Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic

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Paired bones: Nasal conchae, nasal bones, maxillae, palatine bones, lacrimal bones, zygomatic bones Most of the teenage and adult patients in my practice are dealing with the consequences of less-than-optimal facial development. As I always say, your face is going to changeno matter what. It can change in a good way, or it can change in a negative way. But if these patients had been able to make changes when they were much younger, they probably wouldn’t need to see me at all. One of the best ways to help a child’s face grow the right way is to make sure that they’re chewing foods as early as possible. Concerns About Facial Development Are Nothing New

The human face is the most anterior portion of the human head. It refers to the area that extends from the superior margin of the forehead to the chin, and from one ear to another. Nowhere in the book does Kahn give any proof of this preposterous statement, or even much practical advice on how to implement this diet of hard, gritty food for small children. It’s better to give a child a slice of pear (this is what she calls a hard food!) than one of those squeezable fruit pouches which do not require any chewing, she says. Of course that is true, but neither of these foods will supply the nutrients a growing child needs to have strong bones and straight teeth. Obviously I was well over the age of development so I was conscious that I could not completely change my appearance. But I was developing my face and that was making me very happy… 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? 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.

What Causes Adverse Face and Jaw Growth and Orthodontic Misalignment?

So yes.. there is a structure and function relationship… but it is function that creates the structure. As early as 1894, a Canadian dentist named Weston Price became interested in the relationship between nutrition, dental health, and overall health. Over time, this interest became something of an obsession. In the 1930’s, he went on to investigate his theories about diet and dental health by studying groups of people around the world who were still eating the traditional diets of their area.

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: E. Josefsson, K. Bjerklin, and R. Lindsten. 2007. Malocclusion frequency in Swedish and immigrant adolescents—influence of origin on orthodontic treatment need. The European Journal of Orthodontics 29: 79–87.Oblique facial clefts:When the maxillary prominence fails to merge with the lateral nasal prominence the nasolacrimal duct is exposed. We can also convince baby food manufacturers to develop foods that are nutritious and safe, and yet require a child to chew a lot. We can make sure schools have chairs that produce the right kind of posture in kids because that seems to affect the oral posture as well. It’s a place where society, if it pays attention, can do a lot.

The anatomy of the face can divide into three main regions: upper face, middle face, and lower face. The entire face is covered by skin superficially, while the deep anatomy contains muscles, fat pads, nerves, vessels, and bones. Facial structure is usually evident the moment a child is born, before he has eaten any food at all. Baby’s first foods in all cultures are soft—starting with breast milk, then chewed liver, fermented porridges and eggs. At what age do hard foods suddenly guarantee a wide face and straight teeth?Another example: We know from fossil evidence that hunter-gatherers had big, well-developed jaws. Snoring is a symptom of your tongue being too big for your jaw and we speculated that individuals with small jaws wouldn’t have survived since snoring would have attracted leopards, which hunted them. I came into reading this book well aware that high palates, tongue ties, and jaw malocclusion were very much less than ideal for your posture, gut and more, but not fully knowing what to do next, or how to prevent the future generations from needing as much work as I do. While many may read this and believe it’s about “being attractive” (there are indeed references to mouth breathing and a recessed jaw being unattractive, and a wider jaw with better formation being a more attractive alternative), it is inevitably about function and how a poor jaw posture leads to deterioration of other skills, postures, and overall bodily function. It’s about health. 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. When I say that the people profiled in Dr. Price’s book had “far better” facial development than those who ate more modern foods, I really do mean it. As the authors of Jaws state in the introduction to the book: “The clincher for him and many others, was image 4, showing what a hunter-gatherer’s jaws look like, with roomy perfect arches of well-aligned teeth, with no impacted wisdom teeth – a movie star’s dream jaw, 15,000 years before movies!”