The Importance Of The Correct Volume

Though generally unrecognized as such, the effect of occlusion is universal - everything from vision to posture can be adversely affected when the bite is not in harmony with the body. In this clip, watch the body's response to different Aqualizer® volumes.

DR. STEVEN OLMOS: When the jaw joint is inflamed, it causes the head to lean forward in a compensatory way, which entraps a lot of the extensor muscles at the back of the head and raises the shoulder up, which entraps the cervical nerves that produce the brachial plexis that go on to integrate the arm and the, excuse me, radial, median, and ulnar nerves. So for patients who have these kinds of jaw joint problems, they have a sensitivity in the radial nerve, of which we'll demonstrate. Titrating the proper volume here will determine whether or not this is efficacious for reestablishing balance, and so, we'll demonstrate this. May I have you put your arms in this position? This reproduces falling forward, okay, and entraps that radial nerve. We're going to ask you to hold this position, and we're going to just test this. A withdrawal response, by stimulation of this radial nerve, now, we'll see whether or not the person is able to stand that pressure. We need you to hold your arms up and all we're asking you to do is hold that position and we'll see. And so, with very little pressure, whichever arm we push, this patient cannot do that. Now, there may be an orthopedic problem in one of these shoulders, so we need to discern the loss of strength in the shoulder from a orthopedic problem, as opposed to a nerve entrapment, neuritis, so let's see whether this person has an orthopedic problem, not being able to hold her arms up, or whether it is neurologic. Can you hold those up? So even ones that have been altered in motor vehicle accidents or other kinds of trauma, the real trauma is the neuritis, and we just reversed that by scratching the underside. There is a withdrawal response from that away, which looks, clinically, as if a return to strength. There's a loss of strength, not because of orthopedic reasons, because of neural reasons. Now, if the origin of this is the jaw joint, we should be able to reverse this process. But it is important to mirror the correct vertical dimension. I'll demonstrate this with some tongue blades first, and then, I'll show you with the Aqualizer how it equates. A tongue blade is approximately two millimeters and we'll demonstrate that. We'll place these different dimensions and see the body's response to this. Okay? Previously, we saw in this patient that we needed approximately two to three millimeters of vertical separation. We'll try one tongue blade first. Okay. And put your arms in this position for me. Hold that. Do the same test. Hold the position, please. Okay. She's not able to do that. Place two tongue blades because, originally, our thought process is that--there we go, that she was around three millimeters of separation. Now, she's quite strong. Okay. And we'll show you that if you place too much separation, it takes people out of their range. Please hold that. Hold this, please, and you can see she won't be able to hold herself like that. That directly relates to her loss of balance. I'm going to have you stand up, please. Okay. Can you put your arms in this position? Rigidly hold this in space, rigid, all your strength, please. Okay. And you can see she easily is displaced. Get back down to her range. Okay. Hold this, please, rigid, concentrate. You can't see I can't budge her. Down below the range, rigidly hold this, all your strength, please. You can see how easy it is to dislodge her. This is why it's critical to titrate the proper vertical and this equates to the differences in the Aqualizers. Okay? Is this the low? So here's the low volume, which has a range to it. There we go. Got it? Okay. I'm going to go ahead and check. We rigidly hold the position here, and you can see it won't work for this patient. Okay? And here's the high, and let's try the high volume. Okay. Got it? Okay. And we'll try it again. Rigidly hold it. Concentrate, please. And you can see that doesn’t work either. Out of range, either too low or too high, will not correct these, and would not be good starting points for any type of therapy. You need to correct volume to restore balance and proper neurology. Okay. Ready? Rigid, and I can't budge her with all of my strength. So this is an important understanding of both physiology and distribution of weight forces and it's a dramatic representation of proper neurotherapy.