Whole Living Guide > by Dylana Accolla
Treating the Teeth as Part of the Whole
Illustration by Jim Bliss

When the third toothache in a row walked into the office recently, I knew it was time to do an article on dentists. But my patients are looking for “alternative” dentists. Those who are more health-oriented, who refuse to do mercury fillings and remove them, who are exploring alternative methods of performing root canals, who try to use fewer toxic chemicals in their practice, or who are in other ways exploring alternative ways of dealing with teeth. I was also looking for dentists who don’t just treat the teeth, but who connect the teeth to the whole body.

Dentist as Healer
The first place I was sent was to the “guru of alternative dentistry,” Maurice “Buzzy” Tischler, DDS, in Woodstock. Buzzy is a very calm, clear, bright-eyed man sporting a white beard (but no beads). Buzzy pooh-poohed the suggestion that he is a guru of natural teeth medicine. Labels aside, he is more than happy to admit his love of energetic medicine, beginning with the mind-body connection. “People don’t realize that medicine starts with the mind,” he began our interview. “They don’t realize the power they have with the mind. I always share this with my patients. I explain the sequence of things to them, that what starts in their minds becomes manifested physically. When people come for treatment, I have them picture their healing in their minds. ‘First, get centered. Then picture the result as if it has already happened. Get excited about it.’”

This is coming from a professor at the NYU Dental College with 45 years of experience. Tischler is an impressive juxtaposition of the right credentials from both the establishment and from out of the box. Of his teachers, the one he says he learned the most from is Rajneesh. His other important teacher was Edward Kauffman, former dean of the NYU Dental College. As a result, our interview was a balance of metaphysics and dental issues. I like that balance, frankly, and once he gets talking about dentistry, he is articulate and concise.

“I used to teach that most TMJ [temperomandibular joint] problems came from the bite. But in my practice, I noticed that some of the worst bites I saw were in people who had no TMJ problem. Now, I got into acupuncture in 1980 to use it as anesthesia. But eventually, I realized that if you balance the ear meridians with acupuncture, you could have a profound effect on the bite problems.”

Tischler’s interest in alternative medicine originated with the inoculation and ensuing illness of his third son. Tischler spent two years at pediatricians’ offices before reading a book about the effects of drugs and chemicals on the body. “I’ll never forget one of the analogies in that book. It was about pain being like a ringing telephone. Analgesics are like ripping the phone off the wall – you stop the ringing but you don’t get the message. That got me.” Immediately afterward he tried a homeopathic remedy on his son, who went from crying and screaming to quiet.

“So I went to school to learn homeopathy.”

From that point Tischler’s life and practice have been one long exploration. He uses ear acupuncture instead of anesthesia for some patients and uses it to help calm fear in others. When people have a real dentist fear, he sends them to see his daughter Barbara, a hypnotherapist who also works at the clinic. He uses homeopathic remedies based on geometric patterns, electrically magnetizes the sugar to make the remedies himself, and uses magnet therapies. Tischler also makes frequent use of light therapies, including low level lasers, a Chi-light that, when set to certain frequencies, copies the Qi energy of Qigong masters, and a Hazel Parcells lamp that desensitizes material for a sensitive person by changing the object’s molecular shape. “I don’t know how or why it works,” he said, but Tischler finds it particularly useful for the plastic in partial dentures.

As a dentist who treats the whole body through a number of alternative methods, there are three main issues in the dentistry profession itself that concern Tischler. The first is the use of toxic chemicals in dentistry, particularly mercury.

Tischler is right to be concerned with mercury—it is an incredibly toxic substance that has long been known to be a neurotoxin, affecting the architecture of the brain. It is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease. More recently it has been indicted as an endocrine disrupter as well, causing harm to the reproductive system. Studies have shown blood mercury levels in Alzheimer’s patients are more than twofold higher and as much as threefold higher in early onset. Results from the National Academy of Science last year indicated that an estimated 375,000 babies a year are at-risk for neurological, and possibly other mercury-related problems, not 60,000 as previously estimated. And according to a study of 180 dentists by researchers at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland, dentists themselves are more likely to suffer memory and kidney problems that could be due to long-term exposure to mercury in tooth fillings.

So yes, mercury is toxic, and every silver filling in your mouth, known as an amalgam, contains 50 percent mercury. Some researchers believe that chewing gum or drinking hot liquids can vaporize minute amounts of mercury, which then easily cross the blood-brain barrier and begin to affect the brain.

The number of dentists still using mercury is “unbelievable,” said Tischler. “But you can hurt a person when you take the fillings out, “ he cautioned. “The mercury can get into the cells, and it may not even show up in the blood and urine tests. I prefer to test energetically, and there is new equipment out to do that.

“Not all my patients seem to be affected by mercury toxicity, of course, so I don’t just categorically take everybody’s mercury fillings out,” says Tischler. “I have to diagnose each case individually. I do kinesiology on everyone, and I also send people off for hair analysis. Then, if the person needs the fillings removed, I assess the case. If they are strong and able to take it, I’ll take all their fillings out at all once so they only have to go through the detox reaction once. If they are weak or ill, I might delay taking the fillings out at all, or take them out one at a time, until they build up strength.”

What should a client expect wh en the fillings come out? Headaches, whole body pain, aches, irritability, “anything you can imagine,” says Tischler.

“But there are other considerations concerning mercury fillings, such as what do you replace the filling with? What kinds of restorations are safe? Some people say no metal at all. Others say that gold is a good replacement. Others use composite inlays made of plastic, bell glass, porcelain, or other materials. It’s hard to know what to use, so again, each person has to be tested specifically,” he said.

Cavitations, or the hole left in a bone after a tooth is pulled or after an infection in the jaw, are the second major concern. “The issue is that after clearing an infection, some of it remains in the bone. It can’t be seen on an x-ray, and it can’t be found except through measuring the energy flow. I use something called a Cavitat machine that measures and maps out the bones and shows the cavitations. Then I send the patient to New York City to have a laser to clean them out. It’s a very expensive process that only a few people are doing, but I think it’s the best way to deal with cavitations.”

The third controversial issue in dentistry that patients should also be concerned about is the root canal. “When they first started doing root canals, they thought it was adequate to clean out the main canal in the tooth,” commented Tischler. “But the access canals that connect to the main canal don’t get clean and infectious bacteria remain, constantly circulating in the canals, then into the blood stream, and then throughout the body, so that the infection becomes systemic. I think it’s best to clean out the canals with a special laser that also cleans out the accessory canal.”

The traditional material used to fill the canal after it is cleaned out is called gutta percha. It is put in with a sealer containing a heavy metal, cadmium. There are claims that it is non-toxic, but Tischler doesn’t buy it. He is currently supporting the use of a new product, called Biocalex that has been used in Europe for over 15 years. “Most canal specialists in this country say it’s baloney, so this is really ‘out there’ in terms of the dentistry field,” Tischler said.

Biocalex is a product that uses calcium oxide, zinc oxide, and a special ethyl glycol/water liquid. The calcium oxide’s affinity to fluid (in this case endodontic liquids) results in a volumetric expansion that causes penetration into the most inaccessible canals. Furthermore, these materials are ultimately converted to calcium carbonate and create a wall of calcification at vital tissue, thereby sealing the root apices and vital dentinal tubules, something that existing dental techniques and materials couldn’t do previously.

Tischler’s support of the use of Biocalex seems typical of his practice, which embraces traditional methods of healing, incorporates the cutting edge in a discerning and intelligent fashion, and integrates both with good training and technique.

A last note on Tischler. His practice is a family practice that three of his four children have participated in. Michael, a dentist, now runs the practice and lectures around the country on dental implants and bone grafting. Barbara is a hypnotherapist who does work on addictions and dentist fear. Matthew is a chiropractor who has left the practice and now works in Atlanta. Tischler’s youngest son Eric will be graduating from acupuncture school next year, and chances are we’ll see him in Woodstock very soon.

Teeth as Healing Vehicle
Fred Milton, DDS is a dentist who is taking tooth tweaking to the heights of a healing art. Dr. Milton, recently arrived to the Hudson Valley from Florida, uses his knowledge of teeth to rebalance the body. In particular, Milton says he finds his work to be quite effective for dealing with chronic physical pain.

“In traditional dental school, they teach you to try to have the teeth fit in the temperomandibular joint. Instead, I try to make the teeth fit into the whole body. I begin with the body and see where it’s out of balance. Then I test to see if there is a tooth component. When I fix the tooth, balance is restored,” said Milton.

“There is a lot of chronic pain out there related to the teeth,” Milton said, “a lot of medically diagnosed fibromyalgia patients who aren’t fibromyalgia patients at all. The work I do is for these people, who have gone from doctor to doctor, have tried all sorts of medications, acupuncture, supplements, and nothing is working. It might just be their teeth.”

The system he uses, called Resultant Force Vectors Techniques (RFV), was developed by a young dentist, Dan Gole, DDS, from Hastings, Michigan. Gole’s discovery that body pain could be alleviated through the teeth was quite serendipitous, said Milton. “One day Gole was adjusting the tooth of a patient in a wheelchair, and after he was finished, he asked his patient how he felt. ‘The tooth feels fine,’ replied the patient, ‘but even more interesting is that the pain I’ve had in my leg for a couple weeks has completely disappeared as well.’”

How can the teeth be linked to other areas of the body? “Every time you swallow, your teeth touch and your body gets a neuro-muscular reading off your teeth,” Milton explained. If your teeth aren’t in balance, your body readjusts. In fact, your body enters a state of constant readjustment. After a while, you become a chronic pain patient.

“For example, you could have just gotten a filling that feels very high,” Milton continued. “The body compensates for that and enters a chronic readjustment state. After a few days you don’t feel the crown is very high anymore, but in this chronic readjustment state, the message travels throughout the body and your body is affected by it. Later, the readjustment may translate into chronic pain. And you have no memory of how it started.”

Milton uses a series of muscle and teeth tests to determine whether the body is out of balance in relation to the teeth. Once an imbalance is determined, Milton says he adjusts or “reshapes” teeth by removing certain areas of the tooth, which translates into scraping off very small portions of the enamel. “I am talking about a very small amount of the tooth,” he clarifies. “It is not at all the traditional dentistry technique of scraping called equilibration. It’s very minor, just a nudge to get the body to readjust itself.”

Does Milton mean to say that the body will shift in balance by scraping a tooth? Yes. It is similar to acupuncture, he said, in that the insertion of a needle into a point causes an energetic shift of the entire body. So, too, a scrape of a tooth results in a similar energetic shift.

Sometimes, says Milton, scraping isn’t enough. “Say someone has had some bad dentistry and comes in with 25 crowns in his mouth. I might have to start with a night guard to bring the body to better balance and go from there. Or a patient has had a serious traumatic accident and her teeth, which grew in to a balanced mouth and body, now no longer fit the traumatized body. I would work on her teeth to fit her new body.”
How would he do that? Does he do physical manipulations in addition to teeth manipulations? “No, I don’t do body manipulations, “ he replied, “but I can adjust every vertebra in the back through the teeth.”
Milton does regular holistic denstistry, too. So if you’re a new patient looking for an alternative dentist to take out those mercury fillings because you think they might be related to your chronic body pain, Milton might be your man. Dr. Milton is now working at the Tischler Family Practice, 2565 Route 212,Woodstock, on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. To reach him, call 679-7339.

For more information on dentists as healers, visit www.dentistry health.com. Visit www.chronogram.com for more information on
alternative dentists and a bonus Web feature on TMJ specialist Barry Mark, DDS, by Dylana Accolla.