A few thoughts on TMJ groups on Facebook and Reddit

Wanna check out the youtube version of this article?

Now onto the article..

My history on TMJ groups of various sorts runs very deep.

I was on many of them back in early 2015 when i was first starting out on my DIY journey with Starecta.

In 2014-2015 I was probably the most active contributor to the Starecta FB group by far. And then occasionally also wrote in other groups up until about 2018.

There was one that was named something like “TMJ Discussion Forum” admin’d by a lady ‘Eva’ and that was one of the largest ones at the time with 50k+ members.

Also in 2017 I started my own FB Group called “Exchanging TMJ Progress”, which got to a few hundred members with the idea of active DIYers exchanging their ideas openly.

And so i’d gathered some of what i considered the smartest minds at the time.

But people started sharing a number of my posts outside the group so the vision was never really realized.

Anyway, today i wanna share a few thoughts on this topic.

My approach on FB groups

Most of the interactions on groups tends to be patients that are suffering and telling their stories.

Occasionally on some groups you will see a dentist who is giving advice and trying to promote themselves indirectly. For example there is a group on Facebook where the Mews were active contributors.

Or Darick Nordstrom, the founder of the ALF.

Then there were some of the DIY legends. Marcello back in 2017-18 was a good example of this. He started a ‘Biomechanical Dystonia’ group that became widely followed and he’d share his protocol.

My approach was always to share what I was thinking in a very open way. And since I was DIYing pretty aggressively back in those days… i was adjusting what i was thinking a fair bit lol.

One other thing you’d generally find to be true of these old posts of mine was that i didn’t mind arguing. Sometimes there would be some troll-like behavior on threads that i’d started, and i generally welcomed this.

Combat, verbal or physical, has always been an art I’ve kind of enjoyed.

For me it is like logic fencing. And since I view that i arrived at all of my conclusions via logic, I would view myself as a hippocrate if I didn’t defend this logic.

I disappeared from pretty much all FB groups from 2019 - 2024

In 2019 I pretty much disappeared from all FB groups except my own. And i’d whittled my own group down from 200+ to less than 20.

The reason for this was that i’d realized I hadn’t figured out the puzzle yet. And outside influences from these groups was only noise.

I didn’t want to be distracted.

I’d figured this stuff out by chance in 2016 and then screwed it up. But i’d figured it out on my own.

And I knew that the way to remember what I was doing back then was again going to be on my own.

So i just disappeared from all of these groups. I like to joke now that this was my ‘Atlas Shrugged’ period. lol

I came back this year to help people

A few months ago I started participating in a number of larger groups again. More on Reddit than on Facebook.

Why did I do this?

Very simple. I’ve figured this shit out now.

And i’m very confident that what I figured out applies to pretty much everyone struggling with TMJ issues.

When you see how it works, especially towards the end…. you just realize that it would be illogical if the way i’m stretching the soft tissue didn’t work on everyone.

We are all humans and therefore engineered with the same biomechanics!

And so I came back to help people. Because I realized that nobody i know of out there has it right. Not any of the dentists i took inspiration from. None of the DIYers.

And shitloads of good people who are struggling out there will suffer if I don’t come back.

I consider myself like the Micheal fucking Jordan of this shit… hehehehehe
No, it’s not the most humble thing to say. But i earned it.

I spent a decade iterating on this stuff. Thousands of hours.

Screwing myself up and then fixing it. Then again. Then again.

Learning how the soft tissue worked.

Learning a way of looking at this problem that no dentist out there understands. And as a result i will go well beyond any of these dentists or their patients in my progress.

I will have achieved a perfect spine, perfectly symmetrical skull, and perfect health at age 47 while having thrown my middle finger up at everything society believes.

I have done no exercise in 4+ years. I ate crap all the time. And yet when i’m done I plan to look and function better than 99.9% of people my age.

And you gotta look and understand who some of my influences early on were in order to not just write what i’m saying off as ignorance:

I was one of the first to do Starecta in 2014 and knew those guys well

Marcello, the founder of Biomechanical Dystonia group, and I were exchanging ideas and messages regularly for years from 2015 - 2017. And he is one of my biggest influences… introducing me to ideas like the inflating / deflating of the skull.

I studied PhD osteopathy for almost a year in 2017-18. And went to several of the osteopaths that were considered among the best in the US like Jim Jecmen.

I went to several of the well know ALF & TMJ dentists in the US like Dr. Risto Hurme and Dr. Jeff Brown.

I know what they do and some of their thinking has influenced me. But I also just know that I have figured out something that they have not.

And that in time history will prove me correct on that and you will understand why i say this.

Some people don’t realize they just stepped on the court with Jordan.. hahaha

Sometimes a guy from a group will start trolling my thread with some standard TMJ knowledge and tell me i’m full of shit.

The thing he doesn’t realize is that if that standard stuff was true… you wouldn’t have the vast majority of the TMJ patient population jumping from dentist to dentist searching for answers.

The dentists have not figured this thing out. Some of them do some things that are beneficial (eg. any dentist using Myobrace or a flat plane splint), but they will never understand the true mechanics till they are able to take this thing to its end.

Because at the end the mechanics become clear.

I know because i’ve done it. And i’m in the late stages of doing it again.

If a dentist is not talking about the skull expanding and ripping thru the skin regularly, he just doesn’t get it.

History will prove me right on this.

For now you’re just gonna have to trust me.

So in the past few weeks a number of folks have gotten aggressive on threads in places like Reddit and i want to openly question their motivations.

Let’s remember that I am stating that pretty much anyone who wears a rubber nighthguard will improve. A nightguard that costs them as little as $17 on Amazon.

Many of these people are in agonizing pain.

Many of them are deeply depressed.

Many of them have stories of going from dentist to dentist bleeding their bank accounts dry.

I have known many of these people.

In just the years 2016-17 i had two different people that i personally knew from the TMJ groups take their own lives because they’d given up hope.

So let’s ask the question… what are these trolls achieving?

They probably think they are trying to protect people from what i am saying. From my ‘pseudoscience’ as they like to call it.

But um hmmm…. I’m telling them exactly what to do and it costs them as little as $17.

If they try it and it doesn’t work they have lost ~$17. Not the $thousands they are paying uselessly to dentists.

And it is not as if wearing a rubber night guard does

But since i have 20-30 people in my test group now I have sufficient data points to say that if they stick to it I’m pretty confident it will work for most folks. But it takes time.

So what are they actually protecting against? I will tell you.

They are protecting their own belief system. That is the only thing they are protecting.

If they really cared about these people they’re supposedly protecting.. they would run the math and realize the potential benefit outweighs the potential cost by a ridiculous multiple.

Because the way i look at it… i’m trying to help people that are suffering… and they’re basically standing in the way.