Dr. Dwight Erwin Jennings, DDS

Part 1/2 of Full Review got cut off at the end, so this is a continuation of that. Read this before reading Part 2/2 of Full Review. Unfortunately, medications and cognitive / behavioral approaches did not help reduce my prior pain or pain during treatment with Dr. Jennings. If times were too painful, I would either not wear my daytime and nighttime dental orthopedic or orthodontic appliances and/or request a break from treatment from Dr. Jennings for days to months. These periodic stoppages in treatment allowed my body to fully reset from the pain and feel pain relief from treatment, so that I could continue the treatment. Even though Dr. Jennings emphasizes reducing Substance P (pain) through bite alignment, the treatment can increase Substance P (pain), especially using jaw expansion and orthodontic appliances that move bone, teeth, tissues, gums, nerves and other things in the mouth where the trigeminal nerve flows through. Due to my very difficult case, one downside was my… treatment plan went from an initial 2 years to a very long 10 years. Other reviewers have also mentioned treatment that went well beyond his treatment plan timeframe, which is a major issue. I wish he was more upfront about the long delay in getting results, but it was very hard to predict where my case would go, since I had major health issues before I saw him.

Part 2/2 of Full Review Read Part 1/2 of Full Review before reading this. Some people cannot wait this long for results and cannot go beyond his designated treatment plan timeframe. Some people grow frustrated at the slow treatment progress and give up before treatment ends. Some people think only his treatment can cure all the illnesses he claims (when in reality, people may need to see other appropriate health professionals to diagnose and treat other health problems). Unfortunately, in my case and other people's cases, results may be slow to come by and not as quick as they were expecting. As another reviewer mentioned, some people sue him and/or settle out of court for not achieving outcomes within his designated treatment plan timeframe. A reviewer mentioned that he is under probationary terms by the Dental Board of California due to causing suffering on other patients. He treats patients in a field where there is still no effective evidence-based treatment according to the… U.S. National Institutes of Health (search online the CBS News and Kaiser Family Foundation Article 'The horrors of TMJ: Chronic pain, metal jaws, and futile treatments' and Video 'TMJ disorders affect millions of Americans, yet remain widely misunderstood'). Therefore, lawsuits against him and other similar practitioners in his field are to be unfortunately expected, and I would not be surprised to find other similar practitioners to him to be under probationary terms as well. In a field of mostly questionable and non-effective treatments lacking scientific evidence and scientific consensus, he is courageous in using his evidence-based treatment based on his own scientific and clinical research to reduce suffering in patients. He was very brave in willing to take on the most difficult cases such as mine, which are higher risk and higher reward. When I consulted with most of the other TMJ disorder and pain practitioners (including major dental universities) before seeing Dr. Jennings, they told me either there was nothing wrong (discrediting my symptoms), or seeing the worn out jaw joints on my X-rays, to get total jaw joint replacement surgery (which the U.S. National Institutes of Health recommends only AS A LAST RESORT after exhausting all non-surgical treatments due to a lack of long-term studies on its effectiveness, and permanent changes to the jaw joint and structure - Source NIH National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research TMD (Temporomandibular Disorders)). Therefore, even supposed 'evidence-based treatment' recommendations from other practitioners and major dental universities were not actually evidence-based in my case, which means this field is highly lacking in professionals willing to take on the higher risk and higher reward to properly treat this condition. Dr. Jennings took on this higher risk and higher reward by using appliances that often temporarily increased my suffering, so that I could achieve optimal outcomes that reduced my suffering in the long-term. A reviewer mentioned about the receptionist in the past not being reliable in returning phone calls and messages. That past receptionist has left, and the new receptionist has been from my experience reliable in answering and returning phone calls and messages. Therefore, this is a treatment that required me to make difficult sacrifices such as enduring treatment discomfort and pain to achieve ideal outcomes. In the end, it was worth it!

Part 1/2 of Full Review Dr. Jennings' treatment finally got me out of TMJ pain towards the very end of treatment, which I am very grateful for! I currently have ended treatment. I do not wear any appliances in my mouth, and my jaw functions well. This treatment fixed the excessive temporomandibular joint compression and hypermobility, temporomandibular and bite dysfunction and pain, excessive musculoskeletal tension including headaches, fatigue, and cognitive dysfunction I had for many years that were related to my jaw. My upper and lower jaw function together well with end-on-end bite (underbite), and I have rear molar contact where I can chew and grind down foods much better, which I did not have previously. For those discouraged by other reviewers, my case is a success! I had a very difficult case due to receiving prior orthodontic treatment from another orthodontist that was done poorly, which caused excessive temporomandibular joint compression and hypermobility,… temporomandibular and bite dysfunction and pain, excessive musculoskeletal tension including headaches, fatigue and cognitive dysfunction. As the other reviewers talked about, he puts people into an end-on-end bite, which is an underbite that mimics what primitive humans have, and some do not feel at all comfortable with that type of bite. However, this type of bite helped decompress my temporomandibular joint, reduced my hypersensitivity to pain at times during treatment, and helped me feel more comfortable in my own body since my bite affected my proprioception. This type of treatment is not for the faint of heart for someone already with facial and trigeminal pain, as going through treatment using jaw orthopedic appliances created fluctuations in my feeling of discomfort, pain, stress, posture and gait from the appliances. Dr. Jennings uses jaw orthopedic appliances like ALF, Crozats, and Twin Blocks for daytime use and Bionator and soft dental splints for nighttime use. Initially, adjustment on these appliances sometimes increased comfort for the first few days, and then after those first few days my prior existing symptoms often worsened (and could lead to frequent headaches). If this was the case, this often led me to chase that comfort by getting more frequent adjustments every week or two weeks, which would only usually fix the prior existing symptoms for the first few days after adjustment. Therefore, I would often have to bear out the discomfort and pain in between adjustments. I often had to massage my own facial and jaw muscles to reduce pain and tension from wearing the appliances, or go to a physical therapist recommended by him to help me release the pain and tension from wearing the appliances. However, in some instances, my symptoms did not get worse and I would wait as long as possible until the next adjustment since I felt comfortable with the adjustment. I learned through the process that I have to be very specific with how I want Dr. Jennings to correct the bite (I often had to tell him multiple times at each adjustment to change the height of the plastic and/or the bite precision in the dental appliances). As a patient, I insisted that Dr. Jennings make multiple adjustments on the appliances until he got it right for my mouth, as my body is very sensitive to any adjustment in the mouth area. I appreciate he was very patient-centered and made adjustments as I insisted, as this area is both an art and a science to get things precisely right. As I saw with myself and other patients, he exercised a great deal of patience for me and other patients to get things right (this is what I call personalized treatment, as everyone's needs and wants to be met are different, which I deeply appreciated). Unfortunately, medications and cognitive / behavioral approaches did not help reduce my prior pain or pain during treatment with Dr. Jennings. If times were too painful, I would either not wear my daytime and nighttime dental orthopedic or orthodonti

Zero stars!! Dr. Jennings is a dental Frankenstein. Numerous dentists that I have seen after this dental Frankenstein have said, without equivocation, that he “disabled” my jaw. He did. The right side of my face now swells, I look deformed, the pain is unbearable and leaves me unable to sleep more than three hours a night and on occasion my jaw just totally is unable to move. I have no control over the symptoms. The instability of my jaw has now left me with cervical instability and tinnitus. I last saw him in 2015 and it is now 2020 and this dental Frankenstein has brought nothing but chaos and poverty into my life. For five years I have used up all my money to try and find a solution to an egregiously misaligned jaw, a now malformed face and the pain of it all. Did I make this clear? He has left me in pain 24/7. Managing the symptoms of his shoddy experimental “work”, although “work” is an overstatement, is a 24/7 job. The quality of my life and health is forever altered as a… direct result of what he did to me. I wish I was able to post photos on here. I went to see dental Frankenstein in 2014. He gave his spiel about substance P and how the trigeminal nerve affects health in the body and how HIS type of realignment can take pressure off the trigeminal and thereby prevent disease. Even Cancer. Of special interest to me because I was a former cancer patient. He knew that. After about a year the right side of my face started to look puffy and we were getting nowhere with the main original symptom I had come in there for. I had moved cross country for this treatment. Really bad move. In regards to the puffiness he told me that, quote, “you are aging”. He also said to remove the appliances from my mouth and my jaw would go back to where it was before we started. Never happened. At the time dental Frankenstein was working on me he was being sued through the California Dental Board by a woman who had to have her jaw surgically reset. However, I believe he was put on probation for a year for something else unrelated to that poor woman’s suffering. He never mentioned the lawsuit of course. You can read the case against him for yourself in the California Dental Board website. I was eventually told by someone who knows him that he gets sued frequently and settles out of court frequently. I was also told by a professional that works with him, at the time, that sometimes he just really messes up peoples jaws and makes them worse. Regrettably, this person said, I was one of those. Why does the California Dental Board allow him to continue to practice when the damage he inflicts on people is far too frequent and far too severe to meet the standard of care necessary for professional quality? Stay away. Dear God, stay awa

Dr Jennings is at best a delusional man who thinks his treatment will cure all diseases, at worst he’s a con artist. I wish so much that I had never started this treatment. My jaw and teeth are ruined and I’ve spent thousands of dollars. I’ve also gone through a lot of pain with this treatment. I don’t even know where to go to fix the damage Dr Jennings has done to my jaw or how much more this mistake will cost me. Don’t do it!

I feel potential patients of Dr Jennings deserve a warning about his treatment plan. He will tell you that his way of pulling the jaw forward, and basically giving you an underbite, will reduce your Substance P levels and cure whatever ails you, including incurable neurological diseases. He will tell you that this will take 12 months. Once you begin wearing these appliances he makes for you, your jaw will shift so much that you cannot bite down normally without them, locking you in to finish the treatment plan. You will be extremely uncomfortable with these appliances in and with them out. 12 months will come and go, and he will tell you you are almost done. Another 12 months will come and go, and you are almost done..no explanation as to why you are now 24 months in, and paying more than you were originally quotes. Every question is answered with some weird vague answer. Another 5 years will come and go....and every time you see him, you are almost done. Keep in mind you… cannot just stop the treatment, your jaw will be in such a bad place that you will be in pain and unable to eat. Your smile is ruined, you are in pain, maybe your teeth are crooked now, and all the while you've paid lord knows how much over the original quote, maybe triple or quadruple, you stop counting because you'e so mad at yourself for ever starting this in the first place. Save yourself and run away...

I have a number of concerns about Dr. Jennings's practice in terms of my child and our experience, which are not TMJ issues. His practice claims to cure a number of serious neurological conditions, which could be an FDA issue, perhaps, I don't know? However, despite all his promises of research proving his claims, he never produced any relevant research and came up with an article from a fashion magazine about ice cream and headaches and the trigeminal nerve, which didn't map to my son's situation at all and was silly at best. He even proposed my son didn't have the birth defect that had been diagnosed by multiple doctors. For my child's written treatment plan I waited almost a year, which I needed to review with my son's other doctors. I was so frustrated by the next week, and tomorrow promises from Lori for a written treatment plan (receptionist) I started to call his home. Lori, a nice personable person, is not in any way reliable. They never return phone calls and vehemently deny… getting any messages. No risks or financial commitment of this approach of resetting the jaw by pulling the teeth in various directions and forward, creating something of an underbite are ever explained. Perhaps it works in TMJ, but my son never had the pain of TMJ. Dr. Jennings shared with me all modern humans need this correction. I'm very open minded, but we ended up trying to reverse the effects of the 6 months of treatment, which made my son's jaw cant worse (not sure how much cant still remains). Maybe this was part of the overall plan but it was never properly explained in writing so I could consider it. All consulting doctors thought his treatment for my son was damaging and had risks with so many years of orthodontic treatment and that it could damage the roots causing tooth loss. Also, now concerned about the plastics and any toxic leeching?

Interesting that 2 of the low reviews are by the same person, and several reporting increased symptoms developed them after discontinuing treatment. I have been in treatment for two diff conditions in the last 25 yrs, have had excellent results reducing pain, dizziness, and spinal alignment. Dr. Jennings treated all three of my sons when they were younger, and I believe improved their health.