"For the love of God... do not treat yourself" - Dentist

Dentists love to scare patients into staying away from DIY. But my 10 years of experience says to ignore them.

Just recently a dentist commented on one of my posts and he wrote something like “Dentist here. For the love of God... do not treat yourself.”

I smiled and laughed.

And then i clicked that ‘delete’ button. Hahahaha

That is what i love about Substack as opposed to platforms like X.com and Reddit where you cannot delete the comments.

Here… i don’t have to argue with him. Though i’ve done more than my share of arguing with dentists over the years.

And today i’m going to delve deeper into my view on this topic.

Dentists love condemning “DIY” (Do It Yourself)

I've been hearing this same song and dance from dentists for nearly a decade now.

They love to use fear to scare patients away from DIY approaches. "You'll destroy your teeth!" "You'll make things worse!" "You need professional help!"

Then they often jump into a bunch of dental terminology and theory to try to drive home their point.

Sorry, but that approach lost its power over me years ago when I realized these "professionals" were a far greater danger than me tinkering on myself. And that that was the case not just with me but with lots of others.

And I recommend you develop the same healthy skepticism.

The solution in my view is a problem of logic. Not dental theory.

I got into DIY after being screwed around by numerous dentists

As I’ve said before… in 2014 a Vietnamese dentist drilled the cusps down on my molars and sent me into a downward spiral that nearly ruined my life.

My cognitive function tanked, I couldn't retain information, I turned into a hermit.

I told the dentist and he blamed me. I forget his logic.. i just remember it was stupid.

I went to another dentist who gave me another expensive splint. I told him after some weeks that I didn’t think it was working. He made excuses.

Similar things happened a few more times back in 2014 as I was desperately searching for answers. It wasn’t till after about 8 months of that runaround that I even considered DIYing.

Then this sort of happened again in 2018 in Russia when I let a dentist do the ‘OSB method’ on my son. Each time, these "professionals" did more damage than any DIY experiment ever did.

Even when I did the wrong thing, I never damaged myself that badly with DIY

And note that I say this after almost a decade of DIYing.

There were many times I was actually doing the wrong thing and had the wrong hypothesis during those early years.

So why didn’t I damage myself badly?

Well I think it is because when you DIY, you're very attuned to the feedback your body gives you. You can stop or change course immediately if something feels wrong.

With dentists, you're trusting their "expertise" even when your body is screaming that something's wrong. And of course you need to wait till your next dental visit to do anything about it.

During the numerous years that I spent various DIY communities like Starecta, I've never seen anyone seriously hurt themselves through DIY. Sure, some people tried things that didn't work, but they usually recognized it and reversed course.

Just read the TMJ forums on Reddit and Facebook - the nightmare stories almost always involve dentists, not DIY.

And the reaction of the dentists that did this harm? Almost always arrogance or denial. They almost have to react that way in order to avoid the liability of a lawsuit.

The case study of my friend

Just recently, an old friend from my early Starecta days contacted me. We knew each other around 2017 or so.

He DIY’d for a couple years with Starecta and had gotten himself out of all of his nasty symptoms like brain fog, neurological symptoms, etc. And so he was functional and back in his career and things were looking up.

But he had plateaud with Starecta and felt like he wanted to go further.

He heard about some fancy dentist and decided this was going to be the thing that would take him further. So he spent a lot of money and went for it. It included an indexed splint followed by braces.

That was around 2018.

A few years and a lot of money later he said he completely fell apart. His neck became unstable and he had neurological symptoms again.

He scrambled to try to fix it. Meanwhile he spent his entire savings and lost his job.

Now he’s in his early 50’s, put all of his savings into medical bills, and is less healthy than when I knew him in 2017.

Meanwhile the dentist that screwed him blamed his lack of compliance. But is there anything he can do? No.

It is extremely difficult to prove any type of wrongdoing in a court on this stuff when the dentist more or less does what was taught in dental school. Even if it is wrong and harmful.

So when he wrote me recently he was again doing Starecta to recover out of the mess that the dentist had put him in. And had essentially done a massive circle from 2018 till now.

Stories like this are the rule rather than the exception in this TMJ game. Spend enough time in the forums like i did back in the day.. and that much will start to be very clear.

Who’s the real danger?

These dentists warning against DIY seem completely oblivious to basic risk assessment.

They ignore the constant stream of horror stories about dental treatments gone wrong, but the moment someone promotes DIY, they act like you’re a serial killer on the loose.

Let's be honest - who becomes a dentist?

In my experience, it's often mediocre students looking for a stable career. I have a couple folks I knew from high school that became dentists. And let’s just say they were the types that were trying to copy my answers on a test and not vice versa.

And if you look at the number of people seriously damaged by dentists versus DIY approaches, it's not even close. Dentists doing the wrong shit are the metaphorical serial killers. lol

Closing thoughts

Look, I'm not saying all dentists are bad. There are some good ones out there. But this idea that you absolutely need a dentist to fix TMJ issues? That's BS.

The dental establishment wants you to believe that DIY is super risky and that only they have the knowledge to help you. But my experience over the past decade shows exactly the opposite.

The riskiest thing you can do is blindly trust a dentist who claims to be a "TMJ expert." That is what i’ve concluded after seeing hundreds of patient stories play out over the past decade.

At least when you DIY, you're in control and can stop immediately if something doesn't feel right.

When you have a roadmap this game is actually a lot easier than it seems.