Dr. Brendan Stack: The TMJ Legend
Dr. Stack was one of the first dentists to consistently solve neurological diseases and complex TMJ disorders with a dental splint.
Dr. Brendan Stack passed away at age 83 on July 24, 2020 in Virginia.
It was the passing of a titan in unlocking this whole TMJ mystery. And coming across his work back in 2018 was a big unlock for me.
Because it was one of the important clues as to how this stuff works.
Back then I was visiting his practice as I was being treated with an ALF by his partner, Dr. Jeff Brown, back then in early 2018.
And Dr. Brown was known for using some of Dr. Stack’s work, including the practice of using a high plane splint. Which was something that I’d already been dabbling with because my dentist previous to that, Dr. Hurme, had also used one.
So it was at that time that i started going through a bunch of the publicly available Youtube videos of Dr. Stack treating various patients with neurological diseases like Parkinson’s. And it was an important piece in the puzzle that I was trying to work out.
Who is Dr. Brendan Stack?
Dr. Stack was a legend in the TMJ world in my view and that of many others.
While most dentists were just trying to stop jaw clicking, this guy was out there curing Parkinson's and other neurological diseases that doctors said were "incurable."
And the fact that he doing it with dental appliances was mind blowing.
He practiced in Virginia for decades and was getting results that should have revolutionized medicine. But of course, the medical establishment mostly ignored him because what he was doing didn't fit their paradigm.
Note, however, that a number of future dentists leveraged his learnings and still more or less practice his principles today. This includes folks like Dr. Jeff Brown (they shared a practice), and Dr. Young jun Lee, who i wrote about here.
Dr. Lee probably doesn’t admit that he is leveraging Dr. Stack’s learnings… but i find that hard to believe.
What kind of results was he getting?
Dr. Stack was treating patients with conditions like Parkinson's, Tourette's syndrome, dystonia, and other neurological diseases - and he was getting consistent results.
There are videos on YouTube showing his patients before and after treatment. The improvements are often mind-blowing.
Here he is treating a Parkinson’s patient.
You'll see people with severe Parkinson's tremors who can barely function, and after his treatment, they're moving normally. Or people with dystonia whose necks are twisted sideways, and his treatment gets them straight again.
Here he is treating a Tourette’s case.
And he wasn't just getting temporary results - most of his patients maintained their improvements for years. This wasn't some placebo effect or temporary fix.
What was his approach?
Dr. Stack's approach centered around using a high, flat-plane splint.
He wasn't trying to lock the jaw in some "perfect" position like a lot of TMJ dentists do.
He was adding vertical height while keeping the surface flat. As you see in this image above taken from one of his videos.
Note that the only contact is on the two last teeth as visible from the marks from the articulating paper.
His process typically involved several months of treatment where he'd gradually adjust the splint height. He understood that you needed to give the skull and brain time to decompress.
What can we take away from Dr. Brendan Stack?
Stack proved something incredibly important - that neurological diseases can be addressed through dental biomechanics.
He showed that what we call "neurological disease" is often just the result of physical compression on the brain. I’m not sure if he described it the way I do.. but i view that we’re essentially saying the same thing.
This was huge for my own understanding.
When I came across his stuff, I'd been messing around with indexed splints like Starecta for years. But seeing Stack's results with flat plane splints helped me realize that locking the jaw position wasn't necessary or helpful.
The other big takeaway is that he wasn't afraid to add a lot of vertical height. Most dentists are very conservative about this, but Stack understood that more vertical seemed to expedite the process.
Something i’d also seen in my experiments. Although it does plateau at some level of vertical.
Dr. Stack vs. Reviv
What Dr. Stack was doing aligns quite tightly with what I've learned about these biomechanics. When you add vertical height between the teeth without locking the jaw position, you allow the skull to "inflate" and take pressure off the brain.
The Reviv approach basically builds on Stack's foundation. We're using the same principles - adding vertical height without locking jaw position - but with a more comfortable rubber appliance (the Reviv One) instead of a hard splint.
Note also that the rubber appliance has the added benefit of not locking the position of the lower teeth. Something that I also believe is key to allowing the soft tissue stretch maximally and is why I say that a rubber guard is ‘faster’ than a lower splint.
But I also view that I took things well beyond Dr. Stack through my understanding of the soft tissue, which is something i explained here:
Dr. Stack never made the ‘crazy’ hypotheses that this stuff is the root cause of aging, beauty and disease the way I have. And that is exactly because he never figured out how to unwind the soft tissue quickly the way i have.
I talk about this in this article below where I describe that as ‘level 5’. Something I plan to show and prove with documented evidence when I am ‘done’, which is hopefully in a few months:
Closing thoughts
Dr. Stack was way ahead of his time. He was treating these "incurable" conditions successfully decades ago, but instead of being celebrated, he was mostly ignored by the medical establishment.
But his results speak for themselves. And the fact that he was consistently fixing neurological conditions through dental work should tell us something profound about how these diseases actually work.
The sad thing is that there aren't many dentists carrying on his work. And so many patients that could be benefitting massively from it, are instead needlessly suffering.
But his legacy lives on in what we understand about these biomechanics.
Maybe one day he'll get the recognition he deserves for being one of the first to really understand the connection between dental biomechanics and neurological health.
I am the first person to say that I definitely didn’t figure this stuff out all on my own… I stood on the shoulders of titans. And Dr. Stack is one of them.
So glad he wasn't afraid to "Stack" on the vertical height!
I need to get out more 🫣🤭
He sounds like he had a brilliant mind. I hope the dental community opens up to this in future years. They seem to be some of the most rigid and closed minded, at least here in the states
This reminds me of "mewing", a postural method to lift and expand the palate for better facial structure. Is this theory related to yours? Fascinating stuff, both.