When I was eight, my dad took me to get a cavity filled. The dentist, a tall man with a moustache and a big smile, reassured me that everything would be just fine. I sat confidently in the chair, closed my eyes, and let the local anaesthetic work its magic. But soon I felt dizzy, and fainted. When I was brought back to life—yep, you read that right—a few minutes later, the dentist told me I’d had an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic. I went home with a swollen face that amused my classmates for an entire week.

From then on, I fought any form of dental treatment tooth and nail. I was ready to sacrifice candy for the sake of a cavity-free future.

Many years later, when I first heard the term “holistic dentistry,” I was suspicious. While I understood “holistic” as relating to complete systems rather than focusing on individual parts, I could not see how dentistry fit in. To me, this was simply another sadistic trick that dentists used to not only inflict pain on your mouth, but on your whole body. Surely, holistic dentistry meant holistic pain dressed up with candles, spa music, and incense.

Armed with a healthy dose of bias and fear, I find myself walking into the Kerrisdale Dental Centre to meet Dr. Abbas Tejani, who practises holistic dentistry. I look for the candles and the spa music, but the place looks like a regular dental office with pictures of smiling patients on the wall. I grit my teeth and ask Tejani, “So what is holistic dentistry all about?”

“We work with the bite and the way the bite affects the whole body,” he explains. “I have always been interested in how to make things work in systems. By changing your bite, you change the efficiency of your muscles and your balance.”

Such an approach helps alleviate various problems such as headaches, jaw joint soreness, muscle tension, and pain in the neck and facial muscles, he adds.

Tejani works with practitioners including chiropractors, physiotherapists, and naturopaths, who conduct biocompatibility tests to determine which dental materials are best suited to the patient’s needs.

And he’s not the only one. Dr. Jonathan Kao, a dentist at City Dental Wellness Centre, uses mercury-free fillings and follows a strict protocol in the removal of mercury amalgam fillings. (Research has demonstrated that mercury, even in small amounts, can cause a variety of health problems.) While Kao believes in holistic dentistry, he does not practise it in the strictest sense, explaining that it depends on the patient’s needs.

“For people who are healthy, it won’t make a big difference,” he says. “Someone can smoke cigarettes for 40 years and never develop any lung problems while others die of lung cancer—just as someone who has a mouth full of amalgam fillings [might] not have any ill effects, while others with only a few amalgam fillings develop major health problems.”

Meanwhile, Tejani offers to perform a little holistic dentistry on me. The eight-year-old girl inside me wants to run away, but I let him proceed. He asks me to stand up and raise my arms horizontally. While I keep my mouth slightly open, he presses down on my arms, telling me to resist. I’m successful (surely I know how to fight dentists). But when Tejani performs the test again, this time while I bite a spatula, my arms quickly collapse.

“This simple muscle test tells me how your body is affected by your bite. When you bite, your muscle strength collapses.”

Soon the verdict is delivered: “Your teeth are not aligned in harmony with your joints. Your system is out.”

My jaw drops. Another test, a computerized analysis of the bite, tells me 55 per cent of my bite is in the front teeth. “You are putting a lot more pressure on the front, and that will be affecting the whole system,” Tejani explains, meaning my front teeth will tend to wear down more quickly and that I may experience problems with my muscles down the road.

I am crushed at the thought that my teeth are in disharmony with the rest of my body. Am I all bark and no bite? But the good news is if I work with Tejani to stabilize the bite, it will help decrease muscle tension, improve my balance, and prevent tooth wear.

Holistic dentistry suddenly makes me realize that maybe I was wrong to ignore my teeth all these years. While it might not be enough to convince me to make peace with dentists, at least I can learn to build more respect for my teeth. After all, it looks like my whole body may depend on it.

Isabelle Groc is a freelance writer and photographer who is developing a sweet tooth for holistic dentistry.