Physiologic Dentistry for TMJ and Chronic Pain: Bite Alignment, Airway Health, Smile Makeover & Oral Wellness

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way. Hi everyone, welcome to another episode on the Holistic Dentistry Podcast. I'm super excited today to have one of my friends with me to talk about what we do as dentists for chronic pain. This is super important because a lot of people live with chronic pain and they have no idea that a physiologic dentist can actually help them. Dr. David Frey, We've known each other for, I wanna say, 20 years now. He's a leading cosmetic and physiologic dentist in Beverly Hills, close to where I work, with over 30 years of experience transforming smiles and restoring optimal jaw function. Known for his integrative approach, Dr. Frey combines advanced cosmetic dentistry with physiologic principles to help patients achieve not only beautiful smiles, but a healthier, more balanced life. His expertise includes full mouth rehabs, TMJ therapy, airway-focused dentistry, and smile makeovers that prioritize both aesthetics and function. Dr. Frey is dedicated to treating the root causes of chronic pain, not just giving people night guards. And we could talk about your philosophy on night guards. He are treating clenching, grinding, headaches, and bite imbalances. I wanna go into over what kind of tools you use, cuz you use very sophisticated tools for this. And last but not least, Dr. Frey is the author of The Physiologic Dentist, which explores the connection between jaw health, posture, breathing, and whole body wellness. Dr. Frey's work has been featured in national media, and he's recognized for his ability to create life-changing results for patients seeking relief from TMJ dysfunctions, as well as those looking to elevate their smile, through high-level cosmetic artistry. So David, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Sanda. That's fantastic. Yeah. Thank you very much.

I'm happy to have you here. I mean, you and I have worked on a few clients together. Basically the way it works, I work on the foundation and then you, they take care of everything else, not just teeth, but you look at jaw function and TMJ and really help people feel better in their bodies. Tell me, tell me the kind of patients that actually come to see you, like who's your ideal candidate?

Well, we have different types of patients. We have almost any type of patient would be fine in our dental practice. We do everything, but we really focus in on TMJ health, and we also focus in on cosmetics here in Beverly Hills. So, um, when it comes to TMJ, a lot of patients don't even know they have it. And typically there's a difference between like signs and symptoms. So they may have the signs of TMJ, but no real symptoms. Symptoms, but it's not really driving them a lot of pain. Once all of a sudden they get pain around their head and neck, or wherever it is— headaches, neck pain, it's like a syndrome— then they start looking for dentists that would help with TMJ. So once the symptoms hit, that's usually when we find the patients and they come in. That's for that. But the— yeah, go ahead.

What are symptoms for TMJ?

Well, the ones that are overlooked is like headaches. That's number one. So when you ask patients how often do they get headaches and they go, "Um, not that often, maybe twice a week or once a week." That's a lot. Neck pains, patients live with constant neck tension. They always blame it on something else. "I sit in front of a computer. It's the way I drive too much," or whatever, but they don't blame it on like a structural functional imbalance that may be going on in your body. And so, you know, the body works, you know, together, it's one big machine. And so when things are off alignment up here, they can create problems down here in your neck, especially, and even below.

Yeah. I mean, what inspired you to go from, you know, obviously we know we finished dental school and we don't know much. What inspired you to actually go this way really understand the whole big picture.

The thing is, the thing is, is that in the '90s, when I first became a dentist, I was very not into metal dentistry. So anything you can do without metal, I was like very interested in. So it was all about bonding porcelains and composites into tooth structure. And once they really figured it out, which was like in the mid-'90s when I really learned how to do it. And I started really bonding a lot of smile makeovers in the mid to late '90s. I said, wow, this material is so incredible. I wonder if it can be placed over the bite table on people's teeth. And so I started restoring all people's bites with this porcelain work without metal, bonding it onto the tooth structure, and I needed a better way to place the bite into its proper function. What they taught in dental school was seriously ridiculous. And it's still taught today. And it's like, it's mind-blowing on what they teach dentists on how to restore a bite. The number one thing they do that's ridiculous is they have something called centric relation. They're still using it today. And if you talk to a medical doctor about its principles, Any medical doctor would say, what? You can't do this. Doesn't sound right. What they do is they take their hands and they hand manipulate the jaw into a position that's actually compressive in the joint. It's the, it's the uppermost forward spot in the joint. And when you talk to a medical doctor, they'll say, we want to decompress joints. We don't want to push them into places or, or cause any type of force. Or when they, you know, when you talk to a dentist about it, when they're not forcing it, they use the word romancing it. They're romancing the jawline into it. But I mean, forceful, it wasn't for me. It wasn't for me. So I learned, I had to learn a different modality that one more that made, made clinical sense, practical sense. It had to resonate in my heart. And so I stumbled upon what's called physiologic dentistry. And what physiologic dentistry does is it incorporates the muscles into the diagnosis. And when you look at a lower jaw, and I actually have one here.

Oh, great.

There's a, there's a jaw here with, with a bunch of muscles attached. There's 4 main muscles that attach to the lower jaw. And just like a puppet on strings, the pup, those strings have to be nice and loose and not tangled. And so When you ask, like, um, you know, basically we want to get those muscles relaxed and that's how we kind of go to find a bite position. So that's, you know, back to these other dentists for a second. They, they basically don't even look at the muscles. They don't use any, any diagnostic aids to look at muscles.

That's bad. It is just so important, I think, to finally start to learn it the right way. And, and yeah, so much of what we were taught in dental school was so limiting. Yeah. So how do, how do you incorporate this? How, how do you start a patient? Let's say somebody comes to you, walks in the door. What are some of the tools you're using in order to uncover these deficiencies?

Yeah, so there's something called EMGs, which stands for electromyography. And what it is, it's like, it's just a sensor that goes on the skin And those muscles I showed you run right along the skin layer. So we put a sensor on and the sensor shows like a Richter scale, how much activity is buzzing through the muscle. And all we want to know is that, that low muscle data when you're resting is good. And if it's high, if it's really hyperactive, that's not good. So we want to get— well, how can we get those muscles to calm down? And so That's when we use a TENS machine. And TENS machines have been around for probably a century. They're ubiquitous in chiropractors' and physical therapists' offices to buzz out tension out of muscles, break up, break up the muscle into relaxation. We use that on the jaw for a good 30, 40 minutes, and we get the jaw to relax. And then once it relaxes, We actually take a bite imprint when the jaw's relaxed in that position. So we're kind of working backwards. We relax the muscles first, we decompress the joint first, and then we build a bite plane that's sort of level to the horizon. It's not going like this or like this or like that. It's sort of level to the horizon. We test it out and then we call this phase 1 when we test it out. So it's a, it's a reversible procedure, meaning that We just wanna make sure that what we're doing is going to work. And so we try it out first with a temporary bite plane, one that's sort of like not permanent.

Okay.

And we will have the patient wear that for anywhere from 1 to 3 months prior to actually doing any real dentistry. And if we were gonna change somebody's bite and make their bite better physiologic bite position, We would actually do this exactly the same way, whether they had TMJ or didn't have TMJ. If we're changing a bite, we want to test it first, make sure it feels really good. And that's how, that's pretty much how we do it.

Okay. And you mentioned that we want to see if it's working. Do you have some instances when this might not work?

Well, you never know, like, what the actual problem is until you get down and dirty, so to speak, with the patient. So we want to, want to try it out. We call it the zone of comfort. So the zone of comfort can be a very wide zone, or it could be a very narrow zone. So it's like goalposts, like when you're kicking a ball through the field goal to get your 3 points, the field goal could be really narrow or it could be really wide. And so by placing in this orthotic, this bite plane that we feel is physiologically correct, that's in harmony with the joint and the muscles, we want to make sure that any symptoms these patients are having has greatly diminished or have gone away. And so that's why we're testing it. We don't win on everybody, but we win probably 90% of the time.

That's very high percentage. Yeah, for sure.

Some people take longer time to get into that zone of comfort. Some people, get right in. Working on human beings is not predictable. And so we always want to kind of test first before we actually dive into the water.

Absolutely. Now, I know you use so many advanced technologies in your office, like Biopac, Tekscan. Tell us a little bit about this Tekscan.

So the Tekscan is basically just digital bite paper. Now, the first time I saw it, it was like, 2002, I was at a cosmetic dentistry convention in Hawaii, and I stumbled upon this booth where this guy has this bite paper, very thin. It's like 100 microns thick, which is still a little too thick, but you bite on it and it will tell me which tooth hits first and which tooth hits hardest to the millisecond.

That's amazing.

And you can slow it up like a movie. You know, when the first time I saw it, I said, I gotta have it. So I had a couple mentors and I went, they were at the show and I went and I talked to both of them and they both said, don't buy it. The paper's too thick or this and that. And it was like polit— they were speaking from political, I found out later, political reasons that they were telling me not to buy it. But, um, I mean, I still bought it.

It makes perfect sense because, okay, for people listening that are maybe non-dentists, you know, when you go to the dentist, they put in a few crowns or a crown, they take a blue paper and they have you tap, tap, tap to mark the bite. So what's the problem with that, David? Like what, what are the limitations?

You don't know which tooth. Oh my God. So you show, you bring this up in a lecture and you have the patient bite, take a photo of all the blue marks around the teeth. And ask the dentist in the room, which tooth hits first, which one hits hardest? So, excuse me, is there water for me? The, um, no one can tell you which one hits first or which one hits hardest. With the bite paper, the computerized bite paper, that solves that issue. And I've had that for over 20 years. Both those mentors who told me not to buy it, They now use it.

So, yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty incredible. And working in your office, I've seen how you use this. I mean, typically dentists will go ahead and adjust all the blue areas that show up. But for example, when you're using this paper, do you find— or this sensor, do you find like you're being more conservative in terms of adjustment?

Totally. Totally. And it's like you're very— you don't want to touch anybody. You can cause them more pain. And it's sort of like if you have a table with 3 legs or 4 legs and one of them's wobbling, what we normally do at the restaurant is we take paper and we raise up the one that's wobbling.

Yes.

What the dentist is doing here is they're cutting down the other 3 legs to try and bring it down to the one that's short instead of raising it up. And what, what, and so we're—

why is that a problem? I mean, can that affect your TMJ?

Oh my God. Yeah. So you start lowering the vertical dimensions, the actual joint, the joint right here, which we call a condyle, is on the same bone as the teeth. So if you start adjusting the teeth down, you're going to, you're going to compress the joint even more. And so you have to be very careful. I had so many patients that come to see me that are like, I had no pain, then the dentist did one crown, and now I have all this pain, headaches, neck pain, jaw pain, and they, you know, and it's been like this for months and I can't get rid of it. The dentist started the whole thing and created the whole thing, which is not the case. It's more like it's just the straw that broke the camel's back, and it's the one that was holding up the body preventing the symptoms from coming, but the patient had severe signs of TMJ even before the work, and the dentist actually hit the tooth that was maybe keeping the body at bay for so long.

Yes. So true. I mean, do you remember, like, if I think back in dental school, I don't, I don't think I got much TMJ education in dental school or TMD, you know, how to treat disorders.

And what's, what's fascinating about what I learned to help patients with TMD is that it's actually just the way the bite should be for healthy people. So not just people that come to us in pain, but people with just crazy bites that are like not level, not this, not that. If you just want to restore them properly, This is the right way of doing it.

Yes.

Relax the muscles, let the decompress and let the jaw go where it needs to go on a level place. So that's sort of what I've learned over time is that, that this is just, this is just dentistry, but it's just corrected.

It's just, it's all connected. Exactly. We can't just zoom in on teeth and unfortunately in dental school, Still, it stopped, like, just zooming on teeth and not much about the rest of the head.

A lot of patients— oh yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, go ahead, David.

I was saying a lot of doctors call me, dentists who actually had this problem, and they asked me to fix it for them. And it's the same thing. If they just raise the bite or they do anything to change the bite, you can just create a lot of chaos if you don't know what really what you're doing. And that's why most dentists won't change the bite. They keep them exactly in their habitual bite, even if the bite's not perfect and they know it's not perfect. They don't do anything to enhance it because it could— it's a deep rabbit hole and they could go the wrong way with the patient.

Yeah. So super important for those dentists that are listening, you must do a TMJ evaluation, even if you don't think the patient has TMJ problems. You have to do an evaluation before you even start drilling on teeth.

And that's where I'm telling you, having a full head CT in your office makes a world of difference. And you know, that's when we work together, we take a full head CT and I can see the joints. I could see if they're compressed or if they're worn down or if they're eroded. I can see the neck. I could see if the neck posture, because teeth and neck have a great posture. I can see the airway. I can see how you're breathing through your nose. I can see all the sinuses if they're clear, plus all the teeth. And there's just so much information that we get from a CT. And that's why we usually, we call our office like a CT-centered office because we take a CT on everybody and then I can really see inside their head to avoid mistakes when restoring their cases or doing dentistry.

I'm so glad you brought this up because as we, you and I both know, there's a lot of dentists that don't even know how to read a CT scan because the education is not there. And they still work with limited x-rays. They just really do bite wings. That's it. And they diagnose. I mean, you know, I agree with you. In order to see the full picture, we must do a 3D x-rays of the surrounding structures, not just the teeth. And airway, let's talk about airway and like positioning of the bite. Do you find that after you place the bite in the ideal situation that that improves people's breathing?

Well, with the CT, you can kind of figure out where the problem is. Is it in the nasopharynx, up in the nose, or is it in the oropharynx? Is it lower? So you want to know where actually is the obstruction coming from. A lot of times the obstruction can be what we call low tongue posture, just the tongue not being up on the palate where it's supposed to be nice and strong. It falls down into the airway, obstructing the airway. And with the CT, we can measure the volume in the airway. We usually never tell patients what to do with their tongue when we take a CT. We just have them close their teeth together, let it go around, and then we catch their tongue. In its natural postural state. And so we can figure out if they have a weak tongue, so to speak, and whether they need to improve that. But that's one— that's one way. The other way is a lot of patients have what's called a deep bite or a deep overbite. And if they have a deep bite or deep overbite, I can relax the muscles, allow the jaw to come down and forward. And when it does, the tongue follows it. Opening up the airway and enhancing the amount of airway that can— air that can go down the airway.

Makes total sense.

Patients report better sleep. And that's a lot of times we'll do a sleep study. We're not allowed to treat for sleep as dentists, but we're allowed to screen for sleep. So we have like some of these sleep studies and we have them read by a pulmonologist and they're uploaded. They have these WatchPads, they're called. It's just a watch. You throw it away in the morning. It's a one-time use, and you just wear it for a day, and the data gets uploaded to the pulmonologist. It gets read, and when— it's a functional sleep study. And so we kind of can see where we are before we even start treating the patient. And then when we're done, say, restoring their teeth to a gorgeous smile and a perfect bite, we can have them take another sleep study and see if we improved it.

I love this holistic approach you have to everything. You're not just looking, you know, at giving people beautiful smiles. You make sure that they're going to function better, less headaches and just better posture, but also better sleep, which is an important part of health. Now, people are out there wanting veneers, you know, I just want a full set of teeth. What should these patients know before pursuing a smile makeover?

Yeah, so I love doing smile makeovers. I've been passionate about it since the '90s, and it was one of the first things I really learned as more than just being a tooth doctor to become a smile doctor. And it takes a lot of skill and experience and education to get to the point where you can create these gorgeous smiles for people. And, you know, I love doing it. When a patient comes in, they say, "Well, I want my smile fixed, not just the top, but I want the bottom too." Well, if they're going to do 10 teeth on top and 10 on the bottom, let's look at your bite. And see if we can enhance the bite. And a lot of patients will come in and they would say to me, I went— I wanted to get veneers with another dentist, but the dentist told me I can't do it because my bite's not good. And so what we do is we incorporate a better bite into a better smile, and they actually work together. The dentistry will last longer if the bite's in its right place, but your face will look more beautiful. It actually looks like— we call it a dental facelift. Because something happens. They just relax more around the face and the eyes. And we look at the before pictures and we look at the after pictures. They're dramatic. How did we get such an incredible change? And what we did was it's that neuromuscular aspect that really incorporating into the smile that brings in the proper proportions and allows the face to relax a little more. To get what we call an enhanced, really, end result. And so many dentists, they just basically restore in the habitual bite because they don't want to change the bite.

They're afraid, actually, of causing problems.

Yeah, they're afraid. And there's reason to be, because, you know, it's like if you don't know what you don't know, you can stumble like we talked about. But the Smile Makeover, I end up doing a lot of full mouth makeovers. Because if they're doing 20 teeth, what's a couple more teeth on each side? Just do the whole thing and get it done. The porcelain works so well. I mean, when I first became a dentist, which was 35 years ago, and I was doing this porcelain back then, the jury was out. How long does this last? The patient would ask. And I would say, well, I don't know. You know, it's so new, the technology. But now at the later part of my career, You know, now that I've been doing them for 35 years and really have done in the tens of thousands of porcelain veneers, I would say that with confidence that they will last you for decades when treated right. That means going to the periodontist or the dentist or getting the gums cleaned on a regular basis, just like your regular teeth, flossing every day. And taking care of it. And so it's like if I parked a Rolls-Royce in your garage, you would make sure there's no dust on it. You would clean it all the time. And that's what happens when we do these smile makeovers. If your teeth are like getting worn down and discolored and chipping and they're just not— and they need a fresh look after so much time of using them, it brings out Hey, I want to take care of these teeth now. And, you know, they're going to last a long time if you take care of them, like anything.

Yes, absolutely. And I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier about this dental facelift, because we know, at least in Los Angeles, especially Beverly Hills, you know, women pay a lot of money for fillers, for cosmetic procedures that don't typically last long, right? Every 6 months you have to do something else. So what people don't realize is what you just said. It's like that if you're supporting the back, the jaw, I mean, then, you know, your muscles will change. So, um, and I think not only that, the posture—

uh, sorry to interrupt, but the posture of just raising those back molars, your head weighs 10 pounds. It allows the head to lay on the spine so much better. And when people have better posture and they're standing straighter, they're actually more attractive also.

Yeah.

But go ahead and continue. I just wanted to add that in.

No, I love that. Exactly. 'Cause you looked like you're standing up with more confidence. But about like women that have like these really deep nasolabial folds, is that, can that be bite related?

Absolutely. So these diminish a lot for patients and it's because we call it the vertical dimension, but they're just not in the right proportion between here and here. So there's proportions in nature called the golden proportion. And the more people are in these proportions, the prettier they look. The Greeks supposedly discovered this 5,000 years ago, but now we use it today as plastic surgeons of the smile. And we, we try to get these proportions. When you fill this out, these lines will go away. Not only that, your lips can become more pout. They can pout out a little more. You can have more upper lip instead of being sucked under by just bringing the teeth out a little more and just broadening the smile. And so we, we do so many great things for patients' face just to enhance it. And it really lifts the skin in all different directions, including around the eyes because the eyes like wake up.

Yes.

And so it's really amazing.

Yeah, I love what you said also about supporting the upper lip. I feel like, you know, with orthodontics and people having some teeth removed, then everything kind of gets pulled back. And now especially women are left without, you know, lips. So what do you do for cases like that where, you know, people are like, oh my God, you know, feels like my face is sunken in. Can you help them?

Oh yeah. I mean, we help both ways actually. So like by building that, when we build that physiologic correct bite position, we get this physiologic correct face. And so once I have, it's like a canvas and I'm an artist, uh, then I can paint properly and I can build out exactly what the face is lacking and, and put it in, incorporate it. Just the opposite of what you're saying is so many women come in with lots of filler in their lips. So much that you can't even see the smile. And so by incorporating this type of dentistry, we actually open up what we call the aesthetic zone. The aesthetic zone is where I'm going to paint in between the lips and how much I have. Like, so some people, they've really sworn you can really see the teeth. And because the lips are just so voluptuous and they just need a smile, to live with these lips. And so we actually do that and we get tremendous results using this technique.

Amazing. I think you have some before and after on your website, if I remember correctly. Do you?

Oh yeah. I mean, we have lots of pictures. Oh my God.

What's your—

I mean, thousands.

What, what's the website that you want people to go to?

Aperfectwhitesmile.com.

Okay. And we're going to put that below in the show notes as well.

Thank you, Sanda Moldovanova. I appreciate that.

Yeah, this is such interesting conversations. Usually, you know, people would think, oh, you know, dentists just talk about teeth, but we clearly covered here, you know, facial aesthetics, jaw pain, jaw tension, jaw grinding. And I want to ask you in your, you know, words, what is the relationship between oral health and whole body wellness?

Well, I think there's a lot that goes on, and I know we're egocentric because we're dentists and everything seems to revolve around the mouth. But we know, like, I think, you know, from just like the bacteria that's in our mouth, that there's so much good bacteria that aid in digestion and that we swallow every day, and that goes into the gut, and our gut health is really reliant on a lot of like what's in the mouth. And I know like some of those, like Listerine, can be like kill all the good bacteria. And then, you know, you can be affecting your stomach and your gut health by, by doing things like that. And so, I mean, a lot of diseases we know manifest themselves in the mouth, like diabetes. If you see a patient, all of a sudden their gums are losing bone, and then we need to get a blood workup. Done and then find out that they could be, you know, suffering from diabetes. And, but there's a lot of diseases that would manifest where we find it in the mouth.

Yeah. No, no, absolutely. So it's good that, you know, as dentists, we have to pay attention to that. For someone struggling with chronic jaw tension and grinding, what are the first steps that you would advise them to take towards finding relief?

So we have a mnemonic called SHAME, S-H-A-M-E, and what SHAME stands for is soft diet, heat, analgesics like Advil, M for mouthguard, and E for exercises.

I love it.

And so, yeah, so when we get a patient who comes in, we incorporate SHAME, and we make sure that they're on every letter that we're doing something. So we actually have, we have a mouthguard, one called clenchrelief.com, Clench Relief. You can make it in 3 minutes. The patient can make it on their own, but it actually resets the lower jaw into more of that physiologic position that we're looking for to try and give them relief. Making a mouthguard just over their teeth or just putting plastic over their teeth Patients will come in with like a bag of mouthguards from previous dentists and like, every mouthguard they give me, I break or I clench through it. Well, that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to bring the jaw into that relaxed position, then making the mouthguard over that. And they won't clench there. The mouth, the body's more relaxed there. They actually feel good in this position, not not the urge to grind and clench their teeth together. So it's just not about putting plastic over teeth.

Yeah. And that's just a Band-Aid, basically.

And what we do in our, in our office is we try to make mouthguards that are functional, meaning we want you to chew and eat with it. So if you think about it, like if their joint is so far back and the disc is slipped off and it's in, it's usually in front of the joint and they just As soon as they take it off, the mouthguard, and they go and eat, that's ridiculous in my mind because it's like, pretend you have a bad knee and the doctor gives you crutches on your knee with a splint and says, you know, be careful. And the patient says, you know, Doc, I can't run with this splint on. I have to take it off to run. Like, how are you going to heal the knee if you take it off to run? That's what eating's like. You take a splint off, then you start chewing, the joint goes all the way back, starts crushing up all that tissue that we're trying to rehabilitate and fix, and then they just destroy it every time they eat. So we want, we want the patients to eat with these guards. They want to make them functional. And we want to actually start to heal and rehabilitate what's going on in the face.

Yeah. How long does it take, the healing process? Let's say if somebody has TMJ pain, you know, and you palpate it and it's tender. On an average.

So, yeah, so on a, believe it or not, like, so we'll put these bite planes in and we adjust them. We always see them the next day after we put it in, cuz maybe something's rough or something might be like, just needs to be smoothed out a little. So we always see them the very next day. We want them to eat on it for a day and see what's going on. And I have to tell you, majority of the patients are doing a lot better. So we have them fill out a progress report and like 0 to 10, all these symptoms. And then we say, you know, are they severe, moderate, or mild? And a lot of patients will move over a column. If they're like a lot of severe, they show up the next day and they're more moderate. And then over time we get them over to the mild column. And so we're always checking their progress, but I would say it's pretty immediate. That the patients feel some sort of relief, like in the neck, around the head. They are feeling— and like, we ask, are you sure you can live with this? Are you sure you'll be okay for a day? Yeah. And like, they, you know, they're fine. And so, you know, you're helping them.

Yeah.

Or they would take it out.

Yes, that's, that's amazing. Now, the last thing in shame, you said exercises. What type of exercises do you have them do?

Yeah, so we have this, um, we have this one exercise that seems to work really well. It's like these foam balls. You put that, you wedge it, uh, in between the first molars. A lot of patients can barely open their mouth. They can barely get one or two fingers into their mouth. And so we wedge it in. It's a foam ball, like that's in those, those toy guns. And we push from the chin to the top. And what happens is they don't bite on the ball. We just push and the ball acts like a fulcrum. And all these ligaments that are in the joint, they're made of collagen. It's like thick rubber bands. They like to stretch. And what we're doing is stretching out the ligaments around the joint. And just one pass through, we do 20 seconds on each side. One pass through is already better. We do 3 sets a round. I also, you can also take your fingers and just push down from the first molar and just push straight down to the ground. You wanna make sure you're on the long axis, just straight down. You can twist a little too, if it's not painful, just a tiny bit, but it's hold for 20 seconds. We like to also take your tongue and put it right behind your two front teeth and just open and close without touching your teeth together. And that's how you lubricate the joint. Because a lot of times the joint, the discs and everything is stuck. It's like rubber cement. We call it adhesions and they're just stuck on the joint.

Yeah. Interesting. I love this. This is great practical tools for anybody listening that's maybe not close to Beverly Hills that could start Healing their TMJ at home.

Well, like your, like your business, patients come from all over the world. And you know, I work in Dubai and London. I work in Dubai and London.

Nice. Nice. I love it. So you can help many people if you want to come into Beverly Hills to see Dr. Frey. We're going to put his Perfect White Smiles website down in the show notes where you can contact him. Thank you so much. Of course. This was super informative, David. I'm glad we got a chance to talk about this. You know, when we're in the office working, we don't really have time to really dive dissect what exactly is that we do. And I know so many of our listeners are finding this information super helpful. Any, anything you want to add last minute before we close the show?

No, I just want to say it's been a pleasure knowing you for all these years, Sanda. And I know that we've been, you know, we've spent a lot of time together in the past and it's, it's really nice to see you today. And, you know, I miss you, not seeing your face every day, but it's great to see you today.

Yeah, nice to see you too, David. I know we've grown. So now, you know, I used to work together and I'm so grateful you gave me that opportunity to share office space with you. But now since my practice has grown, luckily I'm not too far from you though. And with that, thank you everybody for listening. I hope you found this information helpful. If you want to hear more topics or different topics, please message me on my Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. And we're going to put Dr. Frey's information in the show notes, um, as well as his social media handles. And with that, everyone, keep smiling.

Bye-bye. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes. For any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @drsandamoldovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.