This goes to show that in many cases, lifestyle choices can have just as powerful if not more of an influence on human traits than underlying genetics. “A genetic contribution to a trait, if there is one, does not necessarily sentence you to a life with that trait,” said Feldman. “In almost all cases, you cannot intervene medically to alter a genetic contribution; it’s not actionable. But what is actionable are the things talked about in this study, as well as Paul and Sandra’s book.” Contributing factors Pause for a moment to look around and note how industrialization has changed your everyday life. The way we eat, the way we work and play, the way we sleep, and even the way we die are all fundamentally different for us than for our ancestors. In the breakthrough book, Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic, pioneering orthodontist Sandra Kahn and evolutionist Paul R. Ehrlich come together to explain how industrialization is also contributing to a silent epidemic that is right under our noses. Image 7. Improvement of the airway in a boy after orthotropic and postural treatment. This is the impact mentioned in image 6.

Again. I just want to say it is an important subject. There is a lot that needs to be told, but the picture needs to be much more vivid.The bottom line of our narrative is that your health and happiness, and more likely that of your children, may be at risk due to habits to which most of us never give a second thought. So here are some of the key questions you could be asking yourself: The evidence of a genetic contribution to the jaws epidemic is not strong,” said Feldman, who is a population geneticist and the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor and professor of biology.

From birth, encourage children to keep their mouths closed when they’re not eating or talking. This will support proper oral posture, which is lips closed, tongue on the palate, and teeth lightly touching. And wean to tough foods that require chewing, like they did in the days of hunter-gatherers.You’re connecting reduced jaw size with stress and associated health risks. How is it possible for all of those things, which seem so disparate, to be linked? Dr. Kahn is a graduate of the University of Mexico and the University of the Pacific. She has 25 years of clinical experience in orthodontics and is part of craniofacial anomalies teams at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University. She can be reached at forwardontics.com.

Most people in industrial societies today do not recognize the facial distortion that is common, the spreading of sleep apnea, the extent of children wearing braces, or other symptoms of an epidemic in oral-facial health that can be traced to how most people eat and hold their mouths at rest. Dr. Mew and his insights were portrayed with some fondness. I was especially moved by the included photograph of his lone petition for policy change outside the BDA. The qualitative case studies and research cited could have been valuable, had they not been diluted with pedestrian accounts. I feel the urgency, but it was difficult to gain depth through the repetitive, almost nagging tone of the book. Kevin Boyd, DDS (Pediatric Dentist), M.Sc. (Human Nutrition) is an attending clinical instructor and Sleep Medicine consultant at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology The symptoms of the epidemic of smaller jaws are everywhere. Children are walking around with their mouths open, unable to close them. Adults are snoring. Teenagers are having their misnamed “wisdom” teeth extracted, sometimes with traumatic results. And so many people now have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that sterilizers for continuous positive airway pressure machines are being advertised on television. This book is great if you’re new to the world of malocclusion and are not yet aware of the massive effect tongue ties may have on our jaws AND bodies as a whole.A less obvious, though more significant reason behind the jaws epidemic, Ehrlich and colleagues contend, has been the rise of what they describe as bad oral posture. Our bones grow, develop and change shape under the influences of gentle but persistent pressures, multiple studies have shown. The proper development of the jaw and its associated soft tissues is guided by oral posture – the positioning of the jaws and the tongue during times when children are not eating or speaking. This positioning is especially important overnight during long sleep stretches, when swallowing maintains the correct, gentle pressures. With both children and adults now sleeping on forgiving mattresses and pillows, instead of the firm ground as their ancestors did, mouths are likelier to fall open, disrupting positioning and swallowing. Instead, profound physiological changes can occur in human populations over short intervals, Feldman pointed out, purely as a result of environmental factors, such as dietary choices and cultural norms. For instance, since World War II, a switchover from heavy rice consumption to more dairy and protein in childhood has been linked to Japanese men gaining around 5 inches in average adult height.

When mothers can nurse, many cannot do it for long enough, or they may pump their breast milk and have a caregiver deliver it through a bottle. They recognize this is excellent for the child’s nutrition, but nursing directly from the breast exercises the jaw muscles. Having milk poured into their mouths from a bottle, not so much.In a new co-authored book, biologist Paul Ehrlich describes the connection between underdeveloped jaws, modern life and myriad health and quality-of-life issues. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero) The major claim of the book is that you and Sandra Kahn have unearthed a hidden epidemic in which people’s lifestyles are affecting how their jaws develop, with many downstream health consequences. What do you feel is the most convincing evidence of that? Jawsis the landmark book in what I call ‘Darwinian Dentistry’, which is a novel approach to understanding the underlying reasons, from an evolutionary perspective, for why the phenomenon of cultural industrialization also tends to produce pandemic proportions of misaligned jaws and crooked teeth.” J. I. Silverberg and P. Greenland. 2015. Eczema and cardiovascular risk factors in 2 US adult population studies. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 135: 721–728. e726.