Does your jaw and bite normalize with a flat mouthguard?

Short answer is yes. But as to why... well that is a much longer explanation.

One common question I get is something like… “Does your jaw move forward with Reviv?”

Or another one is… “Will this normalize my bite to the way it used to be?”

So let me address this in this post as it is probably on the minds of a number of folks.

Dentists talk a lot about moving the jaw forward

Many dentists like to talk about ‘moving the jaw forward.’

They like to describe the problem with many TMJ cases as the jaw being pushed back and therefore you are trying to reposition it forward.

This is why many dentists use things like ‘repositioning splints’ like the one pictured above. It tries to force your jaw to move forward.

This is also why back in the day Starecta used to have you register your bite with some protrusion. And thus you were essentially forced to hold your jaw forward.

I tried a repositioning splint with a dentist in mid- 2014 and dabbled with Starecta for years so I am very familiar with this way of thinking. And i’m here to tell you that it just doesn’t work that way.

Why it doesn’t work that way

From screwing things up and fixing it numerous times over 10 years I can tell you that it just didn’t work that way. I saw what was happening each time.

Every time i got worse the same pattern applied. And same with when I got better.

Rather I view the soft tissue covering the skull to be like a balloon that has deflated.

As i blow air into the balloon and expand it... the jaw is allowed to return to its correct anatomical position.

But in doing so the jaw can move in 3 different planes like an airplane. And probably does.

So its not that the jaw just moves forward, but rather all kinds of stuff are moving as the balloon expands. Remember that the skull is about 29 bones connected at sutures.

All of these bones are also moving and repositioning as the jaw repositions.

So i guarantee it is impossible to 'move the jaw forward' as dentists like to say... without completely remodeling the entire skull.

Because the jaw and cranial bones are both trapped in this deflated balloon that is now expanding.

Why I am I confident that I am right and dentists are wrong?

I mean you are probably thinking… ‘what an arrogant dude! How does he think he is right and thousands of dentists who spend their entire career on this are wrong?”

Well it is important to point out that i'd finished this process im doing once back around 2016 before screwing it up again.

How and why did I screw it up? Well there are many reasons for that but essentially i still had concepts from Starecta in my head and thought that i needed to fix a bite position.

And so now I am doing the same things for the past 3+ years that I was doing in 2016. Because I remembered how it works.

And during this time i literally see and feel my body remodel a bit each day for that entire time.

I rip thru my scalp and face a little bit each day for about the last two years as the skull expands right through the skin.

Above is a pic of what this looked like a year back.. but some version of this occurs after i do my jaw stretches every day.

It's like saying you're going to build a mansion and everyone laughs as you.

But after you see yourself laying bricks and building the foundation and then the rooms for 3+ years... at some point you’re very confident that you’re gonna have a mansion at the end.

Because you see how the shit evolves each day.

So why does the rubber guard work?

By wearing the rubber guard you are putting a stretch on the soft tissue covering the skull. I like to call this the 'door jam' effect because you're essentially adding vertical and not allowing the jaw to fully close because of the guard.

The constant movement of a non-locking occlusion helps support this by moving the jaw subtley as u wear the appliance. Stretching the soft tissue in the places it needs stretching

As you do this and the soft tissue stretches, the skull and body 'inflate'. Think of this like an inflatable wetsuit covering your body inflating.'

The reason you are sick and damaged at the start is b/c that wetsuit had essentially deflated.. thereby crushing your skull and everything in your body a bit. And now you are blowing air into it... allowing everything to reposition back to its anatomically correct position.

Over time things like the jaw also reposition back to their correct position.

This WILL work on pretty much everyone

I am very confident that what i am doing to myself will work for pretty much all of you. Because it would be impossible/illogical that the physics of the soft tissue/balloon worked any differently on any other human being.

This is also why i KNOW that i've figured this shit out, whereas all of the dentists who have never seen what the ‘end’ looks like are just guessing.

As you get closer and closer to the 'end' you see how you're unraveling the soft tissue like a ball of yarn each day and remodeling the skull and body bit-by-bit.

Till at some point the soft tissue of the jaw completely breaks and the jaw and neck are allowed to fully revert to their anatomically position.

I am not ‘guessing’ about how this might happen. I have done it. Back sometime around 2016 or so. And i’m feeling and seeing exactly the same things happen now.

Can you reposition the jaw without doing what I am saying?

In my view having seen how this soft tissue works for so long… you absolutely cannot.

You can try… hell you see all kinds of repositioning splints, surgeries, etc.

But show me one concrete example of a person where it actually worked well.

In my ten years I have not seen one.

I’ve seen shitloads of people try it…. but they all had stories later of how it didn’t really work for one reason or another. Or at least didn’t work the way they would have hoped.

And think about it in the context of my balloon metaphor above.

How would you get the jaw to reposition back to its healthy position without inflating the balloon? It would be impossible.

Closing thoughts

This process with the soft tissue is not a quick fix. You should expect it to take awhile. Years.

However you'll continue to improve the whole time. And even just getting used to wearing the guard comfortably will probably take most of you a long time.

But will any dentist do this faster than me?

No.

Because i've played with how this soft tissue works for years.. i understand it better than anyone i’ve ever seen or read about.

The fastest thing you can do is my stretches (which I dont teach). After that is a simple rubber guard. And after that is a flat plane splint or flat composite.

How do i know?

Because there is literally pretty much nothing i havent tried to see its impact on how fast it develops the curve of spee via a tracking splint.

And once you have this ‘yardstick’ to measure progress on an incremental level… it is likely finally having a map on your TMJ journey.