Hi Everyone and welcome back to my YouTube channel! My name is Priya Mistry and I'm a
General Dentist with a practice limited to taking care of patients with TMJ Disorders.
Today's video is about the Aqualizer bite, so this video is specifically for Dentists,
Prosthodontists, any other specialists in the dental industry
that want to do this for their patients. It's pretty straightforward, but I thought I'd make
a video about it and explain the benefits to the patient and we'll go from there.
So an Aqualizer is this little guy right here. You guys might be familiar with this and the
best Aqualizer to use for an Aqualizer bite, in my opinion, is the medium Aqualizer; so they come in
low, medium, and high volume and they come in a regular standard size - which is this one - and
also a mini. For people that are missing some posterior teeth, the mini one is usually better,
but Alex has her full complement of teeth - she is very toothy, and so we'll be using this
medium volume, regular Aqualizer. The reason I do a lower nightguard with an Aqualizer
bite - which again is what this video is about - is because the Aqualizer has two little pads
that are filled with sterile water. These pads serve as a water bed for the muscles
in the head, neck, and jaw.. so when this Aqualyzer is worn for about 20 minutes,
what happens in those 20 minutes is that the muscles actually float to their "happy place"
and then we record that "happy place" by taking a bite. We then send that bite and the models of the
teeth to the lab and I always ask them to build a lower custom nightguard, and I'll go over that a
little bit more but first we'll get this Aqualizer placed so we can get those 20 minutes going..
..all right so you just open it up and take it on out of here..
Once it's out, what you want to do is have the pads facing away from you so
these little water pads right here are actually facing away from me,
and you want to bend this whole thing into like a horseshoe or arch shape;
again with the pads facing away from me. Then you just insert it in the mouth
with the pads way in the back, and this top part that's bent into the horseshoe shape has a little
soft liner so it is somewhat comfortable for the patients. Then I'll gently pull her upper lip over
that and ask her to bite down [rest her upper and lower teeth gently on the water pads] and
then typically I just ask these patients to stay [like this] for about 20 minutes.
So now 20 minutes has gone by. We'll go ahead and take the first part of the bite.
We do this in two steps. I'm using the blue bite registration material and you definitely want to
have two tips two fresh tips for this part. I'm going to go ahead and insert it into the front;
so we leave the Aqualizer in and we actually insert the material - typically canine to canine,
wherever the Aqualizer is not resting - between the teeth. So i'm going to go ahead and do that..
..thank you, Alex, and we're just going to let that set for about 40 seconds.
That's about how long it takes. In that time, I switch out the tip
and while it's setting I'll go over my specific instructions with the lab.
What i'll do is i'll ask them to make a lower either combo or fully hard night guard.
Combo means that it's actually soft on the inside and hard on the outside and with that i'll ask
them to mount the models to this bite registration I'm taking and also ask them to index it. I'll
ask them to go ahead and put bite indexes all across the lower guard to guide the upper teeth
where to rest against the guard, putting Alex's jaw in this rest position that we're measuring.
When the muscles are in that rest position, what happens is that over seven or eight
hours at night if the muscles are in that position for that consecutive amount of time,
it'll set her up for success not having jaw pain, headaches, or neck pain the next day.
So getting those muscles in their "happy place" can be really beneficial. This is not going to
help a whole lot with people that actually have problems within the joint if they're locking up
or catching a lot; so this is mainly for people who are having more muscular issues - head, neck,
and jaw pain. It's been 40 seconds and Alex has been very patient, so we'll go ahead and
take everything out now. So we take the Aqualizer out and the front part of this bite registration;
so i usually give my patients a Kleenex so they have something to wipe their hands on,
and I just take everything out, and i'll just place it in here. If these patients
are experiencing a lot of pain and they have to wait for the guards to come back from the lab,
I'll send this Aqualizer home with them, and then they'll have something to wear at least until that
custom guard comes back in.. and unless they pop it, the Aqualizer can actually be pretty helpful.
Most of these patients are heavy clenchers and grinders, so I'll say, "you may pop this and
those little pads of sterile water will burst, so if you end up with some water in your mouth
don't be surprised, don't let it freak you out. But that just means you burst those pads
and you should throw the Aqualizer away because it's not really useful after the pads are burst".
I'll then take this front part and I place it back in, so I put it right between,
I line it up with Alex's front teeth and then I have her bite into it, find where her lower
teeth fit into that. So then what we'll do is fill in the back part of this bite registration
so the important part here.. and i usually actually come around to each side to do this,
but i can't really do that for the video's sake so i'm actually going to ask Alex to just turn
her head a little bit towards me.. perfect, and i'm going to retract her cheek to show you guys..
..or do my best there i want to block the light, yeah.. and now you can turn back a little bit
..turn. Yeah, there we go.. so I'm filling in this bite registration material on the biting
surfaces all the way across and then I actually stitch together the old and the new material
so that it'll stay in one piece. And then I just go ahead and do the same thing on the other side.
I like to kind of tap the cheek or pat it like you saw me do after placing the material. The
reason I tap the cheek or pat it is to kind of flatten that material out and again,
I just stitch it together in the front and Alex is helping me kind of mold it. Too
kind of you! So now we wait another 40 seconds and once it comes out,
we'll have our bite registration. But what i do is i oftentimes ask the lab to send me back the
mounted models and the bite just so I can verify that everything was done exactly how I want it.
That might sound nitpicky and a little bit intense, but i just want to make sure
i'm doing the best treatment I can for my patients, for Alex here.. so we're almost
set; maybe another 10 seconds.. all right and here we go..
So here, my friends, is the final product! It should look nice and clean and have all
the bite marks in it top and bottom so the lab can easily mount it to this
bite registration. And when I've done this for my patients, good things tend to happen. So if
you don't have a TMJ specialist in your area, this can be a really good thing that you can just do in
your own practice. This is not the method I use in my TMJ practice; this is the method I used in my
general practice when I was still doing that, and I still got good results. But this is much, much,
much better and more superior to replicating the natural bite, so that's why this Aqualizer bite
is so valuable! It actually puts the muscles in their "happy place", instead of putting
plastic between the teeth just to block them from the forces of clenching and grinding.
This does more for the muscles, joints, and ligaments and also protects the teeth.
So I hope this video was useful to you guys. If it was,
please click "Like" below and SUBSCRIBE to my channel! There's so much more to come and I'm
so excited to share it with you guys! Thank you to my lovely assistant, Alex here.. she is wonderful,
couldn't have done it without you, and we'll see you all later. Thank you!