- The nonsurgical treatment of a Class II open bite malocclusion Michael D. Insoft, DMD," Richard A. Hocevar, DMD, b and Charles H. Gibbs, PhD c Gainesvitle, Fla. This case was treated by residents in the postgraduate orthodontic program at the University of Florida under the supervision of Dr. Hocevar. A treatment regimen that he developed to increase the strength and endurance of the masticatory muscles was used. The patient performed prescribed daily clenching and chewing exercise with resilient posterior bite-blocks and wore a hard acrylic posterior biteplane the remainder of the time. It was hoped that this approach would increase the chances of treatment success and stability. (Am J Orthod Dentofac Orthop 1996;110:598-605.) The diagnosis, treatment, and stability of treated open bite malocclusion continues to be a di- lemma, creating much controversy and debate among orthodontists. Many authors agree it is essential to distinguish between dental and skeletal open bites? '2 However, difficulty arises in the numerous inter- mediate cases where the distinction between the two is not clear. 3 Several articles have been published on characteristics associated with skeletal open bites. These include increased lower face height, 1"4-6 short posterior face height, ~'4"6-9 marked antegonial notch- ing, 1'7 increased maxillary molar dentoalveolar height, ~~ and increased gonial and mandibular plane angles.3-8"~l Several factors have been implicated in the cause of anterior open bites, including unfavorable growth patterns, ~2-15 digit sucking hab i ts , 12''4'16-2~ hered- ity, 16'17'21 an enlarged lymphatic tissue. ~8-2~ Several studies have found correlations between orofacial mus- culature and facial structure and indicated rela- tions between weak musculature and long face and anterior open bite pat terns . 23-31 Concrete establish- ments of cause-effect relations is much more elusive, however; these are classic "chicken or egg" questions. The problem in many patients may well be multifactorial, and subsequent problems that appear similar may have different causes. Perhaps because of the variety of theories on cause, a wide variety of treatment philosophies have been advocated for the correction of anterior open bites. Many orthodontists believe that without identification From the University of Florida College of Dentistry. aIn private practice, St. Petersburg, Fla. bRetired. ~Professor, Department of Oral Biology. Reprint requests to: Dr. Charles H. Gibbs, University of Florida, Department of Oral Biology, Box 100424, Gainesville, FL 32610-0424. Copyright �9 1996 by the American Association of Orthodontists. 0889-5406196/$5.00 + 0 8/1/61083 598 and elimination of the etiologic factors, treatment and stability will have a poor prognosis. 3"23"32 This in turn led to the advocation of speech therapy, tongue retraining exercises, and habit appliances as a part of the orthodontic armamentarium. 1'32'33-36 A variety of removable and fixed appliances have been developed to counter digit sucking and tongue habits, for example, obstructive cribs, various acrylic plates, and palatal spikes. 23'32'26 Some orthodontists claim success from orthodontic means alone. Cooke et al. 37 presented a case in which they extracted molars, thus moving teeth out of the "wedge" thereby causing an upward and forward autorotation of the mandible. Kim, 11 on the other hand, believes the key to success lies in the axial inclination of the posterior segments that must be upright in relation to the occlusal plane. He advocates the extraction of second or third molars and distalizing the crowns of the first molars through a technique called multiloop edgewise arch wire. In addition, while others have had little success in using the chincup and headcup, Graber 38 has found that in his practice it renders the best response. High-pull headgear to the maxillary molars is another common approach to open bite treatment. The rationale for this treatment is to intrude the maxillary molars and allow the mandible to autorotate, thereby closing the anterior open bite; some authors may dispute this. 39 Before the 1970s, treatment consisted primarily of dentoalveolar changes or modification of oral habits. While this may be adequate for some dental open bites, it is inadequate for the treatment of skeletal open bites. 37'4~ Several surgical techniques were developed to aid in the correction of anterior open bites, including three-piece sectioning of the maxilla, 42 subapical os- teotomies, 43 and corticotomies. 44 Recently, repelling magnets in posterior bite-blocks have been used to intrude the posterior segments, allow autorotation of the mandible, and thereby close the open bite. 45 Kil-
- American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics insoft, Hocevar, and Gibbs 599 Volume 110, No. 6 Fig, 1. Pretreatment photographs. iaridis et a l . 46 conducted a study of 20 growing pa- tients, age 9 to 16 years, with skeletal anterior open bites. Half of the subjects wore removable repelling magnetic posterior splints, whereas the other half wore removable acrylic posterior bite-blocks of the same thickness. The results showed that the magnets caused a more rapid intrusion of the posterior segments. While magnets have been shown to close open bites in some cases, there may be at least some patients for whom they might not be the best treatment in the long run. Many patients with open bites seem to have hypotrophic or hypotonic masticatory musculature. Relative to average persons, their mouths seem to hang open flaccidly. As anyone who has ever tried to push
- 600 Insoft, Hocevar, and Gibbs American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics December 1996 Table I. Muscle exercise chart Bite Strength and Endurance 2501 r cO 200] === ~'En" 150] (gJ~ =E 1ooj • Strength-lbs. B Repetitions--# E l l . V/ / V / / V / / L / / / V / / g/ / / / / . . / / / / I , " / / /1 t / / I / / / / / / 0 36 72 I 128 170 240 Days into Treatment 280 321 396 Fig, 2. Pretreatment cephalometric tracing. the opposing poles of two magnets together has noted, such magnets produce a "noxious" sort of force that might encourage some open bite patients to let their mouths hang open all the more, avoiding the magnets rather than fighting them, and discourage them from using their masticatory muscles, leading to their further weakening. Weaker muscles would not contribute to the stability of the result; stronger muscles would. Much of the publications on open bites is not supported by scientific evidence, but is instead based on unanecdotal responses. We believe that new ideas and further research into the cause, treatment, and stability of open bites need to be pursued. The treat- ment approach developed by Dr. Hocevar and illustrated in this case, endeavors to correct an anterior open bite with the use of exercises with a posterior biteplane in an attempt to intrude or at least prevent extrusion of the buccal segments during treatment. Unbeknownst to us, similar approaches with similar rationale were being tried elsewhere at about the same time, also with some success , 47-49 but exploration in this direction, including our own, is embryonic. HISTORY This 141/2-year-old postmenarchial white girl had unre- markable medical and dental histories. The patient's chief
- American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics ]nsofl, Hocevar, and Gibbs 601 Volume 110, No. 6 Fig. 3. Posttreatment photographs. complaint was the prominence of her maxillary incisors. No oral habits were reported. Diagnosis This patient had a moderate Skeletal II pattern and a Class II, Division l dental malocclusion (ANB = 6 ~ over- jet = 12 mm). This was accompanied by an open bite pattem, which characteristically included a long lower face height, a steep mandibular plane angle (SN-MPA = 46 ~ and a 3 mm open bite. The maxillary incisor inclination was a 114 ~ to SN, and at 31~ mm to NA, and the mandibular incisor was at 82 ~ to MP, 23~ mm to NB, and 1 mm to NPg. The molars were 1/2 cusp Class II and the canines were 3/4 cusp Class II. The maxillary arch had 2 mm of spacing and the
- 602 Insoft, Hocevar, and Gibbs American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics December 1996 J Fig. 4, Posttreatment cephalometric tracing. mandibular arch had 4 ram. The maxillary midline was correct and the mandibular midline was 2 mm to the right. She had an excessively "gummy smile," apparently because of both the vertical excess and the horizontal prominence of the maxillary incisor segment (Figs. 1 and 2). Etiologic Factor The cause appeared to be primarily genetic. The growth pattern of her facial skeleton was poor, and her orofacial musculature weak, but no specific causative factor could be identified. General Treatment Plan The treatment of choice was an orthognathic surgery option, which the mother and the patient adamantly declined. The major concern in formulating her treatment plan was that any conventional orthodontic approach for reduction of the large overjet would entail considerable risk of exacerbating some or all aspects of the vertical pattern. The patient agreed to undertake masticatory muscle exercises with posterior biteplanes, in an effort to minimize that risk. After this, maxillary first premolars were to be extracted and the overjet reduced. A muscle strengthening and endurance conditioning program was developed by Dr. Richard Hocevar in consultation with exercise physiologists at the University of Florida. To increase the strength of the major closing muscles of the mandible, a morning and evening regimen was imple- mented. The patient clenched on custom fit posterior biteplanes made of soft resilient mouthguard material, approximately 4 mm thick. A posterior biteplane of hard acrylic was wom at all times when not exercising. Every morning, one set of 12 repetitions of maximum force clenching was to be completed. Each repetition should take 10 seconds: 3 seconds smoothly increasing intensity, 4 seconds holding maximum intensity, 3 seconds smoothly decreasing intensity, for a total time of 2 minutes. Every evening, she was to clench at maximum force for as long as possible, up to 1 minute. Endurance was to be increased by chewing with her soft biteplane every evening as much as she could, up to 2 to 3 hours with medium intensity. Chewing should consist of a mixture of medium clenches, lasting from 2 to 15 seconds with rests of similar length between clenches, and simply chewing as one would chew gum. She was to begin with about 10 minutes of this exercise and work up to 2 to 3 hours as she w~s able. In theory, this type of training would strengthen the muscles of mastication and intrude the poste- rior teeth, or at least prevent their extrusion during treatment. Treatment Progress Progress was monitored by periodic testing of maximum bite force and endurance with strain gauges and transducers, incorporated in custom fit acrylic bite-blocks, linked to a computer and plotter. 5~ First, the patient would clench as hard as she could to establish her maximum biting force. Then, watching the plotter, she would clench with 80% of maxi- mum force for 2 seconds, followed by 2 seconds of relax- ation, repeated continuously for as many repetitions as she could, until she could no longer attain the 80% force level. Treatment was initiated with 13 months of posterior biteplane exercise. Maximum bite force increased from 126 to 196 pounds after 8 months of exercise and was maintained at this level through 13 months. In addition, bite endurance increased from 30 to 208 repetitions for an astounding l 1-fold increase in pound-reps. The patient accomplished remarkable development of her masticatory musculature that was impressive in appearance and to palpation. Some bite closure was noted during this period (Table I). After 13 months, upper first premolars were extracted and a 0.022-inch Beddtiot appliance (American Orthodontics Co.) s1"52 was placed with 0.014 Australian stainless steel arch wires. Two months into treatment, use of the hard acrylic posterior biteplane was reinstituted, and light Class II elastics were started. The arch wire size was increased to 0.018 by the fifth month of treatment, and a torquing auxiliary was used in the maxillary arch. Slight bit opening was placed in the upper wire 2 months later, and a J-hook anterior high-pull headgear was started. The posterior biteplane was discontin- ued after 1 year and the torquing auxiliary after 10 months. After 2 years of treatment with the Beddtiot appliance, the headgear was discontinued and 0.021 x 0.016 stainless steel ribbon arches ~3 were placed in both arches. The case was completed in the ribbon arches and the braces were removed after 26 months of Beddtiot appliance treatment and 39 months of overall treatment. RESULTS The patient was finished to a functional and esthetic Class II molar and Class I canine occlusion (Figs. 3 and 4). The ANB angle was reduced 1 ~ to 5 ~ and the mandibular plane remained at 46 ~ Overjet and overbite were ideal, and facial appearance was greatly improved. The maxil lary lip may have been retracted
- American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics lnSOj~, Hocevar, and Gibbs Volume 110, No. 6 Fig. 5. Postretention photographs. slightly more than might have been ideal: this was necessitated by reduction of the large overjet. The maxillary incisors were retroclined and retracted 10~ mm. The mandibular incisors were tipped forward 4~ mm and there was concern about the lower incisor attached gingiva (Table II). RETENTION A maxillary wrap-around and bonded mandibular canine-to-canine retainers were delivered at the debond appointment. The maxillary retainer was worn 24 hours a day for the first year and reduced to nighttime wear in the second year (Fig. 5).
- 604 Insoft, Hocevar, and Gibbs American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics December 1996 Fig. 6, Pretreatment to posttreatment superimpositions on cranial base. Fig. 7. Pretreatment to posttreatment superimpositions of maxilla on maxilla and mandible on mandible. Table Ih Cephalometric measurements Measurement I Norms 7-24-86 I 4-25-91 I 6-30-93 SNA 82 81 80 80 SNB 80 75 75 76 ANB 2 6 5 4 SN-MPA 36 46 46 45 IMPA 91 82 86 86 1-NPo (ram) 4 1 3 4 1-NA 22 31 21 23 1-NA (mm) 3 9 2 3 1 -NB 25 23 27 25 1-NB (nun) 4 5 7 6 1-1 angle 129 119 128 127 FINAL EVALUATION Overall, the treatment was successful. Surgery might have been a more ideal treatment plan, but the patient was not interested in this option. As of her last visit, which was 21/2 years after debond, her occlusion and gingival health were stable. She had not been wearing her maxillary retainer for the last 6 months. At this time, all cephalometric measures were well within measurement error of the posttreatment results (Figs. 6 and 7). COMMENTS We could not realistically expect to effect a significant change in the patient's growth pattern, as her growth was virtually completed by the time of the initial records. What we did hope for was a change in her orofacial structure and function of the sort that can be accomplished in other areas of the body by intensive exercise, as exemplified in the extreme by competitive body builders. We did not hope to alleviate the vertical problems significantly, but did hope to minimize the risk of worsening them. We further hoped that once the patient had developed her masticatory musculature through the formal exercise program, she would use and thus maintain her increased capacity in normal function. It may be that some patients might benefit from the use of intrusive magnets, in addition to an exercise program like that Used in this case. We wanted to test the effectiveness of exercise without confusing the question with multiple treatments at this stage. Furthermore, we thought that magnets might provoke muscle
- American Journal of Orthodontics and Oentofacial Orthopedics InsoJ~, Hocevar, and Gibbs 605 Volume l l 0 , No. 6 relaxation rather than contraction, and thus interfere with the exercise objectives in some patients. So far, our objectives seem to have been fulfilled. The treatment went as well as we had hoped, and the result has held up well for 21/2 years, 6 months after discontinuance of maxillary retention. The obvious increase in the development and tone of the masticatory musculature has remained, despite discontinuance of the formal exercise program.
- REFERENCES 1. Bell WH. Correction of skeletal type of anterior open-bite. J Oral Surg 1971;29:706-14. 2. Nahoum HI. Vertical proportions: a guide for prognosis and treatment in anterior open bite. Am J Orthod 1977;72:128-46. 3. Heckmann U. The treatment of anterior open-bite with removable appliances. Traus Eur Orthod Soc 1974;00:173-80. 4. Nahoum HI, Horowitz SL, Benedicto EA. Varieties of anterior open bite. Am J Onhod 1972;6I:486-92. 5. Richardson A. Skeletal factors in anterior open bite and deep overbite. Am J Orthod 1969;56:114-27. 6. Lopez-Gavito G, Wallen TR, Little RaM, Jooedeph DR. Anterior open bite malocclusion: a longitudinal 10-year postretention evaluation of orthodontically treated patients. Am J Orthod 1985;87:175-86. 7. Hayward JR. Surgical correction of anterior open bite. Int J Oral Surg 1978;7:286-8. 8. Ellis E, McNamara JR, Lawrence TM. Components of adult Class II open bite malocclusion. J OraJ Maxillofac Surg 1985;43:92-105. 9. Isaacson KG. Overbite and facial height. Dent Pratt 1970;20:398-408. 10. Schudy FF. Vertical growth vs. anterioposterior growth as related to function and treatment. Angle Orthod 1964;34:75-93. 11. Kim YH. Anterior open bite and its treatment with multiloop edgewise archwire. Angle Orthod 1987;57:290-321. 12. Subteluy JE, Sakuda M. Open bite diagnosis and treatment_ Am J Orthod 1964;50: 337-58. 13. Schudy FF. The rotation of the mandible resulting from growth: its implication in orthodontic treatment. Angle Orthod 1965;35:36-50. 14. Garino GB. Open-bite clinical consideration. Odont Emplant (Milano) 1976;2:29-32. 15. Richardson A. Facial growth and the prognosis for anterior open-bite: a longitudinal study. Trans Eur Orthod Soc 1971:149-57. t6. Mizrahi E. A review of anterior open-bite. Br J Onhod 1978;5:21-7. 17. Swinehart EW. A clinical study of open bite. Am 20rthod Oral Stag 1942;28:18-34. 18. Gershater MM. The proper perspective of open-bite. Angle Orthod 1972;42:263-72. 19. Justus R. Treatment of anterior open-bite: a cephalometric and clinical study. ADM 1976;33:17-40. 20. Atkinson SR Open bite malocclusion. Am J Orthod 1966;52:877-86. 21. Sassouni V. A classification of skeletal facial types. Am J Orthod 1969;55:109-23. 22. Linder-Arnnson S. Adenoids their effect on mode of breathing and nasal air flow and their relationship to characteristics of the facial skeleton and dentition. Acta Ololaryn- gol 1970;00:suppl, 265. 23. Straub W. Malfunctions of the tongue. Am J Orthod 1960;46:404-24. 24, Ringqvist M. Isometric bite force and its relation to dimensions of the facial skeleton. Acta Odont Scand 1973;31:35-42. 25. lngervall B, Thilander B. Relation between facial morphology and activity of the masticatory muscles. I ~ Rehab 1974;1:131-47. 26. Ingervall B. Facial morphology and activity of temporal and lip muscles during swallowing and chewing. Angle Orthod 1976;46:372-80. 27. Helkimo E. Ingervall B. Bite force and functional state of the masticator)" system in young men. Swed Dent J 1978;2:167-75. 28. [ngervall B. Helkimo E. Masticator), muscle force and facial morphology in man. Arch Oral Biol 1978;23:203-6. 29. Lowr AA. Correlations between orofacial muscle activity and craniofacial morphology in a sample of control and anterior open bite subjects. Am J Orthod 1980;78:89-92, 30. Proffit WR. Fields HW, Nixon WL. Occlusal forces in normal and long-faee adults. J Dent Res 1983:fi2:566~70. 31. Proffit WR, Fields HW. Occlusal forces in normal and long-face children. J Dent Res 1983;62:571-4. 32. Parker II-I. The interception of the open bite in the early growth period. Angle Ort.hod 1971:41:24-44. 33. Miller H, The early Veatment of anterior open bite. Int J Orthod 1969;7:5-14. 34. Turvey TA. Joumot V, Epker BN. Correction of anterior open bite deformity: a study of tongue function, speech changes and stability. J Max-Fee Surg 1976;4:93-101. 35. Speidel Mr, Isaecson R J, Worms FW. Tongue-thrust therapy and anterior dental open bite. Am J Onhod 1972;62:287-95. 36. Rein B. Treatment of anterior open-bite malocclusion, lot J Orthod 1969;7:27-34. 37. Cooke MS, Newsome PR. Combined unhodontic and restorative correction of severe anterior open-bite. Quint Intern 1990;21:729-36. 38. Graber TM. Lecture. Biennial meeting of Edward A. Angle Society. Denver, Colorado: 1969. 39. Baumrind S. Molther R West E, Miller D. Ma.edibular plane changes during maxillary retraction. Am .10r~od 1978;74:603-20. 40. Reitzik M, Barer laG, Wainwright MW, Lim B. The surgical treatment of skeletal anterior open bite defotru/ties with rigid internal fixation in the mandible. Am I Orthod Dentofac Orthop 1990;97:52-7. 41. Arvastas MG. Treatment of anterior skeletal open bite deformity. Am J Orthod 1977;72:147-64. 42. Hernandez-Orsini R. Class I open bite: a case report. Am J Orthod Dentofac Or, hop 1991:99:100-6. 43. Taylor RG, Mills PB, Brenner LD. Maxillary and mandibular subapical osteotonues for the correction of anterior open-bite. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Patrol 1967;23:141-7. 44, Generson RM, Porter JM. Zell A, Stratigos GT. Combined surgical and orthodontic management of anterior open-bite using cotticotomy. J Oral Surg 1978;36:216-9. 45. Dellinger EL. A clinical assessment of the active vertical eorrector, a nonsargical alternative for skeletal open bite. Am J ~ 1986;89:428-36. 46. Kiliaridis S, Egermark 1. Thilander B. Anterior open bite treatment with magnets: an experiment in nongrowing baboons. Am J Orthod Dentofac Onhop 1991;100:393-400. 47. /ngervall B. Bitsanis E. A pilot study of the effect of masticator)' muscle training on facial growth in long-face children. Eur J Onhod 1987;9:15-23. 48. Bakke M, Siersbask-Nielsen S. Training of mandibular elevator muscles in subjects with anterior open-bite. Eur J Orthod 1990; 12:502 (Abstr. 116). 49. Kuster R. lugervall B. The effect of treatment of skeletal open-bite with two types of bite-blocks. Eur J Orthod 1992;14:489-99. 50. Gibbs CH, Mahan PE, Maoderli A, Lundeen HC, Walsh EK. Limits of human bite strength. J Prosthel Dent 1986;56:226-9. 51. Hocevar RA. Begg-Edgewise diagnosis
Thursday, December 1, 2016
nonsurgical treatment of a Class II open bite - repelling magnetic posterior splints,
braces + surgery for open bite. going against dominant science
I just read your account, and it
sounds IDENTICAL to mine!! I believe my open bite was caused by a splint
to address my TMJ problems too, and only my back 2 teeth touch. I've
had a couple orthodontists who say I need braces + surgery, but we have a
dentist in town (in Ottawa, Canada) who does the DNA/homeoblock
approach, which I am REALLY drawn to, with the opportunity for a
holistic approach to address TMJ, better breathing, etc (a long list!) I
also have a long face. I'm still in the decision-making process, it's
hard to go against the dominant science out there. I wish there was more
concrete peer-reviewed research on the impacts of them, but am finding
out some very interesting accounts on-line, including this great blog -
thank you! MC in Canada
http://prettyinprimal.blogspot.kr/2011/05/epigenetic-orthodontics-building-better.html
http://prettyinprimal.blogspot.kr/2011/05/epigenetic-orthodontics-building-better.html
Friday, November 25, 2016
top teeth hitting on top of our bottom teeth
I wanted to let you know that the first sign my son and I had that we
had TMJ was our top teeth hitting on top of our bottom teeth. This
means that the bottom jaw is trying to come forward from a trapped
position. If you have had orthodontics than I would say you have the
same problem my son and I have, that the orthodontist moved your lower
jaw back and the brought you top teeth in to hold this force position
which caused your TMJ. If you haven't had orthodontics it still
supports that you lower jaw is trapped posteriorly and is trying to come
forward to relieve your TMJ and correct your lower jaw position.
Either way it's not got because it will cause wear and damage to your
teeth and gums and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. My
sons teeth started doing this and within 2 months he had 2 deep groves
worn in his front teeth. The hard contact can also cause root
resorption, it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Also it's a
major sign that your jaw joints are damaged and they will continue to
suffer damage unless you get the proper treatment which would begin with
a proper fitting splint to protect your teeth and jaw joints. If the
doctor you seeing won't address this problem, find one who will because
it will only get worse.
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Weston Price article. genetic model - tooth extraction
http://www.westonaprice.org/holistic-healthcare/is-it-mental-or-is-it-dental/
Cranial & Dental Impacts on Total Health
Dr. Raymond Silkman has a private practice in holistic dentistry and orthodontics in West Los Angeles, California. This article is based on his presentation at the 6th annual conference of the Weston A. Price Foundation in 2005.
The widely held model of orthodontics, which considers developmental problems in the jaws and head to be genetic in origin, never made sense to me. Since they are wedded to the genetic model, orthodontists dealing with crowded teeth end up treating the condition with tooth extraction in a majority of the cases. Even though I did not resort to pulling teeth in my practice, and I was using appliances to widen the jaws and getting the craniums to look as they should, I still could not come up with the answer as to why my patients looked the way they did. I couldn’t believe that the Creator had given them a terrible blueprint –it just did not make sense. In four years of college education, four years of dental school education and almost three years of post-graduate orthodontic training, students never hear a mention of Dr. Price, so they never learn the true reasons for these malformations. I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of very knowledgeable doctors in various fields of allopathic and alternative healthcare who still do not know about Dr. Price and his critical findings.
These knowledgeable doctors have not stared in awe at the beautiful facial development that Price captured in the photographs he took of primitive peoples throughout the globe and in so doing was able to answer this most important question: What do humans look like in health? And how have humans been able to carry on throughout history and populate such varied geographical and physical environments on the earth without our modern machines and tools?
The answer that Dr. Price was able to illuminate came through his photographs of beautiful, healthy human beings with magnificent physical form and mental development, living in harmony with their environments.
What Is Happening?
It has been well documented and Nobel prizes have been awarded to researchers that have established the relationship between proper form and development and proper physical functioning of the body. The changes in facial structure that we observe in our children today is an extremely serious matter. I would like to explore the consequences of what is happening to human physical form.
Let’s evaluate what happens to our children or adults who have faces that are narrow and long, who have lower jaws that are not developed properly, or who have a profile view showing a very weak chin. What happens when we see jaws so narrow and small that the teeth are crowded and overlapping. What happens when the cranium is underdeveloped in various dimensions and the eyes are not level with one another?
What is the physical health legacy of these individuals going to be? What happens when we see children and adults with forward head posture–necks that are holding the head in a forward position?
There’s an old saying, that someone “has his head on his shoulders.” The translation: well-grounded minds require well-grounded and well-supported physical forms and bodies. Unfortunately today a lot of people don’t have their heads on their shoulders–their heads are positioned in front of the shoulders.
Since a normal adult cranium weights between 12 to 18 pounds, the musculo-skeletal strain in the neck or cervical region to support a forward head posture can cause a cascade of events leading right down to the feet. The forward head posture in most individuals creates improper spinal alignment and lack of proper curvature to the spine at critical areas.
There is also an alarming trend in hip and knee replacement surgeries and many individuals have improper or mostly flat arches in the feet necessitating orthotics in their shoes or, even worse, corrective surgeries.
What happens to people when they don’t have their heads on their shoulders? What is causing this effect and why does the body support this apparently futile posture? We will answer that question.
The Cranium or Skull
Let’s discuss the significance of the skeletal structures in the head. The human cranium is made up of roughly 22 cranial bones not including the ones responsible for sound transmission. One of the key bony structures in the cranium is the maxilla, or the upper jaw. The cranium also houses the extremely important glands of the endocrine system. Two of these glands, the pituitary and the hypothalamus, are housed in another very important bony structure known as the sphenoid bone residing directly and in close contact with the maxilla.
The entire brain, and all of the structures or glands housed in the cranial cavity as well as the spinal cord and all of the peripheral and accessory nerves in the entire body are covered by a continuous-membranous sheath called the dural membrane. In dissections, it has been demonstrated and documented that pressure or force on the dural membrane in the cranial cavity or at the brain level will create pulsation or an opposite force at the end of the spinal cord, and vice versa.
If the cranium is not developed properly, the dural membrane can become twisted and torqued, thus possibly creating nerve conduction issues, hormonal imbalances or pain. You can imagine the effects that this can have on the nervous system and on an individual’s overall health and well being.
Interestingly, medical research has demonstrated the presence of constant and rhythmic movement of the cranial bones at the contact areas, also known as the sutures. Just as in breathing, when the lungs fill with air and then empty, so there is a movement of cerebral spinal fluid up and down the spinal cord and around the brain. So, unlike the popular belief that “it’s good to have a solid nogger,” we now know that this does not mean an immovable head or cranium. The inherent motion in the cranial bones is very important to overall health. Various accidents or trauma or surgical interventions of the face and head can have a negative effect on this motion.
There are also various foramina or openings in the bones of the skull which allow nerves and blood or lymphatic vessels to pass from the cranium to the lower areas and vice versa. If any of the cranial bones is under-developed or misshapen, as often happens to be the case, then these foramina can also be malformed. For example, they may be ovoid rather than circular because of underdevelopment, which may cause an impedance to flow of circulatory or neurological vessels going through that particular foramen. Improper drainage of our waste products through our lymphatic system or lack of oxygenation or nourishment of cranial tissues and organs may be experienced as negative effects on brain function and mental clarity.
The Maxilla
This bony structure provides visible structure to the whole mid-facial area. Eleven of the cranial bones directly contact the maxilla and the rest of the cranial bones have an intimate contact with the bones directly in contact with the upper jaw or maxilla. Therefore the position and size of the upper jaw has quite a lot to do with proper cranial development and facial aesthetics.
The entire floor of the orbit or eye sockets, where the visual globes or the eyeballs are housed, is made up of the upper jaw or maxilla. When the maxilla is not well developed, and the face is long and skinny, the eye sockets do not develop properly; the eyeballs cannot develop as a sphere, but may take on a football shape. The resultant developmental pattern can create various ophthalmic issues such as astigmatism or myopia. We can treat astigmatism with corrective lenses but the treatment does not really address the root of the issues.
hi-mental-skull3b
The maxilla viewed from underneath. Note the narrow palate in this illustration.
hi-mental-skull6
View of the interior of the head. Note the small area in the center where the nerves and blood vessels must pass.
hi-mental-skull5
Side view of the head showing the tongue and the nasal cavity.
hi-mental-sphenoid2
The complex sphenoid bone, positioned behind and above the maxilla.
hi-mental-headarteries
The arteries in the head. If the passages for these arteries run through skeletal openings that are too narrow, many detrimental effects can occur.
Airway Obstruction
The most serious consequence of under development of the maxilla is airway obstruction and mouth breathing. Eighty five percent of the nasal airway is made up of the maxilla, which provides the floor of the nasal cavity and houses all of the nasal sinuses typically referred to as the sinus cavities. Therefore, an individual with a narrow or improperly formed maxilla will have extremely narrow nasal passages, which limit flow of air and breathing capabilities, and will thus experience difficulty in having proper sinus health and drainage.
It is an important fact that the soft tissues develop to their genetic size, even when the bones do not! You might think of the head as a box that must house all of the structures that the genetic code needs to express and that will develop, but lack of proper dimensions to the cranial bones and the cranial cavity causes overcrowding, overlapping or deviation of some soft tissue areas. This can be illustrated by the example of overpacking a suitcase.
hi-mental-septum
A deviated septum or overgrowth of the soft tissue in the nose can cause blockage of the nostrils, leading to mouth breathing.
An example of this “overpacked suitcase” in humans occurs in the nose. How often have you heard someone say, “I have a deviated septum”? The septum is the cartilaginous tissue membrane that separates the two nostrils vertically. Imagine this soft tissue developing to its normal size, but the maxilla remains under-developed. The developing septum has to express its dimension somewhere, so it has two choices—it either deviates or bends to one side or the other (the deviated septum) or it grows through the maxillary suture and creates the condition known as palatal tori. These are bumps or ridges in the middle of the palate and most people have them to some degree or another.
A deviated septum blocks proper nasal air flow causing the individual to take up mouth breathing most of the time. There are a variety of other soft and hard tissue conditions associated with the nasal cavity such as polyps, enlarged turbinates and muscosal conditions that also serve to restrict air flow.
Breathing through the nose creates an avenue of air that’s moisturized, humidified and even somewhat filtered. Furthermore, when we breathe through our nose, the air passing through the nasal airway and contacting the turbinates–shelf- like bony structures–is slowed down. This allows the proper mixing of the air with an amazing gas produced in the nasal sinuses called nitric oxide (NO). Nitric oxide is secreted into the nasal passages and is inhaled through the nose. It is a potent vaso-dilator, and in the lungs it enhances the uptake of oxygen. NO is also produced in the walls of blood vessels and is critical to all organs.
Mouth-Breathing
Let’s evaluate the differences in mouth breathers and nose breathers. The consequences of mouth breathing can occur from the moment of birth because all infants are obligate nose breathers. That is the mechanism by which breast feeding and breathing can occur simultaneously. If a baby has obstructed airways, he may turn away from the breast due to lack of air and prefer a bottle, which allows him to consume his food more quickly.
A mouth breather will not be humidifying the air, or slowing it down to allow the proper mixing of NO with it. The lungs will have difficulty providing maximum oxygenation for the body with this dry, unhumidified, unfiltered and, most importantly, NO-lacking air. This constant and chronic condition affects the cardiovascular system and the heart because the smooth muscles that line all of the arteries react to this poorly oxygenated air with a kind of tightness, a kind of permanent tension, which can be very stressful and depleting to the body. Furthermore it has been clinically shown that blocking NO production in healthy individuals results in moderate hypertension and reduced heart output as well as shortened bleeding times by activation of platelet blood-clotting factors.
Due to the lack of proper oxygenation, the ability to deliver fully oxygenated blood to the cells is also much reduced. Thus mouth breathing has a negative effect on every cell in the body as it deprives them of oxygen. Overall wellness and health requires proper oxygen as every particle of our being requires oxygen. Cancer cells, by the way, are anaerobic by design. Other manifestations of mouth breathing include snoring and cessation of breathing (also known as sleep apnea), some types of headaches, hypertension without other known clinical causes, bed wetting, chronic ear or sinus infections, TMJ pain, sleep disorders and dark patches under the eyes.
Visual Diagnosis
Much valuable information can be obtained by looking at and studying the faces of traditional peoples with proper physical development and form. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Price and all of the photographers and cinematographers who have provided us with such valuable clues and information.
We can tell a lot about an individual’s physical development just by looking at the face. One of the things I look at in profile view is the nasal-labial angle. In a well developed person, this angle is an acute angle, that is, less than 90 degrees. A nasal-labial angle that is obtuse, that is greater than 90 degrees, is a sign that the maxilla is not well developed or positioned in the front-to-back dimension of the skull. The proper development of the maxilla is absolutely critical to the formation of the entire head and to the health of the entire body—and not just physical health but spiritual and emotional health as well.
hi-mental-nasalangleIn the photograph at left we see an individual with a nasal-labial angle of about 110 degrees, a sure sign that the maxilla is underdeveloped. As a consequence, he will not have an optimal development of the rest of head. Predictably, he has a narrow palate and in this case, he has had four premolar teeth extracted.
Another sign of poor facial development can be detected in the eyes. When someone is looking straight at you and you can see the sclera or white of the eye, that is a tip off to a very, very under developed upper jaw and mid-facial area.
Another area of interest is the soft tissues and skin. Sagging and wrinkles are minimal or non-existent in people with good physical development as they age. Their faces don’t sink back into their craniums. Wrinkles happen when the scaffolding—the bony structure—becomes diminished in comparison to the muscles and skin.
As I mentioned, the soft tissues of the body grow to their genetic size, even when the bony structures do not. The skin, the tongue, the tonsils and the nasal tissues grow to their genetic size but when the nutrition is missing, the bony structures are compromised. So the face will have an excess of skin and musculature, the tongue and tonsils will be too large for the mouth. Nasal bumps can also result–the nasal tissues are out of proportion to the facial structure so they protrude. People who have proper facial development do not have nasal bumps.
The TMJ and the Lower Jaw
When we look at the skull from the profile view we observe the temporo-mandibular joint, the TMJ. Most joints will go through normal hinge motion, and some of them like the shoulder and hip joint will have a rotational motion that is more complex. However, in these joints, the two bony members stay in contact with one another throughout the motion of the joint. The TMJ is unique in that it is designed to provide both hinging and sliding motion. In order to accomplish this compound hinge-and-sliding movement, the TMJ has a disc that slides in concert with the lower jaw or mandible. When the lower jaw is not positioned forward enough, the TM Joints do not develop very well, and the discs can get jammed behind or in front of the joint. They can even become perforated and cause some of the “clicks and pops” that can be heard when people open and close their mouths. Immediately behind the TM Joints we also have the ear canals and important vascular and neurological structures, which can become impinged upon as well.
What we call an overbite or overjet should really be called an underbite, because it is caused by the mandible, the lower jaw, that is too far back, not the maxilla that is too far forward. But when children come to the orthodontist with what the public calls an overbite, they are often treated by removing some of the teeth in the upper jaw and then with a device known as neck gear or headgear to pull the maxilla back. The thinking is that the apparatus will stunt the growth of the maxilla and allow the lower jaw to grow and catch up, or that the maxilla has grown too far forward and must be pulled back.
But the maxilla is already stunted due to poor nutrition and so you can imagine how this type of treatment may cause more compression, more jamming of the bones in the head with possible detrimental whole body effects. The correct treatment for this condition is to widen the palate with an appliance so the lower jaw position can be corrected forward and allow proper physiological form and function as our ancestors have enjoyed throughout the millennia.
More Visual Clues
When children or adults are not breathing properly they tend to develop dark patches and bags under their eyes. This is due to lack of adequate circulation as well as venous blood pooling in these areas.
Kids that are mouth breathers will always have chapped lips and typically the line separating the inner lining of the lip and the outside lining , known as the vermilion border, will be visible. Also mouth breathers in profile tend to have very weak chins and elongated faces. Typically these individuals will suffer from chronic sinusitis or sinus infections, colds, respiratory problems and lung-related issues.
Typically children with bags under their eyes have short attention spans because they do not have good circulation and oxygenation of the head and can tire easily. They are literally suffocating.
Furthermore, they don’t sleep very well–they are always tossing and turning and they wake up tired. Your body recuperates during sleep and sleep is especially important for teenagers. Teenagers need to go to bed before 10:00 pm because certain brain cycles designed for recuperation of the body kick in at around that time. These cycles will be interrupted if sleep mode is delayed to after 10:30-11:00 pm. The recuperation and rebuilding necessary to cope with stressful daily activities will then be compromised. These are the tired, sleepless kids who tend to have a diet high in sugar, trans fats and grains. They may end up labeled as ADD or ADHD and treated with drugs.
Airway capacity is the biggest and most important part of the well-being of a human being. It is important to stress the fact that breathing through the mouth and breathing through the nose have extremely disparate effects on the body. We are not designed to breathe through our mouths. The body is able to live by breathing through the mouth, but it suffers greatly for doing it.
Examples of Poor Facial Development
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Narrow face, mouth breathing, sclera showing under the eyes.
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Over bite or over jet, dark areas under the eyes, weak chin.
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Narrow face, circles under eyes, nose bump, tendency for face to sag.
Internal Structures
The structures that hang off the mandible or lower jaw include the tongue and the nasal pharyngeal areas, which eventually lead down into the lungs.
Other structures that can affect the airways further back in the throat area or the pharyngeal airway space are the tonsils and adenoids. About 85 percent of the children I see in my practice have extremely large tonsils and do you think they can breathe very well? It is not possible to breathe very well when tonsils, which are typically supposed to be almost unnoticeable, are so inflamed that they are almost touching and practically closing off the airway in the back of the throat, right where air is supposed to pass on its journey towards the lungs.
These structures also become swollen due to food allergies, especially allergies to pasteurized dairy. Every time I’ve had a kid and a mom convinced that they should stop everything pasteurized and processed and then eventually go to raw dairy products I have seen some reduction in tonsillar size, although this doesn’t happen overnight.
(Interestingly, I have had two cases of children who stopped having epileptic seizures as soon as they had their extremely massive tonsils taken out. Please note that I usually do not recommend removal of organs and body parts.)
Almost invariably a narrow or under-developed maxilla can cause the effect of holding back the lower jaw or the mandible. This improper positioning of the mandible and its inherent retrusion causes a lack of physical and physiological space for the tongue and the pharyngeal tissues, which again will provide an impedance to the airways, causing breathing difficulties and lowered oxygen uptake by all of the tissues.
The most important orthodontic appliance that you all have and carry with you twenty-four hours a day is your tongue. People who breathe through their nose also normally have a tongue that postures up into the maxilla. When the tongue sits right up behind the front teeth, it is maintaining the shape of the maxilla every time you swallow. Every time the proper tongue swallow motion takes place it spreads up against maxilla, activating it and contributing to that little cranial motion, that cranial pumping that we discussed earlier. Individuals who breathe through their mouths have a lower tongue posture and the maxilla does not receive the stimulation from the tongue that it should.
When the tongue doesn’t fit inside the jaws or dental arches it retracts back into the throat and pushes on the floor of the mouth. The result is something that looks like a double chin, even in women who are very thin. When we begin palate-widening procedures, this problem disappears–without plastic surgery.
And then what happens when orthodontists treat these problems by removing teeth? If he takes out eight teeth out of a total of 32 (four first molars and then later on four wisdom teeth), the patient ends up missing one-fourth of his teeth. What are the consequences of this? Can you take out 25 percent of anything that’s supposed to be whole and expect it to be okay? I consider the teeth as organs and do not recommend the removal of teeth for tooth crowding or orthodontic treatments.
And what happens when a child is given head gear or neck gear, when you put a force on a cranium to pull it back? There can be serious consequences.
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Types of headgear used to pull back the upper or lower jaw.
The Final Answer: Adaptive Capacity
Our bodies have an adaptive capacity to deal with shortcomings. Those of you who have studied CPR know about the ABCs of resuscitation. The A stands for airways and what are you supposed to do when someone needs assistance? You tilt the head back to open the airway. Similarly, when the airways are chronically blocked, the body tilts the head back. But humans cannot walk around with their noses up in the air for too long. The eyes must be parallel with the horizon, so the body then leans the head forward. Forward head posture in essence is a chin lift procedure with the eyes corrected to the horizon in a vertical or standing position.
That’s where that characteristic forward head posture comes from. This chin-lift, head-tilt-forward posture helps open up the airways. As I mentioned, craniums on adults weigh 12-18 pounds. Imagine a bowling ball. If I carry the bowling ball close to my body, I can carry it without becoming tired, but if I carry the bowling ball out in front of my body, what happens? I am going to suffer from fatigue. So then, in order to balance the head tilted forward, I may extend my butt out a bit, which creates a misalignment of the hips, but helps to balance the extra forward weight of the ball. How many people do you know that have hip and lower back problems? Most of those people also have airway problems. Also, there are limbs attached to the hips–we call them legs–so when the hips go out of alignment, the knees have to adjust to this weird hip posture.
These adjustments are all very subtle. One doesn’t wake up and feel that he or she is going to walk differently. Can you imagine that all of these issues and events can start with a baby who is chronically breathing through its mouth? So airway capacity is the most important hallmark of the well-being of a human being. If you have good airway capacity, you will go through life with a strong immunity to illness.
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Breathing difficulties can lead to the tiring head tilt forward position.
Sympathetic Overload
When the bones in the head are underdeveloped or misaligned, the soft tissues are over-crowded and unable to assume their normal shapes and positions and the air way is obstructed. When, in addition, the diet is not nourishing and lacks proper fats, the nervous system also suffers.
Let me explain: as you may know, there are two types of autonomic nerves, sympathetic and parasympathetic. The parasympathetic nervous system works to calm us down and to heal. The sympathetic nervous system is the part used when one needs to get out of a dangerous situation. It operates when we are under a lot of stress, and we are not meant to be under constant physical stress. When the sympathetic nervous system is activated it places the body and mind in an alert mode and this mode and the constant stress depletes the bodily reserves and nutrients.
Sympathetic nervous system overload also occurs when the airway is obstructed and the input or sense to the nervous system is akin to a hand or choker around the neck. What type of response do you think the nervous system will have? It’s on high alert at all times. This is why kids who are mouth breathers have a strong gag reflex, for example. For them, the mouth is the source of air as well as the source of food, and the mouth was not designed to perform both of these functions. So kids and adults who are mouth breathers have strong gag reflexes, sometimes so strong that they can’t get near their mouths without difficulty, not even with their own toothbrushes or eating utensils. This, of course, precludes certain psychological issues that can also create a strong gag reflex but can be ruled out during an assessment.
So mouth breathers tend to have amped-up sympathetic nervous systems, always on alert, and they have a hard time getting their physical or mental bodies to relax. Many have found an avenue of dealing with this issue subconsciously, namely exercise and physical exertion. This is because during physical exertion large volumes of air are inhaled, which may give the body the input it needs to make up for the lack of proper oxygenation during rest periods.
Long-Term Consequences
People who are not well oxygenated and who have poor posture often suffer from fatigue and fibromyalgia symptoms, they snore and have sleep apnea, they have sinusitis and frequent ear infections. Life becomes psychologically and physically challenging for them and they end up with long-term dependence on medications—and all of that just from the seemingly simple condition of crowded teeth.
In other words, people with poor facial development are not going to live very happily. They’re always going to be in and out of treatment, hopefully with a more holistic alternative practitioner—but you can take all the herbs in the world, you can take all the homeopathic medicines for these conditions, but the truth is, you cannot have proper function without the proper structure. If you don’t have the proper form how do you expect proper function even with the best alternative care?
So, as you can see, airway capacity is extremely important and many times when we do the procedures that widen the palate, correct the head tilt and allow a person to breath through the nose, that person suddenly becomes happy. It is amazing to see the things that happen when we take steps to expand the palate and the upper jaw. The patients go through a literal expansion, but they also open up in many ways–they open up their hearts and their personalities and relationships change. They become more pleasant, more contented. A lot of amazing things can come about just from changing the shape of the maxilla for a human being.
Well-Formed and Hardy
My friends think I am nuts but I can stare for hours at photographs of well-formed individuals and just marvel at the beauty of proper physical form and function and the capabilities for hard work and functioning that these individuals tend to have.
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Examples of excellent facial development: Note the broad middle portion of the face, well-developed lower jar and smoothness (lack of sags or circles) under the eyes. These individuals illustrate the full expression of our genetic blueprint.
Let’s ask a question: who can perform better in jobs or sports with very difficult physical requirements and conditions? Generally you will find the well-developed (that doesn’t mean large muscle mass), well-formed individuals who are capable of such physical feats and they tend to come from rural or isolated areas or from families that have consumed more traditional diets and therefore had much better development than the average city child growing up these days. Many of these individuals are people who come from other parts of the world and are involved with professional sports and or jobs we consider menial, such as doing our gardening, housework and construction work, and even raising our children–people who are able bodied and capable.
Therefore if we are looking for the magic period to help a child grow into an individual with amazing physical capabilities then we must acknowledge that the most important developmental period is preconception and the nine months in utero or in the womb–this is when the foundation is laid for living a full 120 years. The parents should prepare themselves well in advance of conception by eating a nutritionally supportive diet, based on the principles discovered by Weston Price, and continue that diet during pregnancy. If, through out the individual’s life, such nutritional practices are continued, then the possibility to have excellent physical form and function is highly likely, with great rewards to that individual. Please take into consideration the fact that over the last 100 to 120 years in this country, many events and conditions have slowly weakened the offspring born in each successive generation. Modern medicine classifies some of the physical symptoms encountered in the younger generations as genetic; however, even though there may be genetic aberrations occurring due to toxicity of the environment, these symptoms are a reflection of the improper human development due to poor nutrition.
The people who were born in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s tended to drink and smoke. They had teeth extracted, root canals and metal fillings, yet they are generally not the chemically sensitive individuals we see in our population today, young people in their twenties who can’t handle even a little bit of lavender scent in the room.
Sources of Energy
We must also briefly discuss other sources of input or energy besides diet needed to create proper physical form and mental function. There is a concept that views a human being as a sort of battery or capacitor. We are the sum of all that goes into us, not only our physical diet but also the input of an emotional or spiritual nature, including our connections to one another, to nature and animals, to art, to the Creator and also, most importantly, to ourselves.
A connection that more than 90 percent of individuals lack is the connection to the earth. Historically, humans have had some form of physical contact with the earth and its electro-magnetic field. We worked on the land and collected our sustenance with our feet or bodies in contact with the earth and without the interference of man-made materials and building structures. So it’s important to literally stay connected with the earth by walking barefoot outside and letting all of our senses recalibrate themselves to what our body knows as normal.
Finally, we get energy from our belief systems and from our beliefs about ourselves. When something goes wrong, do we berate ourselves or do we see our troubles as important lessons given to us because we are worthy to receive them?
Humans Recognize Proper Facial Form
While very few people have heard of the work of Weston Price these days, we haven’t lost our ability to recognize proper facial form. To make it in today’s society, you must have good facial development. You’re not going to see a general or a president with a weak chin, you’re not going to see coaches with weak chins, you’re not going to see a lot of well-to-do personalities in the media with underdeveloped faces and chins. You don’t see athletes and newscasters with narrow palates and crooked teeth.
Unfortunately the trends in cosmetic facial and body enhancement procedures make one believe that all can be bought with money and surgery, but a word of caution: avoid implantation of objects or removal of organs as they interfere with normal and natural processes of the body, mind and soul. Great research has demonstrated that cells communicate with one another via a form of light and surgery tends to disrupt these light pathways, also called meridians or chi pathways.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2005/Spring 2006.
Cranial & Dental Impacts on Total Health
Dr. Raymond Silkman has a private practice in holistic dentistry and orthodontics in West Los Angeles, California. This article is based on his presentation at the 6th annual conference of the Weston A. Price Foundation in 2005.
The widely held model of orthodontics, which considers developmental problems in the jaws and head to be genetic in origin, never made sense to me. Since they are wedded to the genetic model, orthodontists dealing with crowded teeth end up treating the condition with tooth extraction in a majority of the cases. Even though I did not resort to pulling teeth in my practice, and I was using appliances to widen the jaws and getting the craniums to look as they should, I still could not come up with the answer as to why my patients looked the way they did. I couldn’t believe that the Creator had given them a terrible blueprint –it just did not make sense. In four years of college education, four years of dental school education and almost three years of post-graduate orthodontic training, students never hear a mention of Dr. Price, so they never learn the true reasons for these malformations. I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of very knowledgeable doctors in various fields of allopathic and alternative healthcare who still do not know about Dr. Price and his critical findings.
These knowledgeable doctors have not stared in awe at the beautiful facial development that Price captured in the photographs he took of primitive peoples throughout the globe and in so doing was able to answer this most important question: What do humans look like in health? And how have humans been able to carry on throughout history and populate such varied geographical and physical environments on the earth without our modern machines and tools?
The answer that Dr. Price was able to illuminate came through his photographs of beautiful, healthy human beings with magnificent physical form and mental development, living in harmony with their environments.
What Is Happening?
It has been well documented and Nobel prizes have been awarded to researchers that have established the relationship between proper form and development and proper physical functioning of the body. The changes in facial structure that we observe in our children today is an extremely serious matter. I would like to explore the consequences of what is happening to human physical form.
Let’s evaluate what happens to our children or adults who have faces that are narrow and long, who have lower jaws that are not developed properly, or who have a profile view showing a very weak chin. What happens when we see jaws so narrow and small that the teeth are crowded and overlapping. What happens when the cranium is underdeveloped in various dimensions and the eyes are not level with one another?
What is the physical health legacy of these individuals going to be? What happens when we see children and adults with forward head posture–necks that are holding the head in a forward position?
There’s an old saying, that someone “has his head on his shoulders.” The translation: well-grounded minds require well-grounded and well-supported physical forms and bodies. Unfortunately today a lot of people don’t have their heads on their shoulders–their heads are positioned in front of the shoulders.
Since a normal adult cranium weights between 12 to 18 pounds, the musculo-skeletal strain in the neck or cervical region to support a forward head posture can cause a cascade of events leading right down to the feet. The forward head posture in most individuals creates improper spinal alignment and lack of proper curvature to the spine at critical areas.
There is also an alarming trend in hip and knee replacement surgeries and many individuals have improper or mostly flat arches in the feet necessitating orthotics in their shoes or, even worse, corrective surgeries.
What happens to people when they don’t have their heads on their shoulders? What is causing this effect and why does the body support this apparently futile posture? We will answer that question.
The Cranium or Skull
Let’s discuss the significance of the skeletal structures in the head. The human cranium is made up of roughly 22 cranial bones not including the ones responsible for sound transmission. One of the key bony structures in the cranium is the maxilla, or the upper jaw. The cranium also houses the extremely important glands of the endocrine system. Two of these glands, the pituitary and the hypothalamus, are housed in another very important bony structure known as the sphenoid bone residing directly and in close contact with the maxilla.
The entire brain, and all of the structures or glands housed in the cranial cavity as well as the spinal cord and all of the peripheral and accessory nerves in the entire body are covered by a continuous-membranous sheath called the dural membrane. In dissections, it has been demonstrated and documented that pressure or force on the dural membrane in the cranial cavity or at the brain level will create pulsation or an opposite force at the end of the spinal cord, and vice versa.
If the cranium is not developed properly, the dural membrane can become twisted and torqued, thus possibly creating nerve conduction issues, hormonal imbalances or pain. You can imagine the effects that this can have on the nervous system and on an individual’s overall health and well being.
Interestingly, medical research has demonstrated the presence of constant and rhythmic movement of the cranial bones at the contact areas, also known as the sutures. Just as in breathing, when the lungs fill with air and then empty, so there is a movement of cerebral spinal fluid up and down the spinal cord and around the brain. So, unlike the popular belief that “it’s good to have a solid nogger,” we now know that this does not mean an immovable head or cranium. The inherent motion in the cranial bones is very important to overall health. Various accidents or trauma or surgical interventions of the face and head can have a negative effect on this motion.
There are also various foramina or openings in the bones of the skull which allow nerves and blood or lymphatic vessels to pass from the cranium to the lower areas and vice versa. If any of the cranial bones is under-developed or misshapen, as often happens to be the case, then these foramina can also be malformed. For example, they may be ovoid rather than circular because of underdevelopment, which may cause an impedance to flow of circulatory or neurological vessels going through that particular foramen. Improper drainage of our waste products through our lymphatic system or lack of oxygenation or nourishment of cranial tissues and organs may be experienced as negative effects on brain function and mental clarity.
The Maxilla
This bony structure provides visible structure to the whole mid-facial area. Eleven of the cranial bones directly contact the maxilla and the rest of the cranial bones have an intimate contact with the bones directly in contact with the upper jaw or maxilla. Therefore the position and size of the upper jaw has quite a lot to do with proper cranial development and facial aesthetics.
The entire floor of the orbit or eye sockets, where the visual globes or the eyeballs are housed, is made up of the upper jaw or maxilla. When the maxilla is not well developed, and the face is long and skinny, the eye sockets do not develop properly; the eyeballs cannot develop as a sphere, but may take on a football shape. The resultant developmental pattern can create various ophthalmic issues such as astigmatism or myopia. We can treat astigmatism with corrective lenses but the treatment does not really address the root of the issues.
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The maxilla viewed from underneath. Note the narrow palate in this illustration.
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View of the interior of the head. Note the small area in the center where the nerves and blood vessels must pass.
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Side view of the head showing the tongue and the nasal cavity.
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The complex sphenoid bone, positioned behind and above the maxilla.
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The arteries in the head. If the passages for these arteries run through skeletal openings that are too narrow, many detrimental effects can occur.
Airway Obstruction
The most serious consequence of under development of the maxilla is airway obstruction and mouth breathing. Eighty five percent of the nasal airway is made up of the maxilla, which provides the floor of the nasal cavity and houses all of the nasal sinuses typically referred to as the sinus cavities. Therefore, an individual with a narrow or improperly formed maxilla will have extremely narrow nasal passages, which limit flow of air and breathing capabilities, and will thus experience difficulty in having proper sinus health and drainage.
It is an important fact that the soft tissues develop to their genetic size, even when the bones do not! You might think of the head as a box that must house all of the structures that the genetic code needs to express and that will develop, but lack of proper dimensions to the cranial bones and the cranial cavity causes overcrowding, overlapping or deviation of some soft tissue areas. This can be illustrated by the example of overpacking a suitcase.
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A deviated septum or overgrowth of the soft tissue in the nose can cause blockage of the nostrils, leading to mouth breathing.
An example of this “overpacked suitcase” in humans occurs in the nose. How often have you heard someone say, “I have a deviated septum”? The septum is the cartilaginous tissue membrane that separates the two nostrils vertically. Imagine this soft tissue developing to its normal size, but the maxilla remains under-developed. The developing septum has to express its dimension somewhere, so it has two choices—it either deviates or bends to one side or the other (the deviated septum) or it grows through the maxillary suture and creates the condition known as palatal tori. These are bumps or ridges in the middle of the palate and most people have them to some degree or another.
A deviated septum blocks proper nasal air flow causing the individual to take up mouth breathing most of the time. There are a variety of other soft and hard tissue conditions associated with the nasal cavity such as polyps, enlarged turbinates and muscosal conditions that also serve to restrict air flow.
Breathing through the nose creates an avenue of air that’s moisturized, humidified and even somewhat filtered. Furthermore, when we breathe through our nose, the air passing through the nasal airway and contacting the turbinates–shelf- like bony structures–is slowed down. This allows the proper mixing of the air with an amazing gas produced in the nasal sinuses called nitric oxide (NO). Nitric oxide is secreted into the nasal passages and is inhaled through the nose. It is a potent vaso-dilator, and in the lungs it enhances the uptake of oxygen. NO is also produced in the walls of blood vessels and is critical to all organs.
Mouth-Breathing
Let’s evaluate the differences in mouth breathers and nose breathers. The consequences of mouth breathing can occur from the moment of birth because all infants are obligate nose breathers. That is the mechanism by which breast feeding and breathing can occur simultaneously. If a baby has obstructed airways, he may turn away from the breast due to lack of air and prefer a bottle, which allows him to consume his food more quickly.
A mouth breather will not be humidifying the air, or slowing it down to allow the proper mixing of NO with it. The lungs will have difficulty providing maximum oxygenation for the body with this dry, unhumidified, unfiltered and, most importantly, NO-lacking air. This constant and chronic condition affects the cardiovascular system and the heart because the smooth muscles that line all of the arteries react to this poorly oxygenated air with a kind of tightness, a kind of permanent tension, which can be very stressful and depleting to the body. Furthermore it has been clinically shown that blocking NO production in healthy individuals results in moderate hypertension and reduced heart output as well as shortened bleeding times by activation of platelet blood-clotting factors.
Due to the lack of proper oxygenation, the ability to deliver fully oxygenated blood to the cells is also much reduced. Thus mouth breathing has a negative effect on every cell in the body as it deprives them of oxygen. Overall wellness and health requires proper oxygen as every particle of our being requires oxygen. Cancer cells, by the way, are anaerobic by design. Other manifestations of mouth breathing include snoring and cessation of breathing (also known as sleep apnea), some types of headaches, hypertension without other known clinical causes, bed wetting, chronic ear or sinus infections, TMJ pain, sleep disorders and dark patches under the eyes.
Visual Diagnosis
Much valuable information can be obtained by looking at and studying the faces of traditional peoples with proper physical development and form. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Price and all of the photographers and cinematographers who have provided us with such valuable clues and information.
We can tell a lot about an individual’s physical development just by looking at the face. One of the things I look at in profile view is the nasal-labial angle. In a well developed person, this angle is an acute angle, that is, less than 90 degrees. A nasal-labial angle that is obtuse, that is greater than 90 degrees, is a sign that the maxilla is not well developed or positioned in the front-to-back dimension of the skull. The proper development of the maxilla is absolutely critical to the formation of the entire head and to the health of the entire body—and not just physical health but spiritual and emotional health as well.
hi-mental-nasalangleIn the photograph at left we see an individual with a nasal-labial angle of about 110 degrees, a sure sign that the maxilla is underdeveloped. As a consequence, he will not have an optimal development of the rest of head. Predictably, he has a narrow palate and in this case, he has had four premolar teeth extracted.
Another sign of poor facial development can be detected in the eyes. When someone is looking straight at you and you can see the sclera or white of the eye, that is a tip off to a very, very under developed upper jaw and mid-facial area.
Another area of interest is the soft tissues and skin. Sagging and wrinkles are minimal or non-existent in people with good physical development as they age. Their faces don’t sink back into their craniums. Wrinkles happen when the scaffolding—the bony structure—becomes diminished in comparison to the muscles and skin.
As I mentioned, the soft tissues of the body grow to their genetic size, even when the bony structures do not. The skin, the tongue, the tonsils and the nasal tissues grow to their genetic size but when the nutrition is missing, the bony structures are compromised. So the face will have an excess of skin and musculature, the tongue and tonsils will be too large for the mouth. Nasal bumps can also result–the nasal tissues are out of proportion to the facial structure so they protrude. People who have proper facial development do not have nasal bumps.
The TMJ and the Lower Jaw
When we look at the skull from the profile view we observe the temporo-mandibular joint, the TMJ. Most joints will go through normal hinge motion, and some of them like the shoulder and hip joint will have a rotational motion that is more complex. However, in these joints, the two bony members stay in contact with one another throughout the motion of the joint. The TMJ is unique in that it is designed to provide both hinging and sliding motion. In order to accomplish this compound hinge-and-sliding movement, the TMJ has a disc that slides in concert with the lower jaw or mandible. When the lower jaw is not positioned forward enough, the TM Joints do not develop very well, and the discs can get jammed behind or in front of the joint. They can even become perforated and cause some of the “clicks and pops” that can be heard when people open and close their mouths. Immediately behind the TM Joints we also have the ear canals and important vascular and neurological structures, which can become impinged upon as well.
What we call an overbite or overjet should really be called an underbite, because it is caused by the mandible, the lower jaw, that is too far back, not the maxilla that is too far forward. But when children come to the orthodontist with what the public calls an overbite, they are often treated by removing some of the teeth in the upper jaw and then with a device known as neck gear or headgear to pull the maxilla back. The thinking is that the apparatus will stunt the growth of the maxilla and allow the lower jaw to grow and catch up, or that the maxilla has grown too far forward and must be pulled back.
But the maxilla is already stunted due to poor nutrition and so you can imagine how this type of treatment may cause more compression, more jamming of the bones in the head with possible detrimental whole body effects. The correct treatment for this condition is to widen the palate with an appliance so the lower jaw position can be corrected forward and allow proper physiological form and function as our ancestors have enjoyed throughout the millennia.
More Visual Clues
When children or adults are not breathing properly they tend to develop dark patches and bags under their eyes. This is due to lack of adequate circulation as well as venous blood pooling in these areas.
Kids that are mouth breathers will always have chapped lips and typically the line separating the inner lining of the lip and the outside lining , known as the vermilion border, will be visible. Also mouth breathers in profile tend to have very weak chins and elongated faces. Typically these individuals will suffer from chronic sinusitis or sinus infections, colds, respiratory problems and lung-related issues.
Typically children with bags under their eyes have short attention spans because they do not have good circulation and oxygenation of the head and can tire easily. They are literally suffocating.
Furthermore, they don’t sleep very well–they are always tossing and turning and they wake up tired. Your body recuperates during sleep and sleep is especially important for teenagers. Teenagers need to go to bed before 10:00 pm because certain brain cycles designed for recuperation of the body kick in at around that time. These cycles will be interrupted if sleep mode is delayed to after 10:30-11:00 pm. The recuperation and rebuilding necessary to cope with stressful daily activities will then be compromised. These are the tired, sleepless kids who tend to have a diet high in sugar, trans fats and grains. They may end up labeled as ADD or ADHD and treated with drugs.
Airway capacity is the biggest and most important part of the well-being of a human being. It is important to stress the fact that breathing through the mouth and breathing through the nose have extremely disparate effects on the body. We are not designed to breathe through our mouths. The body is able to live by breathing through the mouth, but it suffers greatly for doing it.
Examples of Poor Facial Development
hi-mental-weakjaw1
Narrow face, mouth breathing, sclera showing under the eyes.
hi-mental-weakjawboy
Over bite or over jet, dark areas under the eyes, weak chin.
hi-mental-weakjawlady
Narrow face, circles under eyes, nose bump, tendency for face to sag.
Internal Structures
The structures that hang off the mandible or lower jaw include the tongue and the nasal pharyngeal areas, which eventually lead down into the lungs.
Other structures that can affect the airways further back in the throat area or the pharyngeal airway space are the tonsils and adenoids. About 85 percent of the children I see in my practice have extremely large tonsils and do you think they can breathe very well? It is not possible to breathe very well when tonsils, which are typically supposed to be almost unnoticeable, are so inflamed that they are almost touching and practically closing off the airway in the back of the throat, right where air is supposed to pass on its journey towards the lungs.
These structures also become swollen due to food allergies, especially allergies to pasteurized dairy. Every time I’ve had a kid and a mom convinced that they should stop everything pasteurized and processed and then eventually go to raw dairy products I have seen some reduction in tonsillar size, although this doesn’t happen overnight.
(Interestingly, I have had two cases of children who stopped having epileptic seizures as soon as they had their extremely massive tonsils taken out. Please note that I usually do not recommend removal of organs and body parts.)
Almost invariably a narrow or under-developed maxilla can cause the effect of holding back the lower jaw or the mandible. This improper positioning of the mandible and its inherent retrusion causes a lack of physical and physiological space for the tongue and the pharyngeal tissues, which again will provide an impedance to the airways, causing breathing difficulties and lowered oxygen uptake by all of the tissues.
The most important orthodontic appliance that you all have and carry with you twenty-four hours a day is your tongue. People who breathe through their nose also normally have a tongue that postures up into the maxilla. When the tongue sits right up behind the front teeth, it is maintaining the shape of the maxilla every time you swallow. Every time the proper tongue swallow motion takes place it spreads up against maxilla, activating it and contributing to that little cranial motion, that cranial pumping that we discussed earlier. Individuals who breathe through their mouths have a lower tongue posture and the maxilla does not receive the stimulation from the tongue that it should.
When the tongue doesn’t fit inside the jaws or dental arches it retracts back into the throat and pushes on the floor of the mouth. The result is something that looks like a double chin, even in women who are very thin. When we begin palate-widening procedures, this problem disappears–without plastic surgery.
And then what happens when orthodontists treat these problems by removing teeth? If he takes out eight teeth out of a total of 32 (four first molars and then later on four wisdom teeth), the patient ends up missing one-fourth of his teeth. What are the consequences of this? Can you take out 25 percent of anything that’s supposed to be whole and expect it to be okay? I consider the teeth as organs and do not recommend the removal of teeth for tooth crowding or orthodontic treatments.
And what happens when a child is given head gear or neck gear, when you put a force on a cranium to pull it back? There can be serious consequences.
hi-mental-headgear2 hi-mental-headgear1
Types of headgear used to pull back the upper or lower jaw.
The Final Answer: Adaptive Capacity
Our bodies have an adaptive capacity to deal with shortcomings. Those of you who have studied CPR know about the ABCs of resuscitation. The A stands for airways and what are you supposed to do when someone needs assistance? You tilt the head back to open the airway. Similarly, when the airways are chronically blocked, the body tilts the head back. But humans cannot walk around with their noses up in the air for too long. The eyes must be parallel with the horizon, so the body then leans the head forward. Forward head posture in essence is a chin lift procedure with the eyes corrected to the horizon in a vertical or standing position.
That’s where that characteristic forward head posture comes from. This chin-lift, head-tilt-forward posture helps open up the airways. As I mentioned, craniums on adults weigh 12-18 pounds. Imagine a bowling ball. If I carry the bowling ball close to my body, I can carry it without becoming tired, but if I carry the bowling ball out in front of my body, what happens? I am going to suffer from fatigue. So then, in order to balance the head tilted forward, I may extend my butt out a bit, which creates a misalignment of the hips, but helps to balance the extra forward weight of the ball. How many people do you know that have hip and lower back problems? Most of those people also have airway problems. Also, there are limbs attached to the hips–we call them legs–so when the hips go out of alignment, the knees have to adjust to this weird hip posture.
These adjustments are all very subtle. One doesn’t wake up and feel that he or she is going to walk differently. Can you imagine that all of these issues and events can start with a baby who is chronically breathing through its mouth? So airway capacity is the most important hallmark of the well-being of a human being. If you have good airway capacity, you will go through life with a strong immunity to illness.
hi-mental-weakchin1 hi-mental-weakchin2
Breathing difficulties can lead to the tiring head tilt forward position.
Sympathetic Overload
When the bones in the head are underdeveloped or misaligned, the soft tissues are over-crowded and unable to assume their normal shapes and positions and the air way is obstructed. When, in addition, the diet is not nourishing and lacks proper fats, the nervous system also suffers.
Let me explain: as you may know, there are two types of autonomic nerves, sympathetic and parasympathetic. The parasympathetic nervous system works to calm us down and to heal. The sympathetic nervous system is the part used when one needs to get out of a dangerous situation. It operates when we are under a lot of stress, and we are not meant to be under constant physical stress. When the sympathetic nervous system is activated it places the body and mind in an alert mode and this mode and the constant stress depletes the bodily reserves and nutrients.
Sympathetic nervous system overload also occurs when the airway is obstructed and the input or sense to the nervous system is akin to a hand or choker around the neck. What type of response do you think the nervous system will have? It’s on high alert at all times. This is why kids who are mouth breathers have a strong gag reflex, for example. For them, the mouth is the source of air as well as the source of food, and the mouth was not designed to perform both of these functions. So kids and adults who are mouth breathers have strong gag reflexes, sometimes so strong that they can’t get near their mouths without difficulty, not even with their own toothbrushes or eating utensils. This, of course, precludes certain psychological issues that can also create a strong gag reflex but can be ruled out during an assessment.
So mouth breathers tend to have amped-up sympathetic nervous systems, always on alert, and they have a hard time getting their physical or mental bodies to relax. Many have found an avenue of dealing with this issue subconsciously, namely exercise and physical exertion. This is because during physical exertion large volumes of air are inhaled, which may give the body the input it needs to make up for the lack of proper oxygenation during rest periods.
Long-Term Consequences
People who are not well oxygenated and who have poor posture often suffer from fatigue and fibromyalgia symptoms, they snore and have sleep apnea, they have sinusitis and frequent ear infections. Life becomes psychologically and physically challenging for them and they end up with long-term dependence on medications—and all of that just from the seemingly simple condition of crowded teeth.
In other words, people with poor facial development are not going to live very happily. They’re always going to be in and out of treatment, hopefully with a more holistic alternative practitioner—but you can take all the herbs in the world, you can take all the homeopathic medicines for these conditions, but the truth is, you cannot have proper function without the proper structure. If you don’t have the proper form how do you expect proper function even with the best alternative care?
So, as you can see, airway capacity is extremely important and many times when we do the procedures that widen the palate, correct the head tilt and allow a person to breath through the nose, that person suddenly becomes happy. It is amazing to see the things that happen when we take steps to expand the palate and the upper jaw. The patients go through a literal expansion, but they also open up in many ways–they open up their hearts and their personalities and relationships change. They become more pleasant, more contented. A lot of amazing things can come about just from changing the shape of the maxilla for a human being.
Well-Formed and Hardy
My friends think I am nuts but I can stare for hours at photographs of well-formed individuals and just marvel at the beauty of proper physical form and function and the capabilities for hard work and functioning that these individuals tend to have.
hi-mental-goodface1 hi-mental-goodface2
Examples of excellent facial development: Note the broad middle portion of the face, well-developed lower jar and smoothness (lack of sags or circles) under the eyes. These individuals illustrate the full expression of our genetic blueprint.
Let’s ask a question: who can perform better in jobs or sports with very difficult physical requirements and conditions? Generally you will find the well-developed (that doesn’t mean large muscle mass), well-formed individuals who are capable of such physical feats and they tend to come from rural or isolated areas or from families that have consumed more traditional diets and therefore had much better development than the average city child growing up these days. Many of these individuals are people who come from other parts of the world and are involved with professional sports and or jobs we consider menial, such as doing our gardening, housework and construction work, and even raising our children–people who are able bodied and capable.
Therefore if we are looking for the magic period to help a child grow into an individual with amazing physical capabilities then we must acknowledge that the most important developmental period is preconception and the nine months in utero or in the womb–this is when the foundation is laid for living a full 120 years. The parents should prepare themselves well in advance of conception by eating a nutritionally supportive diet, based on the principles discovered by Weston Price, and continue that diet during pregnancy. If, through out the individual’s life, such nutritional practices are continued, then the possibility to have excellent physical form and function is highly likely, with great rewards to that individual. Please take into consideration the fact that over the last 100 to 120 years in this country, many events and conditions have slowly weakened the offspring born in each successive generation. Modern medicine classifies some of the physical symptoms encountered in the younger generations as genetic; however, even though there may be genetic aberrations occurring due to toxicity of the environment, these symptoms are a reflection of the improper human development due to poor nutrition.
The people who were born in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s tended to drink and smoke. They had teeth extracted, root canals and metal fillings, yet they are generally not the chemically sensitive individuals we see in our population today, young people in their twenties who can’t handle even a little bit of lavender scent in the room.
Sources of Energy
We must also briefly discuss other sources of input or energy besides diet needed to create proper physical form and mental function. There is a concept that views a human being as a sort of battery or capacitor. We are the sum of all that goes into us, not only our physical diet but also the input of an emotional or spiritual nature, including our connections to one another, to nature and animals, to art, to the Creator and also, most importantly, to ourselves.
A connection that more than 90 percent of individuals lack is the connection to the earth. Historically, humans have had some form of physical contact with the earth and its electro-magnetic field. We worked on the land and collected our sustenance with our feet or bodies in contact with the earth and without the interference of man-made materials and building structures. So it’s important to literally stay connected with the earth by walking barefoot outside and letting all of our senses recalibrate themselves to what our body knows as normal.
Finally, we get energy from our belief systems and from our beliefs about ourselves. When something goes wrong, do we berate ourselves or do we see our troubles as important lessons given to us because we are worthy to receive them?
Humans Recognize Proper Facial Form
While very few people have heard of the work of Weston Price these days, we haven’t lost our ability to recognize proper facial form. To make it in today’s society, you must have good facial development. You’re not going to see a general or a president with a weak chin, you’re not going to see coaches with weak chins, you’re not going to see a lot of well-to-do personalities in the media with underdeveloped faces and chins. You don’t see athletes and newscasters with narrow palates and crooked teeth.
Unfortunately the trends in cosmetic facial and body enhancement procedures make one believe that all can be bought with money and surgery, but a word of caution: avoid implantation of objects or removal of organs as they interfere with normal and natural processes of the body, mind and soul. Great research has demonstrated that cells communicate with one another via a form of light and surgery tends to disrupt these light pathways, also called meridians or chi pathways.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2005/Spring 2006.
Orthtropics can instantly close open bites
AIRWAY WIDTH BE IMPROVED?
Biobloc Orthotropics® has been scientifically proven to substantially open the patient’s airway and change unfavorable vertical growth to favorable horizontal growth – unlike Herbst, MARA, Bionator, Frankel, Twin Block, etc..
Often refereed to as “surgery without a scalpel” Biobloc Orthotropics® can instan tly close open bites, reduce lower face heights, and produce virtually perfect facial balance for young children.
In this video series, you will see case after case and article after article validating these claims.
--
Orthotropics can't fix an open bite so she's likely headed for surgery anyway.
http://jawsurgeryforums.com/index.php?topic=4132.0
--
Biobloc Orthotropics can help to reduce open bites caused by misaligned teeth and reduce jaw misalignment. It is a non-surgical and non-invasive treatment method.
http://dentist-in-calgary.blogspot.kr/2015/08/biobloc-orthotropics-calgary.html
This girl presented with a chronic mouth-breathing pattern in the early mixed dentition. The posterior cross bite and the anterior open bite are typical of the mouth-breathing pattern. Using Orthotropic therapy using a series of Biobloc appliances the upper arch was expanded and the upper incisors advanced. The mandibular posture was then corrected with a lip seal and nasal breathing. The pattern remained stable long term as the patient maintained the nasal breathing pattern, a lip seal and the teeth in or near contact at rest. http://old.myoresearch.com/cms/index.php?id=152,211,1,0,1,0
--
Open bite
Associated with a forward resting tongue posture, an open bite will often return if tongue posture is not treated by widening the dental arches to provide alternative room. Unless there is a very pronounced forward tongue posture it is easy to close a gap in the bite with fixed appliances and vertical elastics. Open bite can be treated with TADs and vertical elastics, but treatment is more difficult with Invisalign or other aligner systems and usually requires unsightly attachments on all the front teeth. Treatment with Invisible braces systems is also more difficult.
WARNING: closing an open bite against a pronounced forward tongue posture or thrusting tongue can jiggle the teeth backward and forward. This can destroy the roots. http://invisalignlondonorthodontist.co.uk/self-assessment.htm
--
Buteyko South Texas
Laurie has over 20 years’ experience as a dental hygienist. For years she observed the effects of the tongue on the teeth, and the increase of patients needing orthodontics. The observation was personal as her own son had a tongue thrust which was addressed at an early age with an orthodontic appliance. Unfortunately the appliance was doomed to fail as she later learned her son is a mouth breather, and was propping his mouth open in his sleep with his tongue.
Surgery to correct his jaw and open bite was the only solution offered by the specialists. Laurie then learned of the Buteyko Breathing method, and Myofunctional therapy, both of which work together to open the airway and stop the tongue thrust. Laurie has taken the course with Patrick McKeown to treat breathing disorders, and Orofacial Myology courses to correct the swallow.
Laurie is located in the South Texas region, located near Corpus Christi Texas. Prospective clients as far as Laredo Texas are in her area. Contact her at 361-236-4191 or for more information.
Biobloc Orthotropics® has been scientifically proven to substantially open the patient’s airway and change unfavorable vertical growth to favorable horizontal growth – unlike Herbst, MARA, Bionator, Frankel, Twin Block, etc..
Often refereed to as “surgery without a scalpel” Biobloc Orthotropics® can instan tly close open bites, reduce lower face heights, and produce virtually perfect facial balance for young children.
In this video series, you will see case after case and article after article validating these claims.
--
Orthotropics can't fix an open bite so she's likely headed for surgery anyway.
http://jawsurgeryforums.com/index.php?topic=4132.0
--
Biobloc Orthotropics can help to reduce open bites caused by misaligned teeth and reduce jaw misalignment. It is a non-surgical and non-invasive treatment method.
http://dentist-in-calgary.blogspot.kr/2015/08/biobloc-orthotropics-calgary.html
This girl presented with a chronic mouth-breathing pattern in the early mixed dentition. The posterior cross bite and the anterior open bite are typical of the mouth-breathing pattern. Using Orthotropic therapy using a series of Biobloc appliances the upper arch was expanded and the upper incisors advanced. The mandibular posture was then corrected with a lip seal and nasal breathing. The pattern remained stable long term as the patient maintained the nasal breathing pattern, a lip seal and the teeth in or near contact at rest. http://old.myoresearch.com/cms/index.php?id=152,211,1,0,1,0
--
Open bite
Associated with a forward resting tongue posture, an open bite will often return if tongue posture is not treated by widening the dental arches to provide alternative room. Unless there is a very pronounced forward tongue posture it is easy to close a gap in the bite with fixed appliances and vertical elastics. Open bite can be treated with TADs and vertical elastics, but treatment is more difficult with Invisalign or other aligner systems and usually requires unsightly attachments on all the front teeth. Treatment with Invisible braces systems is also more difficult.
WARNING: closing an open bite against a pronounced forward tongue posture or thrusting tongue can jiggle the teeth backward and forward. This can destroy the roots. http://invisalignlondonorthodontist.co.uk/self-assessment.htm
--
Buteyko South Texas
Laurie has over 20 years’ experience as a dental hygienist. For years she observed the effects of the tongue on the teeth, and the increase of patients needing orthodontics. The observation was personal as her own son had a tongue thrust which was addressed at an early age with an orthodontic appliance. Unfortunately the appliance was doomed to fail as she later learned her son is a mouth breather, and was propping his mouth open in his sleep with his tongue.
Surgery to correct his jaw and open bite was the only solution offered by the specialists. Laurie then learned of the Buteyko Breathing method, and Myofunctional therapy, both of which work together to open the airway and stop the tongue thrust. Laurie has taken the course with Patrick McKeown to treat breathing disorders, and Orofacial Myology courses to correct the swallow.
Laurie is located in the South Texas region, located near Corpus Christi Texas. Prospective clients as far as Laredo Texas are in her area. Contact her at 361-236-4191 or for more information.
John Mew: Former maxilo-facial surgeon turned anti-surgery anti-braces Orthtropics
Professor John Mew
Head of the London School of Facial Orthotropics
After qualifying as a dentist in 1953, he studied Maxilo-facial surgery, before moving to orthodontics in 1965. He became president of the Southern Counties Branch of the British Dental Association in 1971. His surgical training at East Grinstead gave him the opportunity to study occlusal and TMD problems. He also observed the facial changes that followed the repositioning of its skeletal omponents. Through his further involvement in research, he noticed that many facial problems appeared to have environmental origins and, as a result, became very interested in early facial growth.
In 1958 Professor Mew put forward the ‘Tropic Premise’, which suggested that malocclusion was a ‘Postural Deformity’ and that irregular teeth were not necessarily inherited. He became concerned that the mechanics of orthodontic treatment could be harmful to facial growth, and over the subsequent 20 years developed the concept of facial ‘Growth Guidance’ [Orthotropics®] and the ‘Biobloc’ system of treatment. He has published numerous scientific papers and articles, written two textbooks and lectures regularly on the subject in the U.K. and abroad.
In 2010, Professor Mew was honored with two “Outstanding Achievement Awards”from the International Association of Orthodontists and the International Functional Association. He has been honored with lifetime membership to the British Dental Association and has also received a lifetime fellowship to the International College of Dentists—an honor bestowed upon dentists who have “made significant contributions to the profession.”
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