Yesterday marked 2 months into treatment with my orthodontic work.
I had been expanding the upper arch with a removable appliance (a type of biobloc)
here is the picture of the appliance.
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Notice the hinge at the bottom of the appliance, the reason for this is my second molar(the last molar) was further apart than the rest of my dental arch. So we used this hinge to keep the second molar in place while we created expansion in the rest of the dental arch (first molar and the second bicuspids) so that they “catch up” and align with the last molar.
Remember that I am going through reversal of previous extraction orthodontic work so I am missing my first bicuspids.
There is many reason to believe that I am working with a great orthodontist. His name is Dr. Gibbs, he is semi-retired orthodontist that has already retired from his private practice and now just works couple days out of the week at this office below.
John Stepanovich, DDS
General Dentist
260 Jefferson Ave
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
Tel. (616) 459-1267
Dr. Gibbs first took the orthotropics class from Dr. John Mew in 1987ish… before then he has taken many courses on functional orthodontic appliances and technique but he has not found any to produce any different result from regular way of orthodontic work. But his colleague, Dr. Stepanovich, had found out about Dr. John Mew’s work and was convincing him about it… initially Dr. Gibbs was not really motivated because he had already tried so many other functional orthodontic stuff that wasn’t impressive to him, however what immediately grabbed Dr. Gibbs attention was that Dr. John Mew was stating that the class II malocclusions (the buck teeth overbite, receeding chin, weak chin appearance) was a result of the Maxilla that was too far back in the face.
Dr. Gibbs thought “Uh oh maybe this guy knows something…” because every class II case he has seen, he has found the maxilla to be too far back in the face on the x-rays.
This is significant because classical orthodontist will look at the buck teeth and decide “the problem is that the teeth sticks out too far so we need to put the kid in braces and pull those teeth back.” Anyway this is going in the totally opposite direction and not addressing the real cause of class II malocclusions.
Dr. Gibbs flew out to Florida and spent two weeks learning the beginner as well as advance class from Dr. John Mew. He explained the process as “mind numbing” because he was being taught about orthodontics that was complete 180 degrees from traditional orthodontics he had been taught in school.
However he was motivated because he really liked how the faces looked on the children that had been treated by Dr. John Mew’s techniques.
Then Dr. Gibbs went back to his private practice in Michigan and first he treated a young lady, that was already past the ideal age for orthotropics according to Dr. Mew which is around age 7, I think this girl was like 14-16ish… however he said, “Her result was phenomenal”.
Then one case after the other, he kept seeing success so he has been practicing orthotropics ever since along with his colleague Dr. Stepanovich, both practicing orthotropics in Grand Rapids, Michigan since the early 90’s I believe.
Dr. Gibbs even hosted several seminars in Michigan and had Dr. Mew teach there, when Dr. Mew would fly in, he had Dr. Mew stay at his house. Eventually, Dr. Mew had Dr. Gibbs teach courses in Michigan about orthotropics!
Dr. Hang (California orthodontist who is famous for his orthotropics work and doing reversal of extraction cases, and has great marketing/online presence on the internet) considers Dr. Mew to be the “brightest orthodontist of our time.” Dr. Mew is Dr. Hang’s mentor…
For a long while, after I had went to 10 different orthodontist in Michigan, looking for someone that can do my case of reverse extractions and being shut down by all of them, I began to think I might have to move to California so I can be treated by Dr. Hang.
However through great fortune here I am working with Dr. Gibbs at Dr. Stepanovich’s office both have learned from Dr. Mew even before Dr. Hang did and on top of that having real close personal relations with Dr. Mew the “greatest orthodontist of our time” and his son Dr. Mike Mew. I think I came to the right office at least in Michigan…
This office has two orthodontists working at once (Stepanovich and Gibbs) on every Friday or when Dr. Gibbs comes into the office which is when I have my appointments. Two bright orthodontists who have learned orthotropics in one office. Which is sort of great because Dr. Gibbs is able to give me ample time to speak with him every appointment (I spend average of hour and a half to two hours there!) while Dr. Stepanovich is taking care of other patients. Because they know my case is complicated It seems that I am given special attention by the more experienced of the two, Dr. Gibbs, in fact even though this is Dr. Stepanovich’s office, I haven’t even met him yet. Dr. Stepanovich actually asked the retired Dr. Gibbs to come work at his office part time to “help out” after he was retired. At first, He started coming in to the office every other Friday then it was every Friday then it was every Monday and Friday now it’s like every Monday Wednesday and Friday .. he laughingly told us how he was brought out of retirement by Dr. Stepanovich and his haunch is that Dr. Stepaanovich didn’t want him to retire. He said now he is working just as much as he used to when he had his private practice, but he is enjoying it because he gets to do orthodontic cases without having to worry about paying bills and what not.
Anyway I am amazed I was able to find such an orthodontist in Michigan after contemplating moving to California for a little while, Needless to say, from speaking to him over the past 2-3 months, I can tell you he is light years ahead of normal orthodontists. And good thing about him is he is pretty open minded to my requests about face pulling and other things.
However his problem is that he has no online presence partly because he is already semi-retired and already pretty old and perhaps not too tech savy. So it is nearly impossible to find this guy…, unless you call the office or find the office through looking for orthotropics orthos which would be your best bet to find these types of orthodontists but again doing orthotropics and reversing extraction cases is a totally different animal. They say reverse extraction cases are one of the most complicated cases even more so than a person with really jumbled up teeth. If you’re searching on the internet it really begins to look like Dr. Hang is the only doctor that is capable of reverse extraction cases, since only Dr. Hang is openly marketing this on the internet…which is why he has many patients fly to see him from all over. Dr. Gibbs has said he has one patient flying in from the east coast, but I told him he would have a lot more flying in, if he had any type of online presence lol…but he had been retired so it is understandable.
I think what Dr. Hang is doing is great though, speaking out about it on the internet about the possibility of reversal of extractions so at least people know it can be done and openly addressing the wrong practice of extraction orthodontics. Because more orthos of the world need to know about this.
Going back to my case, yesterday at the appointment, Dr. Gibbs had decided I had enough expansion with the hinge and he was going to go ahead with putting on the fixed braces with coil to begin pushing my canines forward to re-open the gaps for the bicuspids, (same thing for the bottom jaw).
This was only 2 months of expansion and he was telling me I was done with expansion, which I was not satisfied about. I had been turning 1/8th turn everyday which is a fast pace and wearing the appliance 24/7. (you can only turn this fast if you wear the appliance 24/7, appliance like DNA appliance or the homeobloc in which you take the appliance off everyday, will not be able to go this fast because every time you take off the appliance your sutures close back up.) If I were to take my appliance off now for even 2 hours I would lose 7 days worth of progress, in just 2 hours!. Since the connective tissues would close the sutures back up that had been gradually pulled apart since there hasn’t been enough bone growth taking place between the sutures yet to hold it in place. DNA appliance and homebloc attempts to create very incremental bone growth for the benefit that you don’t have to wear it during the day, but why bother? I’m just gonna wear it 24/7 (even while eating! only time it comes off is for brushing teeth) and expand quicker and once enough expansion takes place then a fixed thing goes on the roof of my mouth to hold the new expanded arch form in place and the bone grows there after a while…in my opinion, producing the same result but going at a faster rate, although I suppose there could be risks of going too fast like teeth tipping, but if that is carefully avoided I believe wearing the appliance 24/7 and doing it this way is faster.
Anyway just in 2 months he was saying I’m done expanding, in which I told him, “no I want to expand more.” “I still have slight congestion in my left nostril” and “I feel like I can see even more results with bones building up on the face if I expand more.”
In my eyes, the more I expand the arch form the better off I will be. Dr. Mike Mew’s (Dr. John Mew’s son) said in a presentation that the human skull has been shrinking in size in our recent history. and he claims if we had even half of what we are suppose to have in our dental arch size then we would never have issues of chronic congested sinuses ever. If you look at the human skull model you can easily see how the size of maxilla directly determines the size of the sinus cavity.
After telling him my desires to expand more, he was open to it… but his issue was he was limited to how much he can expand the upper by the lower jaw. Since we had only been tipping the teeth upright on the lower jaw and not creating expansion in the lower jaw (mandible) itself. He says that since the mandible does not have a suture like the upper, it is not easy to create expansion.
To which I replied, “well some people have lower jaws that are too narrow right? in which case they do surgery?”
Gibbs told me yes there is the surgery option in which the surgeon cuts a line at the front of mandible and inserts a screw device there. The screw actually comes out of the gums and the patient is able to turn the screw of where the bone has been cut everyday and gradually create bone growth and expansion.
However instead of surgery I had different things in mind, I am coming from the model that bone at any age can be remolded and reshaped with incremental pressure on them. Just recently I had been talking to Robert Von, who is an nutrition expert, and I was telling him about my physical restructuring process of bone remodeling, and he had told me what I can do to greatly increase the speed of this process was eat bunch of cooked vegetables with butter. The cooked vegetable with butter allows the body to build with those vegetables and it turns your bones into “clay and easily malleable”. Where as raw vegetables will detox you and not build. He recommends cooked yellow squash, onion, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, green beans.
So with this in mind, I asked Dr. Gibbs do you have any appliance for the lower jaw that can exert pressure on the bone and create expansion? and I told him about changing my diet to cooked vegetables and making my bones into clay.
Thankfully he is open minded enough to give it a try. He does have an appliance for the lower jaw and he has agreed to go along with my plans. He will make the appliance for me and he will reconstruct the upper appliance, removing the hinge and placing the expansion screw in the middle so that now we are expanding the entire arch form (including the back molars and not in the hinge like manner), so as I expand the entire upper arch I shall see even more significant changes in the cranial bones. (cheek bones, bones around the eyes, nasal cavity, etc),
Also if what Robert Von has told me is really true then I can begin to expand the lower jaw as well although I have no idea how much I can expand and how it will change the appearance of the lower jaw. But I am excited to see what will happen.
Currently I have changed my diet to predominately cooked vegetables and some beef liver.
Everything is taking place in great timing because a week ago I moved out to a single bedroom apartment so I can really concentrate on this process and strict up my diet. Which is difficult to do as I had been living at my parents house for a few months after college graduation and it is hard to refuse my mom’s delicious home cooking as well as I would not feel right cooking myself meals separately. I think sometimes it is more important to value the connection that food fosters with people then to strictly deny that connection just because you are “vegan” or “raw foodist” or whatever.
And I love meat but for this process I will focus on eating mostly cooked vegetables and see what happens.
Working with even the real experienced and bright orthodontist like Dr. Gibbs, I realize it is important to ask for what you want. And not just blindly follow the doctors plans, the doctor should be assisting your plans. I blindly followed my previous orthodontist’s plan for which I am paying the price now. So please do your research and think carefully about orthodontics. It has more profound consequences than you would think.
Dr. Gibbs has determined that there has been enough expansion to get my bicuspids back, but in my eyes I want maximum changes to take place in the entire skull itself, not just getting bicuspids back. But shooting for maximum expansion because that will then really begin to unlock everything, from improved brain function from increase space for the brain, improved hormonal secretion from more space, bigger sinus cavity for enhanced breathing, more and more improved cranial symmetry, higher cheek bones, even broader smile, broader arch means even better voice projections, also unlocking one’s sexuality as the mouth directly corresponds to the pelvis and sexual organs… so I have been told. There’s just many changes that can take place for the better.
Phew this was sort of a long blog post. There is more to be said about this new diet I am taking on but this is enough for today!
Thanks for this informative post, and congratulations on your progress! Like you I am concerned about expansion of my lower jaw. I haven’t started any treatment yet but I always figured it would be much more difficult to expand my lower jaw than upper. It’s a little scary that I might have to resort to surgery. I’ll be following your progress closely to see how lower jaw expansion works for you.