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Physicians are not often asked to see patients for toothache. And most physicians wouldn't know what to do anyway. However we sometimes see patients with toothache, either before or after they have consulted a dentist. The vast majority of cases the dentist diagnoses and treats successfully, but some seem to defy most dentists' skills. Sometimes diagnosis is difficult because an occult infection or dental fracture is too subtle to be detected in the usual ways. X-rays and the usual physical examination show only so much. On other occasions, pain results when the nervous system plays a "neurological trick", e.g. produces pain from a nearby (or distant) interference field. When diagnosis is difficult and the patient is in a great deal of pain, the dentist is sometimes pressured to perform an endodontic procedure or a "root canal". When this fails, the patient sometimes pleads to have the tooth extracted. The situation becomes even more desperate when pain persists after the tooth is gone. On more than one occasion, I have seen patients with three adjacent tooth spaces, each tooth treated endodontically and then extracted, in a futile effort to chase down the source of dental pain. Neural therapists learn early that teeth themselves can be interference fields. If they are uncomplicated by infection or electro‐galvanism, neural therapy may be all that is needed to permanently abolish the pain. The classical method of diagnosing the interference field is by test injections of dilute procaine into the mucosa overlying the suspect teeth. Alternatively, autonomic response testing can identify the dental interference field, and with great precision. Usually the interference field is on just one aspect (lingual of buccal) of the tooth and therefore needs treatment on only that side. An additional advantage of autonomic response testing is that it can indicate a complicated dental interference field, i.e. one that harbours an infection. Procaine is unlikely by itself to abolish the interference field in these cases. Here one must add a homeopathic or isopathic to the procaine solution. Dental infections almost always subside with this treatment ‐ one or two treatments a week for up to three weeks. (Isopathics are homeopathic‐like remedies (Sanum remedies) manufactured by Sanum‐Kehlback GmbH & Co.) Autonomic response testing will indicate the appropriate remedy for each type of infection. In the more difficult to diagnose cases of dental pain, the source of the pain is sometimes not in the teeth themselves but rather in interference fields in the adjacent autonomic ganglia ‐ sphenopalatine for upper teeth, submandibular for lower ones. These should be routinely checked in all cases of dental pain of obscure origin. Treatment of these ganglia solves many puzzles of dental as well as facial pain. Other contributors to neurological overload of the ganglia, such as occult facial sinus infections, tonsillar interference fields and somatic dysfunction in the cranium and neck need to be identified and treated or the autonomic ganglia interference fields will recur. In recent years I have found that the Tenscam device treats dental interference fields as effectively or even more effectively than procaine injections. (No needles!). This holds true even when using homeopathics or isopathics. The remedy vial is simply held over the tooth and the Tenscam "beam" directed through it to the infected tooth. Next month: more about obscure dental pain! Sincerely, Robert F. Kidd, MD, CM |