Dentology & General Practice

By Dr. Franz Hopfer

From Neural Therapy, Reflex Zones and Somatotopies: A Key to the Diagnostic and Therapeutic Understanding of Man’s Ills, a seminar guide compiled by the American Academy of Biological Dentistry, June 1989

The tooth-jaw area continues to take up a key position as the cause of the most varied diseases. This statement is very often doubted on grounds of negative experiences in odontogenic sanitizations. But if one pursues these cases, one finds that these so-called sanitizations have been performed in an untargeted and deficient way, or again, that they were performed for illnesses which were not focus-conditioned and, therefore, represented a therapy attempt at the wrong place and without proper diagnosis.

In Novocaine, we have at our disposal a substance which allows a skilled hand to bring about a genuine comparison-diagnosis in the framework of neural therapy, especially when focus-dependent diseases are involved, and thus to point the way for a targeted and successful treatment.

As is known, one speaks of a Seconds Phenomenon when, e.g., after injecting Novocaine into the tonsils, the distant complaints which depend on them diminish at once, whereby this effect must last ca. 20 hours. But only when the phenomenon is repeatable – that is, if it can be released again after return of the complaints – does it pass as a genuine Seconds Phenomenon and the tonsils are to be designated as focus, resp. disturbance field.

As I now enter more closely into the tooth-jaw area, several peculiarities need to be considered for success in diagnosis and therapy. First of all, the tooth with its holding apparatus is to be seen as a unit both in its own function and in its property as an illness-causing factor. In general, for the focus diagnosis, only a few x-ray pictures of devital teeth and sometimes crowned teeth and their description are delivered for the recognition of a granuloma by x-ray. The practicing doctor or internist gets little assistance from this. One requires a complete x-ray status of all teeth and empty jaw areas, with a clinical description of gum inflammations, pocket formations, paradentosis, various metals in the mouth, etc. The standing rule is that all the following are in questions as potential foci: all devital and impacted teeth, root remainders, increased dental germs, inflammatory changes in the empty jaw areas which are described as restostides, and also incorporated foreign substances. Relevant experiences have shown us that, in the case of an odontogenic focus happening, only the removal of the totality of pathologic factors will bring the desired result.

Much argued about is the

Problem of Root Canal Treatment

It is valuable when a tooth is to be saved, but there is still now no root treatment method which can safely keep a devital tooth from adopting focus character. It is necessary to point out again and again that the local lack of symptoms in such a tooth does not exclude a disease-causing distant effect on the remaining organism. The same goes for the root tip resection which is to be seen as a part of a root treatment. Pritz has proved by his histologic cuts that the problem does not rest in the root tip but in the entire root itself: the dentine-cananiculi running vertical to the root canal do not end blindly into the cement-dentin border, as was previously assumed, but they are in connection, via so-called cross-connectors, with the surrounding bones and, thus, via the soft connective tissue, with the total organism! With this, every discussion about the value of a root filling sealing of the apex has become superfluous.

Another factor which often causes failure in focus sanitization of the tooth-jaw area lies in overlooking or [not] recognizing the so-called restotitic changes in the empty jaw. They represent a chronic inflammation in the jawbone where there was an extraction years ago. These restotides hardly ever cause any local complaints are are also difficult to recognize by x-ray. They show up as more or less distinct, usually vaguely indicated lighter areas with washed out bone structure. Their cause is not clear but probably the arsenic inlays used for devitalization, which have been proven to be diffused beyond the apex, are the main culprit.

It is not the intent of these elaborations to enter in detail on all these changes which may cause distant effects from the tooth-jaw area. I only want to mentioned that Maletz, in his work, points to 28 odontogenic focus possibilities. Therewith it appears understandable that the odontogenous area, along with the tonsils, stands in first place as a source of focus diseases.

How to Perform the Testing of This Area?

One must exclude in a single sitting, by Novocaine injection (Cofficaine, Impletol, etc.) which is given submucously at the level of the apex, all places which were designated as suspect by the dental focus-related examination. In this, the following 4 peculiarities are to be observed:

1. In contrast to other organs, freedom from complaints is required only for 8 hours here – for being able to speak of a positive Seconds Phenomenon, assuming its repeatability.
2. A negative test result does not preclude that the teeth are causing the illness in question. Why only here this exception applies is not known.
3. A permanent success through repeated injections is not to be expected here – in contrast to other disturbance fields; here, only surgical sanitization leads to success.
4. The success after extractions and surgical sanitizations does frequently not set in immediately but only 4-6 weeks later.

Speaking of failure, I must also mention a situation which is found relatively often and it defeats all therapies. This is the condition of “regulatory rigidity” or the “blockage situation,” which frequently develops under the influence of foci or disturbance fields. In this situation, the organism remains after a stimulation in the “shock or counter-shock phase” and is unable to swing back into the normal reactions position. There prevails a condition of limited reactions capacity in which the body poses completely refractorily to usual specific and organotropic therapies – and it is the same toward neuraltherapeutic measures and testing attempts.

This regulations rigidity can be objectified iodometrically by the method according to Pischinger and Kellner. When the rigidity is broken by strong external influences, e.g., by alternating application of Elpimed a.Insuline or by stimulants, the body must respond with an intensive counter-regulation. Thereby, the disease is brought back from untreatable chronic to a treatable acute stage, which is provable by the changes in the iodine-consumption values in direction to normal.

Not rarely one can make the observation that there is a longer period free from complaints after a disturbance field has been shut off or after surgical focus removal, but slowly the patient sinks back into his old ailment. In such a case, it is needful to work against this back-sliding into the often entrenched misregulation which lasted for years by a so-called desensitizing after-treatment with one of the above mentioned stimulants in order to bring about a stabilization of the success. Surgically sanitized patients must, moreover, have Novocaine injected into the surgical area a few times.

As a rule, we proceed with patients assigned to us for testing or treatment by aiming at the finding of causal connections by the anamnetic information of potential distubrance fields and the aid of the Huneke Test. If no positive result is gained by this, we concentrate at last on the tooth-jaw area. Whether the test is here preated, or whether one decides right away on the removal of pathologic factors, depends on the situation.

Frequently there are disease syndromes which make a focus condition extremely likely but the objectification through the Huneke test cannot be done. In this, I remember, amongst other hematologic disease, the condition of subfebrile temperature, the raised sedimentation, the complaints picture of the vegetative dystony. In these diseases, but especially with heavy changes in the blood panel, in heart disease, the condition of heart infarction, with eye diseases and other serious ailments, we consider it preferable to begin with the radical odontogenic sanitization which in this case must be performed with great caution and under antibiotic and antiallergic protection.

I would like to interject at this point that, fundamentally, we always perform a cleaning of the tooth-jaw area before a tonsillectomy because, very frequently, there is an irritation from that area into the tonsillary bed via the drainage path of the lymph. If manifests in a “sensitivity of the throat” or in the tendency toward PNA-pharyngitides, and it frequently leads to the tonsil scars taking on disturbance field characteristics. Moreover, after tonsillectory, they sometimes become focus-active because their filter station has been removed.

During our last Freudenstadter Seminar, a colleague placed the justified question during the roundtable exchange: why a dentist so rarely experiences a Seconds Phenomenon during the placing of an anesthesia, resp. an extraction, since the teeth so frequently cause a distant ailment. On this, the following may be stated in summary:

1. As a rule, a nerve-dead tooth is rarely the only one, and all pathologic conditions in the odontogenic area constitute a connected unit, in the disease-causing sense.
2. The removal of disturbance field characteristics depends on the type of injection of the local anesthesia, wherefore the application of a conduction anesthesia in the lower jaw cannot happen.
3. The Huneke test is not as reliable in the odontgenic area as in other places – according to our experience, only in about half of the cases.
4. Undoubtedly, there are cases where the positive Huneke Phenomenon happens during local anaesthesia, but neither the dentist nor the patient pay attention to it, being excited otherwise. Moreover, the dentist does not know the other ailments of the patient. Therefore, the effect of the Novocaine injection is brought into no connection with the suddenly appearing improvement of distant complaints.

In conclusion, I wish to point out that specialist reports allow for very valuable pointers for the establishment of causation in suspected focus diseases – but the usual examination methods cannot make any statement, whether in the positive or negative sense, as to whether in their area there are actual causes for a certain ailment. This goes for the dentist as also for every specialist, unless he avails himself of the neuraltherapeutic method.

Originally published in German