality. I would be happy to throw out my entire training protocol tomorrow if I found a better one today. I just haven’t.
Just as my eyebrows were raised in confusion and suspicion as I walked through the Diamondbacks training facility on my first day, you may have a similar gut reaction to this concept. Just keep reading.
There are a suprisingly logical sequence of events that brings the teeth into the chronic pain discussion. Just follow the trail that I lay out below.
3 Lobes of Lung on the Right - Only 2 on the Left
I am about to run through the process of how the teeth become involved in posture, pain and performance. It is complicated and there are several steps involved. I am including a video here from our conversation with Dr. Frank Mallon that gives the same information.
If you study the picture above, you will notice that the right lung (which is the left side of your screen) has three lobes while the left lung (right side of your screen) has just one.
Think for a minute about the actual location of this right upper chamber. It’s completely surrounded by bone
Just using your common sense, are you able to see how it would be more difficult for that upper right chamber to expand during inhalation because it is completely surrounded by bone?
The lower lobes have greater opportunities for expansion because they can create room in the softer underbelly.
A term you should remember as long as you care about your health is, “the path of least resistance.”
Your body ALWAYS wants to take the path of least resistance. Here is what the path of least resistance looks like while you breathe.
An example of belly-breathing. Many modalities advocate for this type of breathing. We view it as incomplete. While it may prevent the neck from being recruited in respiration, it will lead to the stiffening of the ribcage, the flaring of the ribs, the deactivation of your abs and these are a much bigger concern.
Observe this man “belly-breathing.” What a shame!
Notice how his ribs have ZERO expansion. They don’t move at all.
The body is taking full advantage of the softer belly to create all of that expansion. After all, THAT is the path of least resistance.
Posturaly, you might recognize this as a rib flare.
If you lie down on your back you will likely see the same thing. You’ll notice your ribs flare upwards. Almost everyone in the world will display this. Myself included. The degree of your rib flare is what I am looking for in the clinical assessment. Often times we will see a runner or endurance athlete whose bottom ribs resemble a ski jump. This is the body’s desperate attempt for more air. For obvious reasons, endurance athletes have a greater respiratory demand. You must be wise about this because, as you’ll learn about teeth, you can’t just move your bones back in place.
This is the body’s compensational response. The only way for this to occur is for your abs to let go, which elevates the ribs and creates even more room for expansion during inhalation.
I can assure you that nothing good will ever come from your abs letting go.
Here’s where things start to happen.
You go for a run. And all of a sudden, there is an increased demand for oxygen.
But that upper right chamber is being restricted by a now-stiffened ribcage (over time, as the body continues to expand the belly and not expand the ribcage while inhaling, the tissue surrounding the ribcage grows stiffer and stiffer. It loses its ability to expand).
Your body, ever the compensator, now turns to the muscles of your right neck to try and free up the upper right chamber by pulling on the upper ribs and clavicle .
Take your time through this section. Read it a few times. There are several steps but it’s sequential.
In the moment that the neck muscles are recruited, you have no connected the dysfunction of your ribcage to your skull. Should it continue, we will now see some predictable things happening to the head.
These muscles of your right neck begin to tug on the mastoid process. This is a small bony point behind your ear.
The Mastoid Process
This pull begins to create tension in your temporal bone.
Your right neck is now pulling on the bones of your skull which will create movement in the cranial bones.
Your jaw is a sesmoid bone, which means that it is not connected to anything by bone. Just muscle. So when the bones of your skull move, rotate and shift, your jaw doesn’t move.
Stay with me here.
Your maxilla, upper jaw, is part of the skull/cranium. If the bones of the skull/cranium are moving, rotating and shifting, this means that there will be some changes to the maxilla…
…BUT NOT TO THE MANDIBLE (Lower Jaw). The mandible is unaffected.
When the shifted maxilla goes to bite down on the unshifted mandible, suddenly the contact is not the same (because the maxilla has changed shape).
The Brain and Your Bite
Occlusion = The way your teeth contact
Your occlusion has changed. So what!
Your brain uses it’s five senses (vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch) to evaluate the world around you to decide if your environment is safe or dangerous.
One of biggest feedback centers that your brain uses is your dental occlusion. How your teeth touch.
If your teeth are used to touching in one way and now they are touching in a different way, your body doesn’t know how to deal with that.
Recap: How Dysfunction Lands in Your Teeth
There is an extra lobe of lung on the right that is harder to fill with air when you breathe
Your right neck tries to help out by pulling on the upper ribs to create more space.
When your right neck begins to contract it pulls on the skull which makes those bones shift.
Your maxilla (upper jaw) is part of the skull but your mandible (lower jaw) is not.
Now your teeth touch differently because your upper jaw shifted and your lower jaw did not.
Your brain doesn’t like this
The Final Piece - Why All of This Matters
Every muscle in your body must adjust with every move you make.
The primary movement of the body is gait mechanics. This is just a fancy way of saying “walking.”
Gait is the alternating between left and right stance.
Although you may not be able to feel it, when you step onto your right foot, your entire body adjusts. Including your head, neck, jaw and occlusion (the way your teeth touch).
Because the right side of the body is so dominant (this is on everyone, see below for more details), the muscles of right single leg stance never turn off.
Which means, in some cases, the occlusion of right stance never shifts (the way your teeth touch in right stance).
Because this is such a major neurological reference center, if the jaw does not shift, your body will never let go of that right stance which may lock you into your chronic pain position until you can get the jaw to move.
This is Rizzo from Survivor 50. Look at his canines (fang teeth). Can you see how they overlap his bottom teeth? When he is biting down, he will be prevented from shifting his jaw because of his unique occlusion. This locks him into this bite pattern.
A Deeper Look into Human Anatomy
I chose not to go too deep here to try and keep it easier to digest, but I’ve included this brief section for anyone looking to go further.
There is a greater discussion to be had about the asymmetries of the body but I recognize this complexity of this topic and would like to keep things simple.
I do have a video with Neal Hallinan, that you can watch below, that will give a deeper dive into the asymmetries that cause patterns like this.
If this resonates and you’d like to go even deeper, below is a link to a complete guide to these anatomical features and why it matters so much to your body. If you are interested in this stuff at all, you should study this.
How to Fix Your Teeth
If you’ve been able to follow along the chain of events that created this teeth issue, you know that it began with the inability to expand your right upper chamber of your lung.
This means that getting expansion into the right upper chamber of your lung solves the problem.
If you can do that, the right neck never gets recruited, the temporal bone never shifts and the jaw contact always remains the same.
If you dive deeper into the asymmetries of the body, you’ll see that this may have even began further down the chain. Click the link below to dive deeper.
This is what makes this form of physical restoration so effective. Where modern medicine is focusing in on the site of pain, we are looking at what caused the pain in the first place.
If I can solve the source, I solve the problem for good.
In this case, you might see a TMJ mouth-guard given to someone to prevent clenching.
You might see a nerve-ablation procedure done to quiet the nerve that’s producing pain.
But all of that is local and only focusing on the symptom.
You could have saved yourself a lot of time, trouble and money if you just inflate the upper right chamber.
It is actually that simple.
When Teeth Get Complicated
Imagine skiing on fresh powder. On your first run, you are making a brand new trail. On your second, you will follow the tracks from your first run. The more times you follow those tracks, the easier it is to follow.
This is what happens with patterns of dysfunction in the body. Doing it once is no problem. Doing it every day for 20 years is a major problem.
Your mouth presents a unique pattern of embedded dysfunction. In your legs, an embedded pattern may look like a glute that doesn’t turn on. But in your mouth, your teeth may physically shift. This is a much harder pattern to change. This may be a pattern that you cannot exercise your way out of.
At Saint Bartholomew, this is when we call Frank.
Dr. Mallon works with a dentist to fit these patients with a splint that goes in their mouth. Kind of like this.
This creates a new bite pattern for your body to organize itself around.
Of course, with teeth, further intervention may be required. Although rare, some cases require a braces to properly align the teeth again.
In my 15 years of practice, I have seen this only twice.
Braces and Invisalign: A Word of Warning
Orthodontics is not a free pass. Getting braces or Invisalign done poorly can take an otherwise healthy body and jump right into dysfunction.
It is not uncommon for us to see someone who began to develop chronic pain shortly after getting braces or starting Invisalign.
In the future, if my kids need braces, I will be consulting with Dr. Mallon before I make any decisions.
Get in Touch with Dr. Frank Mallon
A big thank-you to Dr. Frank Mallon and Renaissance Physical Therapy and Wellness for their generosity of time and information in the making of this episode. We hope that this information gets in the right hands and can help people in need.
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