Why Your Teeth Might Be the Reason Your Body Won't Heal
Most people have never connected their jaw to their hip pain. Or their bite to their chronic neck stiffness. Or their teeth to the reason they cannot seem to get out of their own way no matter what they try.
In this episode of Medicine, Sean sits down with Dr. Frank Mallon, a PRI-certified physical therapist, integration specialist, and private PT to Super Bowl champions, Olympic medalists, World Cup champions, and platinum recording artists, to talk about the third and most overlooked lever in the human movement system.
The teeth.
Dr. Mallon's path to this work started the same week he graduated from PT school, when he was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin's lymphoma. After six months of chemotherapy, his body was in disarray.
Panic attacks, brain fog, muscle twitching, vestibular dysfunction. Every specialist he saw told him he was fine. It was not until Ron Hruska looked at him from across a room and said "you probably have some health issues, don't you?" that the path forward became clear.
What he found in Lincoln, Nebraska changed everything. Not just for him, but for every patient he has worked with since.
Topics covered:
- How the diaphragm, liver, and human asymmetry create a predictable pattern that works its way from the pelvis all the way into the jaw
- Why your mandible is a sesamoid bone and what happens to your bite when your cranium shifts
- How your teeth function as pressure sensors and proprioceptors that tell your brain where it is in space
- Why a popsicle stick can give someone full range of internal rotation in seconds
- The connection between your bite, your sphenoid bone, your pterygoid muscles, and your visual system
- Why braces and crowns done on a body that is already in a compensated pattern can lock that body in place
- How to know if your teeth are a limiting factor and the tests Sean uses before picking up the phone and calling Dr. Mallon
- Cross bites, open bites, deep canines - what to look for and what they mean
- The Parkinson's patient whose tremors stopped the moment a splint touched his teeth
- Why the splint, the orthotic, and the lens are all the same idea - open the window, then install the right pattern
From Medicine, presented by Saint Bartholomew - a conversation series on the truth of pain, performance, and optimal health.
Find Dr. Frank Mallon:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renaissance_pt/
Renaissance PT and Wellness: https://renaissanceptandwellness.com/
Saint Bartholomew
The Patron Saint of Chronic Pain
New York City
www.SaintBartholomew.com
What is Medicine?
Medicine is not pills.
It is not injections.
It is not surgery.
Medicine restores the body.
Hosted by Sean Light, founder of Saint Bartholomew Medicine, this podcast explores what actually heals chronic pain and builds durable human performance.
Through clinical insight, lived experience, and systems-based thinking, Medicine challenges the conventional model of symptom management and replaces it with a deeper framework: rebuild the systems, and the body restores itself.
Each episode examines the foundations of real healing:
– Sleep
– Nutrition
– Strength
– Nervous system regulation
Along the way, Sean shares the stories that shaped this philosophy — from childhood headaches to performance training, from the Sistine Chapel to the symbolic meaning of Saint Bartholomew — and explains the Four Systems of Healing that guide his clinical work.
If you are done chasing quick fixes and ready to build a body that works, this is where we begin.
This is Medicine.