Function First Integrative Health

03/09/2023

Watch for signs of mouth breathing

Here are 3 signs of chronic mouth breathing that parents can look out for.

1️⃣ Mentalis strain - a dimpled or golf ball-like appearance of the chin is an indicator that a child does not seal their lips naturally at rest. Research has demonstrated this is one of the strongest orofacial indicators of disturbed breathing during sleep in children.
2️⃣ Dry, chapped lips
3️⃣ A gummy smile – increased gum display is an indicator of vertical facial development. Mouth breathing is linked to low tongue posture. The tongue does not provide the proper support for the upper jaw, and it tends to grow in a downward direction.

Did you know that as mouth breathing alters facial growth, the vertical pattern of growth in turn is not favorable for the airway and breathing? This can lead to a constant downward spiral of poor function and poor development.

This explains why although nasal breathing is the optimal way to breathe for all ages, it is most important to secure early in childhood.

02/19/2023

Why nasal breathing is a MUST.
a follow up post.

Look at the negative skeletal change despite the orthopedic dental treatment just because the nasal breathing was so compromised.

- Face got longer
- Lower jaw grew more vertical
- Bite became more open

While the nasal breathing is poor the body tries to stay “above the water. ”
The result is a WORSE overall airway, all the way from the tip of the nose down to bellow the tongue.

Terrible outcome that is very hard to control. It takes a gargantuan effort on the part of the patient to make nasal breathing a priority.

Water can cut a stone
Muscles can reshape a bone

02/18/2023

Important of tongue position to nasal breathing

🗣🎙 When your tongue is up you must breathe through your nose 👃

If you have a tongue-tie the tongue is physically held down which will lead to air in and out of the mouth!
You can try to get the back up but it will require increased effort!

“Tongue functions as and on/off switch for nasal breathing”

01/26/2023

https://www.facebook.com/100063505004980/posts/652692396857588/

Dental erosion and airway reflux in children.

Teeth grinding related dental wear is one of the clues in the mouth that most strongly predicts a child has disturbed breathing during sleep. If a child is grinding their teeth during sleep, it is worth them being screened for sleep and airway problems.

The other type of dental wear that I see very commonly in children is erosion, or acid wear - magnified in the image.

This is typically seen in children who have ground and wore away their tooth enamel, exposing the yellow and softer dentine underneath.

Tooth enamel is harder than bone and the acid wears away the exposed dentine at a faster rate, giving it a scooped-out appearance.

Unless a child is sucking excessively on lemons, or having excessive coke or energy drinks, the most likely source of acid is reflux disease.

In airway reflux, a child who is breathing in more effortfully when they have airway restriction is going to have increased vacuum pressures in their thorax (region below the neck and above the stomach). Think of how a straw gets pinched if we suck too hard. This can allow stomach acids to be aerolised back into the throat and mouth. This can contribute to inflammation and swelling of the adenoids and tonsils.

Children with airway reflux (also called laryngopharyngeal reflux) may present with:

• Throat clearing
• Chronic cough
• Mild hoarseness
• Postnasal drip
• Reports of “Spew burps”
• Bad taste in the mouth or bad breath

Children may be misdiagnosed with asthma.

The constant acid exposure in the mouth can accelerate teeth-grinding related tooth wear and contribute to very obvious loss of tooth structure.

It can increase a child’s risk of dental decay. As much as we look at diet, and dental hygiene, mouth breathing and airway-reflux should not be overlooked as a risk factor. It is my observation that children who have had a lot of decay and fillings in the past often have a lot of these erosional wear facets.

It’s another example of the need for us to pay more attention to obstructive breathing as a root cause of common childhood problems.

09/13/2022

Your tongue is connected via a fascial rudder system that runs right down to your toes.

In nearly all my patients, I see poor tongue posture, and the links to bad spinal posture, breathing, and other issues can be traced throughout the body.

The tongue is so influential to spinal health in how it supports proper head posture. When the tongue is down and forward, forward head posture and mouth breathing occurs.

Over time this associates with a narrow jaw, crooked teeth, and sleep disorders.

But… you guessed it, as always the mouth is a gateway for so many other systems in the body.

The tongue is an extremely complex muscular and fascial rudder system. This dissection via shows the deep front line fascial connection.

It guides all the structures of the myofascial continuity that runs from the inner arch of the foot all the way up through the middle of the body to the tongue and jaw muscles.

Isn’t that amazing?

Actually the tongue is potentially more important for core stability than turning on your actual core.

Our core begins deep under the arch with the insertions of the tendons from the lower leg, especially tibialis posterior.

To find its insertion, feel just under the inside arch of the foot, just underneath and forward of protrusion of the navicular bone you can feel a bit over an inch in front of your tibial malleolus on the inside of your ankle.

This point will respond to a soft-but-energy-rich touch that is held, and also to a more firm and direct fascial release. Pressing here can make a flow of feeling run up the fascial line.

So for better core support, spinal, hip and leg strength, you need to work on your tongue posture.

During exercise practice sealing the tongue to the roof of the mouth, this turns on the fascial rudder to the toes.

It takes time and you need to work on making the BACK of the tongue connect to the soft palate.

When you swallow, the tongue should move upwards and backwards against the hard and soft palate, not down and forward.

Have you noticed open mouth posture in you or a family member?

09/06/2022

08/25/2022

Nasal breathing for better health!

Breathing is a 24-7 unconscious act… are you breathing the correct way????

08/15/2022

Updated AAP guidance on breast feeding.

On June 27, 2022, the AAP released a revised recommendation from 2012 which, recommended continued breastfeeding for up to one year or longer 🤩. Under the new policy, the AAP now supports continued breastfeeding until two years or beyond, as mutually desired by mother 🤱🤱🏽 and child 👶🏾👶.
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Updated AAP guidance continues to recommend exclusive breastfeeding for six months, with complementary foods introduced around six months.
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Preliminary data reveal that human milk 🥛 in the second year of life continues to be a significant source of macronutrients and immunologic factors for growing toddlers. Studies and meta-analyses also have confirmed the impact of breastfeeding longer than 12 months on maternal health, in decreasing maternal type 2 diabetes mellitus, hypertension, breast cancer and ovarian cancer rates.
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While nursing into your baby's second year may feel daunting for those of you in the thick of it, I promise you, based on personal experience, that nursing in the second year is so different, and much more casual. Feel free to reach out if you would like to explore a plan for nursing into year two! 😀
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08/03/2022

The important of Myofunctional Therapy!

https://dentalsleeppractice.com/pediatric-orofacial-myofunctional-therapy-the-four-myo-domains/?fbclid=IwAR2P1xC53pac4Zj2Y5opTL9k4IlgXCFrhxEr9LHqDw67vIilVuBSVgaR3xw&fs=e&s=cl

Orofacial myofunctional therapy incorporates four major areas of concern.

07/29/2022

Correct habits early !

Did you know your child’s habits influence their jaw development.

I think it’s important for parents to understand this, so they can make informed conscious decisions about what is right for their children.

Many people think crooked teeth are genetic or bad luck, well we can see here they are not.

Both extended pacifier use and thumb sucking demonstrate in stark clarity how the way we use our mouth shapes its growth and development.

In dental practice I see patients with open bites in adults quite regularly.

They either think it’s normal and say ‘Oh yes my front teeth don’t meet, it’s hard to bite food’, or want to correct the issue.

When we use root cause and functional diagnoses principles we can see that dental issues must be intervened in earlier, but there is also hope for those who have grown with the issue throughout their life.

Orthodontics and braces to correct this issue act to ‘drag’ the teeth down to close the bite. Problem is if there is a functional problem that remains, the teeth regress.

It happens quite frequently and is reported in the literature.

Looking at the photos above you can see a child at ages 2-4 who develop an open bite has high risk of other oral health problems.

These include:

Mouth breathing

Low tongue swallow.

In adults you can have reasonable success to correct these cases by addressing the causes. Training the tongue NOT to go into this place and orthopaedic guards to either prevent or recorrect the underdeveloped upper jaw.

However, treatment like this is always dependent on training and habit formation. So, it’s a lot of time and effort.

In kids you can close these bites in 3 months.

By using an approach that we want to correct oral habits at ages 4-6 instead of waiting until age 12-13.

The other side of the coin is that pacifier and thumb sucking habits hold hard in kids.

We only used a pacifier very sparingly for the first 4 or so months then mak sure to remove so that the baby can establish close oral posture.

I’d love to hear your experiences on thumb sucking and pacifier use.

07/20/2022

Is your tongue on the roof of mouth for nasal breathing ?

🗣🎙 Nasal breathing requires a patent nasal passage AND the back of the tongue needs to be up making contact with the soft palate to direct the airflow in and out of the nose 👃

👅 tie ➡️ tongue down
Low 👅 tone ➡️ tongue down
Long facial growth also facilitates mouth breathing 😮‍💨

07/19/2022

They hyoid bone is a U shaped bone located in the anterior midline of the neck and is the only bone that does not articulate with other bones, it’s a floating bone.

Why do we need to understand this structure?!

The hyoid bone needs to be flexible for optimal function.

✔️ Flexibility is provided by the supra and infra-hyoid muscles.

✔️ Balance between these muscles is maintained by the efficient action of swallowing, breathing, speech, and posture.