Help me feel normal again

My story:

Twelve years ago, I have had orthodontic work done that has changed my bite to the worse. The orthodontic work consisted of an unilateral extraction with braces on the maxilla. I noticed changes on my palate and in my neck, I was no longer able to fit my tongue between my teeth. I reported all this things to the doctor after he had taken my braces off, and his explanation was that I would get used to it and that all this was normal. Two - three years latter I started to feel heavy postural problems, the whole right side of my body was locked up, my right shoulder, right leg and right sitting bone dropped down and when I would stand or sit, I would be in pain and discomfort - feeling stiffness all over my body. I could not breathe normally, breathing shallow and couldn't take a deep breath, this affected my hearth - I started to feel arrhythmia. All of this was happening to me after I have forgotten all about my orthodontic treatment - but it is all connected, and I will explain this latter. I have been living for the last 10 years, thinking all the time, whole day, before I go to sleep, when I wake up - what the hell is happening to me. I was always feeling very healthy and youthful, full of energy and happy - my body was my temple, I loved playing sports, and then like from nowhere I am having scoliosis, dystonia and a whole variety of neurological, respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms. All of this made me very anxious, like I want to jump out of my body, the same body I was so comfortable in for whole my life. Anxiety led to depression, and from the happy and relaxed state of mind I turned into a disaster in terms of functioning. I was/still am dissociated from the world - all the time thinking what is going on, and will I ever feel normal again. I have been to numerous doctors, all telling me that I have problems, but not as severe and that I exaggerated things in my head. One doctor who palpated my deep fascia and told me I really have a problem, but he couldn't find the cause of my postural instability (witch was the main cause of all the other symptoms). I tried to meditate, I tried a rigorous exercise regime, that the doctor prescribe me that included me doing postural and breathing exercises 3 times a day for 1 hour, witch means 3 hours a day. Nothing worked. Yea sure the exercise made me feel a bit better, but I felt it was not solving anything, just keeping things a bit more stable. So one night, a year and a half ago, I got home from a friend, where I was in the same old situation I was in for like 8 years now - can't relax, can't breathe, can't sit down, can't focus on the things that are going on around me... never really socialized in the full meaning of that word for quite some time, simply can't function because of the thoughts and discomfort regarding my condition. So when I got home I started crying, just crying, literally like a baby, weeping, and I decided I am going to get to the bottom of this, on my own, since the doctors don't know, I was going to find out.
And so I found out all about the connection your jaw joint/bite have with your spine and overall health - and the connection is HUGE. Your bite directly correlates with the relation of your first two vertebrae C1/C2, witch correlates with your whole spine and your brain stem (responsible for autonomic functions). Your tongue and the width of your dental arch correlate with your breathing, swallowing and skull dynamics. I have been investigating this for over a year now, every day, and it is impossible for me to explain this in short and simple while in the same time telling everything. So much symptoms that I have been feeling for so long were finally explained in unity and connection. Remembering how out of place my mouth and neck area felt after the orthodontics and the permanent stiff neck I got and reading all the connections - I was sure, this is it, this is the explanation. To make things 100% sure I made a ton of tests, including brain scans, and other neurological tests, to rule out some other conditions that could be causing this. All the tests I did confirmed that the main source of my problems is my jaw joint and bite - a CBCT of my skull and neck showed me that my head is tilting to the right and my cervical vertebrae are twisted, an MRI of the same region showed mild disc degeneration and cervical scoliosis. Your bite and your tongue play a direct role in supporting your head on your neck, the jaw acts as a class III leaver - when you bite down on your teeth, you decompress and stabilize the upper cervical spine. When that system goes out of place your body starts to slowly shift and twist to compensate that - it is simple static physics/biomechanics. One more thing to mention is that the unbalanced forces of a bad bite also cause cranial twisting, subluxating of the sphenoid bone (the central bone in the human skull) and can cause brain fog, feeling of disorientation and dizziness, witch I also have, but are a minor symptom compared to the discomfort.

I do not know why in the year 2019 such information is not being thought in every dental school in the world, but it is not. In fact most doctors I came in contact with (here in Croatia) have somewhat laughed at me when I tried to talk to them on this subject. Most of them couldn't accept that a mere plain citizen could know something they do not, and would often just dismiss me without even listening really. This information has been known for over 50 years now and is practiced in some places in the world with success in bettering peoples lives and how they feel. There is indisputable evidence about the connection of your mouth/teeth/jaw to your whole body, your breathing, just your overall psycho-physical health. My goal and dream is not to only heal myself, but to learn as much as I can from Dr. Sims, and upon returning to Croatia - plant seeds of this knowledge and spread the word, I hope the truth will be strong enough to change things. There is a lot of ego and childish own-theory protecting that is stopping the flow of some very useful information that could greatly benefit the health of everyday people. Believe me, I have wandered in a lot of medical circles in the last year, and while they can be knowledgeable and successful at what they do - they are not immune to ego, thus a lot of vital information and knowledge is being literally blocked. And while doctors are being stubborn, everyday people are walking around misdiagnosed and put on a ton of medication that is only a band aid to treat the symptoms, not the real cause. To make things clear I do not blame the everyday doctor, they are just people who have gone trough a lot of school and have a lot of practice that has been going in a certain direction. I imagine how hard it can be, when you put so much effort and time in something, to be able to have a flexible view on things. So the main problem is the schools that do not teach this - and that is the thing I am hoping, dreaming, of changing, alongside my health.

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My symptoms:

- cervical dystonia / whole body dystonia

- postural collapse, scoliosis, kypholordosis and forward head posture, whole body discomfort

- respiratory (unable to take a deep breath) and cardiovascular problems; having a hard time calming down after I do physical activity, example: I play football for 60 minutes and when I come home my heart rate and breathing won't go back to normal for a long time.

- neurological: mild tremors when doing fine head movement such as positioning the head to drink, tinitus (ear ringing), right eye tends to focus harder, brain fog, mild vertigo, whole body anxiety.

- in some literature all these symptoms are described as a whole in what is called "the dental distress disorder"

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My treatment plan:

I want to visit Dr. Anthony B. Sims (https://www.absimsdds.com/) and follow a multidisciplinary treatment protocol which consists of the following:

- a modified gelb splint that guides and decompresses the jaw join and upper cervical to a more natural and balanced state

- ALF appliance, used for unwinding cranial strains often caused by extraction orthodontics or trauma

- cranial osteopathy, placing the skull back to its original state

- general osteopathy and individual exercises, placing the whole spinal system in balance at the same time the jaw is being placed is key, because it is all connected

- meditation and neurological training to reprogram the neuromuscular system

- finishing orthodontics that center the bite around the, now stable, system

- the treatment lasts for about 2 years+ because it is a non-invasive method made to stabilize your neruomuscular and skeletal system trough biomechanics and exercise, it takes time for things to naturally fit in together again

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About me:

My name is Filip Kindl, I am 29 years old and I come from a small town called Đakovo in Croatia. I have studied and finished kinesiology at University of Split (KIFST). I am currently teaching gymnastics to kids here in my hometown Đakovo. I'm coming from a family of 4, my older brother, my mom and dad, and me. I always liked sports and have always felt very connected to my body, thus feeling so bad when all these problems started happening.

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Some knowledge I can give you, that may help your children:

Investigating all of this mouth-whole body connection made me find out about some very interesting things that could be useful to know for every parent! You can find all this info online, but I will try to sum it up for you.
While there are doctors that treat patients who already have problems with teeth and posture, there is a doctor in the U.K. that has been figuring out why do children get crooked teeth in the first place. His name is Mike Mew and he is continuing his fathers work (John Mew). They have discovered some amazing things that can help your child grow to its full psycho-physical potential. The facial development of people - for years now, has been fully related to genetics. And while that could be partially true, it is mostly just a connection made to justify our lack of understanding of facial development. There are HUGE environmental and behavioural factors in all this. Facial development starts from breastfeeding, I will not explain the process of breastfeeding itself but rather the positive neuromuscular program your child learns while doing so - and that is the motor functions of the tongue that are learned while being breastfed. The baby strengthens its tongue and learns to hold it up against its palate and between the teeth. Why is this important? Because the forces the tongue creates, play a major role in developing your child's facial structures, the tongue that is sitting on the roof of the mouth makes the healthy shaped arch of your teeth and proper forward facial growth. Also because of breastfeeding the baby learns to swallow properly, witch is a function we do 500-700 times a day, and is connected to your cranial dynamics and your posture. But breastfeeding is just the start, there are a couple more factors that go into account here, one of them is the proper use of your mastication muscles, in terms of usage volume. With the development of modern civilization, food became much softer and in the same time much more caloric, resulting in an exponential decrease in the use of our mastication muscles. You are needed to chew significantly less and in the same time you intake a lot more energy. Talk about an underused part of the human body, think about he jaw! This is important because bone growth, translated here as facial development, responds to forces, in other words, force stimulates the bone to grow. One more factor that is influencing the amount of stimulus your child gets is the fact that we dismantle our food using a fork and knife, do your child a favor and give it a nice chunk of solid food and let it train its mouth, stimulate bones and develop its face. The last major factor I would point out here is proper nasal breathing. Air pollution and allergies equal having a stuffy nose that disables the child to perform proper nasal breathing and makes him breathe trough his mouth. This disables proper tongue posture, disables the function of the sinuses to produce nitric oxide and in general starts a negative habitual cycle. More breathing trough the mouth equals a less developed face and that again equals in smaller craniofacial airways that correlates to more mouth breathing, so as I said, it begins a cycle. The most important period of nasal breathing is during sleep, because in a healthy baby the body will perform perfect tongue posture without any distractions and will stimulate proper growth for the whole night, and in baby terms, sleeping is more than half their life, so it is very important. The nitric oxide I mentioned is related to cardiovascular health, that is again related to breathing also. I do not want to raise panic you if your child has a stuffy nose here and there, it happens, the problem is if it is constant and if your child developed the habit of breathing trough the mouth. I am putting function first when talking about this, but on the other hand proper facial development plays a huge role in attractiveness.
What I want to add is that it is never too late to learn proper habits, of course that children will have far better results in terms of actual facial changes, but at any age really, you can better your postural health with proper tongue support to the skull, the deepest part of the tongue being the most important support. You can further research all these things on your own if you wish, I tried to explain them in the simplest way I could.

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Additional information, questions and costs

- Why Dr. Sims?
I am in contact with a lot of people who suffer similar symptoms with a same root cause - the jaw joint. My investigation lead me to believe that the methods Dr. Brendan Stack developed many years ago are the most effective in treating this. Dr. Sims is one of three people practicing his methods and has closely worked with him. Main reason why I chose him over the others is that I talked to many people who have been treated by all of these doctors and all feedback confirmed to me that Dr. Sims is the most communicative and open kind of guy, witch I will greatly need if I plan on learning and changing things in my home country. Other factor is that he is on the east coast of the US, witch is easier for me being in Croatia.

- Why gogetfounding and how much is the estimated cost of all this?
The biggest setback in all of this is the fact that I cannot get a working visa for the US. Obviously I do not want to work illegally? because by doing that I am putting everything at risk. These facts make my expenses way bigger because I now have not only the medical bills to pay, but expenses of living there for more than two years. The expenses of the treatment itself with all the adjustments, appliances, orthodontic work and cranial/sacral osteopaths are, I would approximate,? in the range of 35000$US - this is a fairly accurate estimate because as I said before I am communicating with other people that are undergoing similar treatments. I do not know how things will change for me once I am there, maybe I will be able to get a working visa, but calculating if I live there on a minimum I would need 10000$ per year of living (I probably need much more because of rent costs, but I count some opportunities will open once I am there), so I estimate I would need 55000$+ all together.
The reason why I need your help and why I am starting this fundraiser is the fact that these amounts are simply not in the same category as is the income in my country. I would literally need to work for 20 years to save up this kind of money, and so much time waiting to start the treatment is not an option for me, because my health will get worse, and I wouldn't be able to take it mentally. I was never a material kind of guy, and I hate the fact I need this money now, but I do, and I do not wish for anything else other than my health and the truth to be heard.

- Do I really need such an expensive and extensive treatment?
This condition has made me depressed and mentally paralyzed at a very happy moment in my life, it has taken away my feeling of youth and much more, my mind just can't let it go. Someone can say that people live with worse conditions - and I would agree, but not all of us are the same. I know if I do not do this, I will think about it for the rest of my life, my mind just won't let go. It has been so many years living with this so believe me I know. I just have to do it, in order to become a healthy functioning, emotionally stable individual again.

Let me just add that I promise this investment will not go to waste, I will use everything I learn on my journey to help understand certain health issues related to this and their root cause. Hopefully ultimately change some things to the better here in Croatia - where the profession just doesn't accept this knowledge for some reason.