Here is even more evidence of dental retainers causing cranial compression. This particular late teenage girl came to me with severe pain in her lower legs and shins. She rated the pain at a 9-9.5 out of 10.
The pain had been there for over 1.5 years causing her to have to stop playing sports.
A little under a year before I saw her she had MRI’s of her lower legs done. The first MRI showed her bones were very white on the scan. The doctors said her bones were about to fracture if she kept playing sports.
A follow-up MRI looked much better after she had taken time off from doing any type of sports activity. She essentially rested.
At this time a battery of autoimmune tests were also run. All came back negative.
When she came into my office she described the pain as in the bone. Her bones were where she felt the pain, not the soft tissue surrounding it.
On my examination it revealed that she had major neurological weakness of the muscles throughout her body. I wasn’t testing the outright strength of the muscle, but instead if her brain was making the right connection with the muscle. In her case, none of her muscles were working correctly.
When this happens, something major is bothering the body. Usually up in head region. In taking her history I found out that she had dental braces removed less than a year before the pain started.
She was fitted for a wire retainer on both the bottom and top teeth. Fortunately, the lower retainer had fallen out not long after it was put in.
With further testing it was discovered the upper retainer was creating the dramatic weakness throughout her body.
And when you don’t have proper muscle contraction, your body loses its shock absorbers. And with no shock absorbers, all the force that is generated from running and jumping goes straight to the bones and joints.
In this case the shins (tibia and fibula bones). Her body couldn’t regulate the amount of stress going straight to the bones. This is what was causing them to look white on MRI. With rest, the follow-up MRI looked much better because the running and jumping had stopped.
But what her body really needed was to function how it’s supposed to.
And a body CANNOT function correctly if the skull bones are pinned together by a dental retainer.
Remember, teeth are attached to bone. If you pin the teeth together, you pin the bones together.
And if you pin cranial bones together there can be far reaching consequences.
In this young girls case, she had the retainer removed and within days felt a 90% reduction in symptoms. Now our job is to keep working on her cranial joints to free the compression the braces and retainers created.
Some people need more work than others for a complete resolution.
Note: I never tell patients to get their permanent wire dental retainers removed. I show them what is happening to their neuromuscular system before and after stimulation to the retainer. They make their own decisions. And if they do choose to get them removed, I always tell them to wear the plastic retainers at night to preserve their orthodontic investment. All three of my children had braces as well!