My thoughts on the 'Biomechanical Dystonia" approach
A friend, Marcello, had come up with a protocol that solved his own dystonia.
Check this out on youtube
Now onto the article..
So this post is gonna come off a bit too specific for many folks because they do not know who ‘Marcello’ is and probably never heard of the Biomechanical Dystonia Group.
It is a group that goes back to about 2017-18 and a guy named Marcello. Marcello was an online friend of mine ever since early 2015 when we met in the Starecta group.
Background on Marcello
Marcello was a smart guy who had spent something like six years with cervical dystonia, a very devastating neurological disease, triggered by a TMJ dentist drilling the cusps off of many of his teeth because of some stupid TMJ ideology.
He then came up with his own DIY (Do it yourself) protocol to recover from this and has been living a normal life free of any symptoms for 5-6 years now.
Back in 2017 or so Marcello also participated quite actively in some of the well known TMJ-related Facebook groups of time. He had a flair for the technical elements of dentistry and dental history. For example he could get into arguments with well known dentists and more than hold his own.
And this brought him a pretty decent following of ‘believers’.
He also stood up a site that was hosted at www.biomechanical-dystonia.net (above is a screenshot of it), which had a lot of educational materials that became quite popular.
Then he abruptly disappeared sometime in early 2019 I believe. He declared that he was ‘done’, took down his site, stopped engaging in social media and just left.
It felt to many of his followers a bit like Atlas Shrugged or something like that.
A new Facebook group was later created by some of his followers to carry on his legacy. And so many folks still follow what he said to this day.
And I even still get the occasional person pinging me asking if I have some of his old materials.
Some more context on me and Marcello
I know Marcello since early 2015 when we were both doing Starecta and still communicate with him a bit once in awhile to this day. More just casual type stuff… nothing really specific about this dental stuff anymore.
We were trading learnings and thoughts pretty continuously between about 2015 - 2019. Sometimes more than others.
From 2015 - 17 I was more or less doing my own thing and he was doing his own thing. And in 2016 as I’ve explained in earlier posts I had gone deep down the path of the understanding the ‘soft tissue’ and using a myobrace. I was also using an ALF that a dentist made me.
He, on the otherhand, was doing his own experiments and had also evolved from just doing Starecta as he’d realized it had shortcomings similar to the way I had.
And it was from these experiments that he came up with his protocol that I will discuss a bit here.
What was Marcello’s protocol?
So Marcello put a pretty good amount of work back in around 2017 formalizing his thoughts on his website.
It started out with putting a loose ALF appliance in your mouth and practicing with your tongue to mold it to your mouth.
Then you would gently begin to put some expansion into the wire. But not enough to move the teeth. The goal was to mobilize cranial sutures.
He would also then use the wire to put forces on the skull to try to remove cranial assymetries. Which is a similar doctrine to what some ALF dentists do, but he was basically doing it himself. And therefore iterating faster.
Another key element of his protocol was a Gerber ‘lingualized’ bite. Which meant that the cusps of the teeth would support various bite positions.
‘E’ was when you pushed your jaw back as far as you could.
‘A’ was the jaw’s rest position’.
‘O’ was when you formed the letter O with your mouth.
‘U’ was when you pushed your jaw forward into protrusion as much as you could.
His belief was that the cusps of the teeth needed to support all of these positions and so he would register a dental spint in two different positions (eg. O & E).
He viewed that these different bite positions support different head positions on the neck. And that the jaw played a critical role in supporting the neck’s movements as you see in the screenshot above.
What do I agree with him on?
One thing I very much agree with Marcello on is viewing the skull like a balloon. He was the first to make this metaphor.
When you improve you ‘inflate’ the balloon. When you get worse it ‘deflates’.
And the wrong occlusion would ‘deflate’ the balloon, which would trigger lots of issues (your skull crushes your brain, neurological issues arise, etc.)
Also he had another great analogy to a bow and arrow that I liked. Basically when you fix this stuff, it is like you are pulling back the ‘bow’ on your spine.
And this therefore directly ties your dental occlusion to the workings of the entire spine.
The other thing I learned from him and believe to this day is that there is a ‘curve of spee’ in a healthy mouth.
Though I learned this though a different mechanic than he did. Basically I would use a lower flat plane splint with contacts on four teeth on each side.
And I noticed that as I improved, the contacts always got heavier in the front of the splint.
Therefore I would drill those contacts down. And as time went on… my spint would go from being relatively flat to being pretty curved (ie. lower in the front and higher in the back).
Thus it must be that teeth must also have this curve if this is what happens as you get healthier. Because essentially the splint was mimicking how healthy teeth ‘should’ have looked.
Where do I differ from him?
So now for where I differ from him. And let me say that in my honest opinion I differ from him now more than I agree with him.
First, I don’t believe there is any need to support different bite positions. I don’t believe in A,E, O, and U.
And trust me.. back in 2018-2019 I was testing that stuff constantly. And going in circles.
For over four years now I have nothing but flat contact in my mouth (with no bite positions) and despite this i’m progressing constantly and am much better in literally every dimension.
So that, in and of itself, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt in my view that he was wrong about this.
Second, I don’t think you need an ALF to apply expansive or torque forces.
I am improving in a steep line up for over three years while not putting any expansive or other forces with an appliance.
Rather i wear a Myobrace-type appliance at night and do my stretches during the day. That is it.
Third, I don’t think flat plane splints are bad for you.
My rules are to add ‘vertical’ and unlock the occlusion. A flat plane splint achieves both of these.
I have used a flat plane splint several times in the past few years as I was improving and it worked just fine. I did it with contact on the back teeth and the front teeth and concluded that they both work more or less the same.
I also have several people in my test group who are improving with a flat plane splint for over a year now.
Fourth, I don’t think he ever figured out the soft tissue.
For me the soft tissue is the absolute key to the whole puzzle and how you take things to the ‘true end’. I talk about the soft tissue here in case you missed this.
Fifth, I don’t think he ever took this to its true ‘end’.
Meaning he declared himself done when he felt better and didn’t have any major symptoms.
I crossed that point a couple years back but I don’t consider that the ‘end’. I want to achieve a perfect body, symmetrical face and perfect health which i expect to achieve by the end of this year.
All while doing no exercise and eating whatever I want. That for me is the ‘true end’.
And note that I already feel and work like a ‘machine’ for a couple years now. Typically going from 8am to beyond 10pm every weekday with only a few short breaks.
I just don’t get sick, i don’t fatigue, and i am always happy.
Why don’t I think he achieved this? Well, in my experience you don’t get there unless you are ripping through the soft tissue on places like your scalp and face almost daily. Because that is key to remodeling the skull.
And I achieve this only via my ‘stretches’ (ie. what I call the fast way). I never achieved this with wearing an ALF or doing any of the things he recommended.
I rip through my scalp and the skin on my face daily for well over a year now.
Summing up
I have nothing but respect for Marcello. I think he was brave and smart enough to dig himself out of a big hole that a dentist had put him in when he had cervical dystonia.
I traded thoughts and learnings with him for years.
He was a major inspiration for what I was doing from about late 2017 till about early 2019.
But those were years that I was going in circles.
And I stopped going in circles when in mid 2021 I went back to the shit that I came up with myself back in 2016. Stuff that essentially violates lots of his beliefs.
So do we agree? No we don’t.
Do I think I’m right? Yes I do.
But I also never had a severe neurological condition like him, so there is some chance that the rules are different.