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Adult palate expansion
Not a vit A related post, but thought it would be valuable to get different opinions.
What are your thoughts on adult palate expansion? I remember @tim-2 mentioned physiologic orthodontics on my log when I was talking about my jaw muscle issues, but the idea didn't register with me fully until recently. I think my jaw issues surpass anything I could reasonably fix with any dietary measures, so I've started seeking out treatment. I also suspect my sleep issues could be due to clenching in my sleep.
To resolve the tension in my jaw and temples, I've started looking into this niche dental treatment that expands the palate to allow your bite to reach a more comfortable, natural position. Here's a video I found that gives a good breakdown:
She seems to be doing well with her treatment so far, but there is a lot of controversy surrounding adult palate expansion techniques. For example, this person claims that the AGGA (adult palate expansion appliance) just pushes teeth through bone and caused him to lose bone.
Anyone have any experience or thoughts? Thanks.
I think it's true that appliances used by functional orthodontists often move the teeth more than the bone, that doesn't mean they aren't helpful for dental alignment issues though.
I recommend researching Neuro Cranial Restructuring. I'm not endorsing it but I think it could be effective. It involves inflating a thick balloon inside the sinus cavity to push against the sphenoid bone. This can allegedly allow the skull to become more symmetrical and move towards it's intended shape.
Quote from Arena on July 18, 2021, 9:29 pmI’ve been mewing for 6 months. Seems like a safe route, for me
https://ggenereux.blog/discussion/topic/jaw/
I began mewing, got turned off by it and stopped, and then realized I was worse off with some snoring issues and uncomfortable bite, and am now back to mewing. This time I'm getting more into the particulars of it, which I might have skimmed too much first time.
I like what one blogger said "If you aren't Mewing, what are you doing?" hahaha
Mewing wont change much (if anything) if you are done growing. Even Dr. Mew said this. Also all these teeth and jaw problems arent because of wrong tongue posture. They are caused by malnutrition while growing up. Yes, almost everyone in todays world is malnurished in my opinion. How many people have perfect teeth without needing braces? Almost nobody that I know. And it definetely got worse in recent times. Im 28 years old and when I see the faces of my former classmates... Most of them have narrow palates, needed braces, needed their wisdom teeth to be removed, recessed jawlines and so on. So much empty calories, sugar, processed garbage, grains and not enough meat, which was our major food for hundred thousands of years.
If you didnt eat at least 3 pounds of meat per week while growing up you probably were malnurished and your bone structure probably isnt how it should be.
Im just sad thinking about what our potential would be if we didnt get poisoned and malnurished since birth.
Dr Mew shows an adult example here. and says he routinely gets results with adults (without surgery), however, in this video, he does talk about an appliance used. So, maybe this vid isn't the whole answer regarding what Dr Mew thinks simple mouth posture changes will accomplish in an adult.
I feel a difference, as I said, I think I have less snoring with the Mew habit. And that benefit was so quick that it might not have even been about jaw/teeth changes but more about wrong-posture is bad.
It appears that some here have seen some jaw changes (straightening of jaw) simply from dropping VA, and so I would guess that adult jaw/teeth aren't set completely in stone. If your jaw is going to decide to restructure a bit, it would be smart to be in correct posture when it happens!
In James Nestor's book, Breath, he talks about how we don't chew on tough foods like rubbery pieces of meat and tendon anymore because we process and cook our meat so much in the modern era, and we eat too many plant foods that don't require the same degree of mastication in order to swallow. Thus, our jaw muscles weaken and our dental structure weakens with it. I think he recommends chewing on gum regularly if you're not going to eat more tough cuts of steak. I can certainly attest to the additional time and energy it takes to eat a tough round steak rather than a sirloin or ribeye! When I first went carnivore, my jaw muscles would get so tired from chewing round steak that I would have to stop and take a break...I almost had to include ground beef in order to get enough meat for a while because it was easier to chew. Now I can gnaw on a round steak almost endlessly without thinking about it.
This video explains a lot of things. Dr Mew's work, what Wavy talks about in his post just prior to this, (regarding chewing) and he even shows some of Price's pictures that he took during his travels. (which show how so-called primitives have wide straight smiles).
He also shows pictures of 3 (albeit young) adults who had good results without using appliances, some adults who had good results with appliances under Mew's care, and he shows pictures that prove that adult faces are malleable by muscle, showing how people's facial bones are affected by changes to the musculature in different medical conditions. He also shows the results of a primate experiment in which the primates were forced to nose breathe, and their teeth became crowded.
A few months back @sarabeth-matilsky posted a very good video about proper chewing and swallowing.
@are
Brett asks Mike what the causes of malocclusion are:
"Well there's two principle things that have changed when we're talking about the structure of the whole facial complex. The first thing is we've gone from having an incredibly rough tough hard low calorie diet. Populations were controlled by calories, how much food they had. People had to eat anything they got hold of and often those things were really tough. We've moved across to this incredibly soft calorie rich diet."
"We've had this change in our posture. Most children now in their first year of life will have several episodes with blocked noses. Now that is kind of normal now and that is often several days. If you do lower your tongue and open your mouth and all the rest there's a good chance you're not going to go back to perfect oral posture afterwards. What started as a need has become a habit."
Mike says that just one hundred years ago people had room for wisdom teeth and there was little malocclusion. In civilized nations for thousands of years people have had diets that did not require significantly more mastication than our diets today. Our dentition has actually evolved around a processed cooked food diet. Throughout history only the lowest classes of society suffered from calorie scarcity. When he says "incredibly rough tough hard low calorie diet" it doesn't match up with historical diets, during medieval European history people ate a lot of gruel, bread, legumes, domesticated meats and got an enormous number of calories from ale. I'm not aware of any tough hard to chew food in the diet.
I also find the blocked nose hypothesis implausible. Blocked noses aren't a modern thing and once they clear up we go back to normal mouth posture.
I think the causes are more complex. Some ideas: modern birthing techniques and lack of midwife practices to normalize infant skulls after birth, pacifiers given to infants and obviously vitamin A toxicity and other nutritional imbalances that lead to calcification of cranial sutures and improper bone growth.
When someone has midface deficiency where the maxilla is not far forward enough the face will grow downwards, this happens regardless of if someone has had orthodontics or not.
I feel that Neurocranial Restructuring is on the right track. I think the solution to a lot of cranial issues in the future may be a combination of a form of NCR to release cranial sutures and let the skull shape normalize naturally along with nutritional therapy. Nutritional therapy to decalcify the sutures first to allow their release and to promote characteristics of youthful bone.
I spent my entire childhood with allergies and do think that it is part of the reason my bite is so goofy. And I do swallow wrong and am trying to chew and swallow properly.
I wish I could say mewing is fun like Arena, but last night I couldn't get my bite comfy. I sure hope that having right posture clears some things up. Bite effects your entire posture and vice versa.
Tim, I can't help but wonder how intrusive the balloon thing might be. ? I'm super delicate and things backfire on me. I do agree that VA also plays a part and probably other things too.
I remember an article in the WAPF at some point that was about a wild deer in a forest who was eating human food left behind and was possibly also exposed to modern landscape or ag chemicals. The deer had horribly crooked teeth.
I'm thinking of a family in which the first two children had perfectly straight teeth and the third child had crooked. I'm thinking of another family in which 4 of the children had straight teeth, and a middle child had crooked.
Well, Price did see some of this happening. Something changed around the 1930's. It even changed in far away places that took on the new foods.
Infant skulls are very malleable, I tend to think that lack of natural birthing techniques and also lack of traditional midwifery cranial manipulation techniques may be the primary factor responsible for cranial issues later in life.
Misshapen Heads in Babies: Position or Pathology?
A newborn's skull is highly malleable and rapidly expanding. As a result, any restrictive or constrictive forces applied to a baby's head can result in dramatic distortions. These changes can be mild, reversible deformations or severe, irreversible malformations that can result in brain injury. This paper reviews the anatomy and physiology of normal and abnormal brain and skull growth, the etiology of cranial deformation, the types of craniosynostosis most commonly seen in infants, and the importance of early diagnosis and treatment.
At birth, the shape of a newborn's skull is highly variable due to its inherent plasticity, intrauterine constraint, and the tortuous journey through the birth canal. Variations from the typical oval shape that usually result from the vaginal delivery process will generally return to normal in a relatively short period of time. If this does not occur, the possibility of a rapidly progressive, irreversible, and, in rare circumstances, life threatening cranial malformation needs to be considered.
In general, cranial deformations are common, mild, and typically reversible...
The other, and far more ominous, type of abnormal cranial development is craniosynostosis, or premature fusion of one or more cranial sutures. This malformation occurs in 1 in 2500 neonates as opposed to the 1 in 3 babies with a deformational anomaly. Craniosynostosis is classified as simple (1 suture) versus compound (2 or more sutures), and isolated (no other major malformations) versus syndromic (one of multiple associated anomalies).
Etiology of craniosynostosis:
We have vitamin A, vitamin D and thyroid imbalances listed there. What if they were also involved in more common less severe cranial deformations?
The normal vitamin K status of the human embryo appears to be close to deficiency. Maternal dietary deficiency or use of a number of therapeutic drugs during pregnancy, may result in frank vitamin K deficiency in the embryo. First trimester deficiency results in maxillonasal hypoplasia in the neonate with subsequent facial and orthodontic implications. A rat model of the vitamin K deficiency embryopathy shows that the facial dysmorphology is preceded by uncontrolled calcification in the normally uncalcified nasal septal cartilage, and decreased longitudinal growth of the cartilage, resulting in maxillonasal hypoplasia. The developing septal cartilage is normally rich in the vitamin K-dependent protein matrix gla protein (MGP). It is proposed that functional MGP is necessary to maintain growing cartilage in a non-calcified state. Developing teeth contain both MGP and a second vitamin K-dependent protein, bone gla protein (BGP). It has been postulated that these proteins have a functional role in tooth mineralization. As yet this function has not been established and abnormalities in tooth formation have not been observed under conditions where BGP and MGP should be formed in a non-functional form.
Vitamin K2 is very important for cranial development and elevated levels of retinoic acid deplete it.