By Ben Orcutt -- Daily Staff Writer

FRONT ROYAL — Dr. Craig A. Zunka agrees the kind of dentistry he practices is not your grandmother's dentistry, or, for that matter, your mother's dentistry either.

The 57-year-old native of Front Royal taught dentistry for two years at the University of Florida after graduating from dental school at the Medical College of Virginia in 1975.

"Right off the bat, 50 percent of my practice was treating TMJ [temporomandibular joint disorder] and chronic pain patients," Zunka says. "I was getting about a 40 percent success rate."

However, after using cranial manipulation techniques he learned at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine in Lewisburg, W.Va., Zunka says his success rate improved. Zunka expanded his treatment horizons by learning dental homeopathic remedies at Millersville University in Pennsylvania and by studying how to balance body chemistry at the Fordham-Page Clinic, in Wayne, Pa., outside of Philadelphia.

"When it came to treating people with chronic pain and jawbone problems, a lot of these people had horrendous muscle spasms and a lot of times instead of giving them muscle-relaxing drugs, you can take those people and you balance their body chemistry, put them on the right forms of calcium and the other adjunctive minerals that need to go with the phosphorous, the magnesium, vitamin D. You do all those things and the next thing you know, the muscle spasms go away," he says. "Sometimes it's just a thing of just changing what certain foods people eat. Some side effects of some of those foods for some people are muscle spasms, headaches, all kinds of things."

Zunka joined the Holistic Dental Association, which formed in the late 1970s, and went on to become president of the group for three years, and serves the board of directors in an advisory capacity.

"So I first started learning alternative health care modalities — diagnostic acupuncture, balancing body chemistry, using homeopathy, cranial manipulation, hypnosis," he says. "I started learning those things to treat chronic pain in TMJ patients. But then what I found out is how to take that and start applying it to a general dental practice. So I use those things every day in general dentistry."

Zunka says he does nutritional counseling based on lab tests. Blood tests are done, as well as a general stress index test. So on a comprehensive basis, Zunka says, he might find out he can help some patients, while others may be referred to a physician an osteopath or chiropractor.

"It may be that it may take two or three people while treating the person in the right sequence or together to get the result," he says.

Zunka says he became hooked on dentistry while in dental school after a patient who had chronic headaches for three years due to TMJ syndrome was relieved of her pain with an orthopedic bite appliance.

"I was hooked to see that you can make that big a change in somebody just by putting an appliance in their mouth," Zunka says. "After that I found out that it was much more complicated than that, but when you see something like that happen it was like that just opened my eyes to a whole different world than just fixing teeth."

In the past few years, there has been a lot of focus on the relationship of gum disease to heart disease, diabetes and osteoporosis, Zunka says.

"By looking at a blood test if you're treating a gum disease, we can get them on the right vitamins and minerals to try to help stop that, to help build the bone back to see what other herbal or homeopathic remedies, vitamins and minerals should be used to treat this," he says.

A member of the American Dental Association, Zunka follows routine protocol and treatment when examining patients, but also incorporates holistic medicine.

"I really like what I'm doing," he says. "I'm going to be practicing for a long, long time because it's fun. It's not boring. If I was just fixing teeth all day long, it could get a little bit boring, but when you're doing the numbers of different things that I'm doing. Right now I do on an average of 225 to 250 hours of continuing education a year."

Zunka admits that some people are somewhat reticent about homeopathic remedies.

"A lot of people don't understand," he says. "A lot of people are skeptical. But what's really happening today in our country is people are looking for other alternative ways [for treatment]. National statistics for last year I think it was 360 or 380 million doctor visits in the United States. There were 420 million doctor visits to alternative health care practitioners. I work with an oral surgeon in Winchester, and using different vitamins and minerals and homeopathic remedies, when we send a patient for wisdom teeth extraction, if you're on the right regime, they heal twice as fast and 50 percent of them never take a pain pill."

Zunka says he exercises five days a week and, in addition to proper nutrition, exercise can help improve dental health by ridding the body of toxins. He also says what people fear most about going to the dentist — getting a shot — doesn't have to be that painful because of compounds that can be applied to the injection site.

Chamomile, the same flower that the tea is made from, also is used to help numbing ingredients wear off faster, Zunka says.

"Some people are really interested. Some are not," he says. "I'm not here to convert anybody. I'm about health, about wellness, and I consider myself a pretty healthy guy, but if there's anything I can do to help make myself healthier, I'm always in it for myself as much as I am for everybody else. I'm just having a blast every day."

Warren County residents Catalina Hoover, 66, and her husband, Richard "Dick" Hoover, 68, are patients of Zunka.

"I'm surprised how well they have worked for me," Mrs. Hoover says of Zunka's homeopathic remedies. "He never gives me over-the-counter drugs. It's holistic medicine that he has recommended and I have used it and it has worked. He's taken care of everything for the last 10 years. We are both extremely happy having been to dentists all over the world."

Hoover echoes his wife's sentiments.

"He left me with a smile so winning that I have to use it with great care," Hoover says.

Marilyn Longerbeam, 62, of Bakerton, W.Va., has been a patient of Zunka's for more than 20 years, having first gone to him to treat TMJ. She says the two-hour and 20 minute round-trip drive to his office is worth it.

"Through all natural means Dr. Zunka got rid of my pain," she says. "It didn't happen overnight. He got me to the point where I no longer had pain. He also recommended that I see an orthodontist."

She wore braces for about five years. During that time she had very few flare-ups of TMJ. After the braces came off, however, the results of her nightly teeth grinding was the next issue she faced.

"My teeth were literally just short stubs in the front and that interfered with my bite tremendously. Dr. Zunka recommended that we do porcelain veneers on my top eight front teeth, which I had done. All of my life, up until the point I got my veneers, I would hide my smile because it was not a pretty smile at all. With the porcelain veneers, I became a new person."

Zunka's office is located at 107 W. Fourth St. in Front Royal. For more information on his holistic dental practice, call 635-3610.

* Contact Ben Orcutt at borcutt@nvdaily.com