Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic

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As research, Kastel went to New York’s Natural History museum and took photos of Great White exhibits that were lying on easels for cleaning. With his shark image clear in his mind, Kastel took five minutes at the end of a photo shoot for Good Housekeeping to place the model onto a stool and get her to do an approximation of the front crawl. I have certainly never spent more time thinking about my breathing and the position of my jaws and tongue while reading than I did while reading this book.

Forwardontic (orthotropic) research, investigating the techniques used by John Mew and his colleagues, faces these problems and then some. Orthodontics is at least a clear-cut, professionalized, medical/dental treatment, engaging a large group of practitioners, and has thus been the subject of more or less standard medical research. Forwardontics is primarily a postural discipline, pursued by a small cadre of orthodontists and dentists. It is harder to practice than conventional orthodontics and less likely to be financially profitable, and its successes are highly dependent on patient cooperation. For those reasons forwardontics (as orthotropics) has been relatively ignored by the research community, and conclusions about forwardontics often need to be drawn from small samples, certain types of anecdotes, photographic histories of patients who sought help (not, then, a random sample of individuals), and the like. This book is absolutely fascinating. It points to a huge public health issue that could account for all kinds of chronic and acute health issues we are seeing in western populations (sleep apnea, ADHD, crooked teeth, the list goes on). And it all can be properly prevented through early interventions (correcting mouth breathing), as well as changing some basic things in our culture (importance of breastfeeding, and weening children from breast milk onto hard foods that require chewing rather than mushy baby foods). The mental region is located inferior to the mouth. It features the chin, a central structure that overlies mental protuberance of the mandible. But why don’t you like your long face and underdeveloped cheekbones at all? If you have one of the following two characteristics, then you’re in the right place: By sounding out vowels and stretching your mouth, this exercise targets the muscles around your lips.

The point is not to shorten your face or to develop it in width. The point is that you have to develop the facial muscles. That’s what makes a face attractive. How to develop the facial muscles Watch carefully how much the jaw muscles are developed. You can see a proper cavity. Look at the protruding cheekbones. The face is smooth and flat, but it is alive and there’s plentiful of muscles that create cavities in the skin. This is sexy! Kahn is right on in pointing out the epidemic and the unfortunate consequences of not having a wide enough jaw. And I am sure she is an innovative and effective orthodontist. She correctly notes that the epidemic of narrow jaws comes with the change from traditional food to the industrial diet. But she does the public a huge disservice in claiming that the reason this change was detrimental is because modern foods are soft while traditional foods are hard and gritty. The action of chewing on hard foods, she claims, is what gives us a wide jaw, prevents dental crowding and saves us from mouth breathing. A.Gibbons. 2014. An evolutionary theory of dentistry. Science 336:973–975; J. C. Rose and R. D. Roblee. 2009. Origins of dental crowding and malocclusions: An anthropological perspective. Compendium of Continuing Education in Dentistry 30: 292–300. The temporal region is composed of the frontal, sphenoid and temporal bones. It is covered mainly by the temporalis muscle and overlying skin.

When I began to apply the Starecta method I noticed right away that some dimples were appearing on my cheeks and that my muscles of mastication were slowly developing. Finally my jaw was strengthened and expanded. So when Sandra was looking for the right way to treat her eldest child without extracting teeth, she first turned to “myofunctional therapy” as a rising and popular form of treatment. The idea was that how you chew, how you swallow, and how you position your tongue, repeated thousands of times a day for your entire life, would result in changes to your teeth and your smile. Imagine if every time you swallowed you pushed your teeth out a bit; eventually your teeth should move outward. Sandra enrolled her preteen children in myofunctional therapy and marched them through the exercises. At the same time, she kept studying the literature and investigating more intensely, while keeping a close eye on the kids’ development. It is often said that the face is the window to the soul, but it is also a window on the health status of the person behind the face. The human face provides visible signals that could indicate serious underlying health problems. Not only can problems in oral-facial health be an indicator of problems in the rest of your body, but they can also be a determinant of how good you look. The habits that can make faces unattractive in our culture are, sadly, the habits that can make bodies unhealthy. Buccolabial (oral) group: Levator labii superioris, levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, risorius, levator anguli oris, zygomaticus major, zygomaticus minor, depressor labii inferioris, depressor anguli oris, mentalis, orbicularis oris and buccinator muscles. There is some history for the minority view we present, especially in the work of pioneering orthodontist John Mew, to whom Sandra took her son after hearing his lecture in 2012. Mew successfully treats patients by returning distorted oral-facial growth to its normal course through “orthotropics,” a program that encourages normal jaw growth and development. Orthotropics is a very important discipline with a lousy name. It is too easily confused with standard “orthodontics,” from which it has major differences. As a result Sandra renamed “orthotropics,” calling it “forwardontics,” to avoid the confusion. The two names are synonymous. Forwardontics is the term we will use from now on, except when we refer to Mew’s work or to literature that employs the designation orthotropics. Forwardontics is more descriptive for the general public and includes all treatments that focus on forward development of teeth and jaws in both children and adults.Paul R. Ehrlich and Sandra Kahn joined Julie Rose for an interview on BYUradio’s Top of Mind, and Paul joined Sonali Kolhatkar for an interview on Rising Up with Sonali. It’s become accepted “wisdom” that babies should eat nothing but baby food. In fact, we have a massive industry promoting soft foods for infants and making a lot of money doing so. It’s also fantastic if you are well aware of the effect tongue ties have on the body as a whole, because you get answers as to the why, as well as an answer to the question: what do I do next? Cheek augmentation is a cosmetic procedure that enhances the appearance of the cheeks by adding volume, removing sagginess, or removing wrinkles. The augmentation of the cheeks can be done by implantation of cheek implants or the injection of fillers to add volume to the cheeks. The addition of implants or injected fillers will increase the volume of the cheeks, usually resulting in less sagging and wrinkling of the cheeks. A. Qureshi, R. D. Ballard, and H. S. Nelson. 2003. Obstructive sleep apnea. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 112: 643–651.