Have you ever been told to “wait and see” and found out that waiting isn’t always better? That phrase is still commonly said by many healthcare professionals who see children even when they hear of clues that point to an airway related breathing problem. We now know that early treatment of underdeveloped upper and lower jaws is much more predictable and successful compared to waiting until very little growth potential remains in teenagers. Life Smiles focuses on treating children between the ages of 4 and 10 years of age to develop their jaw, to promote a healthy airway.
The Significance of a Healthy Airway
The implications of a compromised airway are huge! A small nasal airway leads to mouth breathing and vice versa. Mouth breathing doesn’t filter the air we breath, doesn’t humidify the air well, doesn’t warm the air well and doesn’t stimulate the release of a very important chemical compound called nitric oxide. Nasal breathing does this all! In addition, mouth breathers actually take in too much air and release too much carbon dioxide. The main driver for our breathing is interestingly not our need for oxygen, but our need to get rid of our waste gas, carbon dioxide. When we expel more carbon dioxide than we should, we enter into a negative loop of chronic hyperventilating. Have you woken up with a dry mouth? You were mouth breathing. Are your tonsils inflamed? That may be caused by irritation by drawing in air. Do you have dark circles under your eyes? Venous stasis is the official term and is caused by mouth breathing and a tightened suture between your facial bones leading to pooling of blood in the bags under your eyes. Do you have asthma? Mouth breathers only exchange only the top 2/3 air in the lungs, leaving one third of the air un-exchanged, leading to many cases of asthma.
The Tongue Tie Connection
Let’s say, for example, that you were born with a tongue tie. Your mom likely couldn’t nurse you for long and switched to a bottle. I have nothing against bottles since both of my children had them since I work outside the home. However, the significance of a tongue tie is that the tongue cannot live on the roof of the mouth, creating a wide and normal height of the palate. When a pacifier (I have used them for my children so no judging here) or a bottle is introduced, something foreign is between the tongue and it’s natural habitat, the palate. When the tongue is tied, the upper arch becomes narrow, and since the roof of the mouth is also the floor of the nose, the nasal space is reduced. Restricted ability of your tongue to function will restrict facial growth. The palate can often be so high as to deviate a septum in the future. So this child grows up breathing through their mouth. Fast forward to age 2 or 3 or 4 when they are getting so many ear infections and their tonsils/adenoids are so large that they need surgery. Perhaps the ear infections were contributed to by inflammation of adenoids which blocks the drainage of the ears, the Eustachian tubes. Also the posterior part of the tongue is supposed to make a seal with the palate when swallowing. This proper swallow creates a small vacuum which can open the Eustachian tubes. A narrow palate negatively affects how muscles are used to open the eustachian tubes. Eating slowly, having difficulty swallowing, grinding teeth, hyperactivity, difficulty waking in the morning, night terrors, a gag reflex, snoring, sleepiness during the day are a few of the many symptoms that may point to a mouth breathing problem. A current theory of why people grind their teeth at night is that our brain wants to improve the air quality while we sleep. When grinding the jaw around, our airway is opened by the jaw moving forward and muscles in the airway are tightened, thereby opening the airway.
