Welcome to the Ricci Flow Nutrition Podcast. My name is Cameron Borg. On this episode I had the pleasure of speaking with Mike Mew. Mike is a lecturer and the lead clinician at the London School of Facial Orthotropics. His primary interest is in the growth and development of the face, identifying the effects of changes in posture, function and muscle tone and its relationship to orthodontic problems.
Mike uses the orthotropic system to reverse the underlying conditions that lead to crooked teeth, sleep apnea, snoring and temporomandibular disorders amongst a range of other symptoms. He is undertaking research to investigate how to improve these systems using modern technology and innovative applications.
Unlike conventional orthodontics where the teeth are mechanically shifted to fit the shape of the face, orthotropics encourages and facilitates proper facial development and posture to ensure that the teeth have enough space so to prevent malocclusion. The importance of environmental factors are clearly being ignored and could greatly assist orthodontic therapy and general health.
Dr. Mew aims to change a section of modern medicine by making it evidence-based and focused on the long-term health of patients. Mike is someone who I have a great deal of respect for as he has been begging for genuine debate as to the etiology of malocclusion, crooked teeth, for many years without having anyone who opposes his ideas step up to the plate. His ideas are generally as follows. Crooked teeth essentially do not appear in human skulls until very recently.
Therefore, malocclusion cannot be based in any real sense on genetics alone. Environmental factors including poor air quality, soft food, bottle feeding, allergies causing chronic mouth breathing, poor posture, and improper swallowing have led to craniofacial dystrophy or improper growth of the face resulting in crooked teeth and narrowed airways. By shifting these environmental inputs, proper facial development can be promoted, allowing space for the teeth to grow unimpeded.
Mike, much like his father before, is a visionary who has placed his career on the line in the pursuit of truth. I'm very humbled that he took the time to speak with me. He's one of the most passionate individuals I've ever spoken to. So with all that being said, I really hope you enjoy the episode. Thank you so much, Mike. That's okay. Yeah, I guess let's just get stuck into it.
I really want to know where your ideas about malocclusion differ from the mainstream and how you came to these ideas with your experience. Okay, so well, I mean, it's interesting when we talk about mainstream. So we're going to talk about mainstream, it's going to be about mainstream orthodontics because I'm an orthodontist. I was a dentist clearly before that, and I trained, I've done an orthodontic program.
And when you do an orthodontic program, or if you were to get the biggest, you know, so here is contemporary orthodontics by William Prophet. You know, you read here and you read in the etiology section, I think it's chapter four, about, you know, what the, it's chapter five. So we go here in etiology is chapter five, and it gives a fairly balanced argument. It doesn't come to any conclusions, but it talks about the environment. It talks about the genes and it quotes quite a few papers.
And of course it quotes papers from my favorite researcher, Coraccini, Robert Coraccini, this is the most fantastic book in the world, this is one of my Bibles. It's out of print, but I've got an electronic version. And it talks about the, but it talks about basically, not specifically the causes, but it talks about the potential causes and the, it gives, you know, it talks about the genetics and it talks about the environment, just the environmental genetic directions.
Okay, now Prophet, which is the Bible of most orthodontic programs around the planet, clearly the most influential orthodontic textbook in the world. And although it gives a relatively balanced argument, you turn the next page, and it's as if those arguments have been forgotten and malocclusion is going to be treated as if it is caused by the genes. Yeah. You think about the treatments we're applying for you when we're treating crooked teeth.
We're going to do, if there's too many teeth, we're either going to take teeth out or widen the arches. There's a great debate about that. And clearly there's a limit to how much you can widen arches. And so often orthodontists will say, well, we have to take teeth out in this case. And in addition to that, but that's not to my wisdom teeth, by the way, that's often in addition to wisdom teeth. Right, right. Then the remaining teeth are made straight.
If there's a big discrepancy between the bones of the face, like asymmetries or the bottom, this is the top teeth, bottom teeth, top teeth are too far forward, the bottom teeth too far back. They'll break the bottom jaw, move it forwards. Usually if the bottom jaw is further forwards, often what makes sometimes they break the bottom jaw or they break the bottom jaw, but they reset these jaws in different positions.
So although there's a very good argument made, sort of they, I would, I think they're a bit biased, but they appear to be fairly fair in presenting both sides of the argument. Then that's ignored when it comes to treatment. So the mainstream orthodontic opinion is that it's probably genetic. Well, we're treating it as if it's genetic. And if I drill down on an orthodontist, that's what they'll ultimately believe.
If I drill down, I take an orthodontist, well, very rarely do I ever got the chance for any meaningful conversation with any orthodontist ever. Please challenge me. I'd love anyone to challenge me. I've got a massive YouTube channel. Come have a debate with me. Any orthodontist, don't criticize me behind closed doors, criticize me to my face. That's what science is about. Take the challenge.
Now, so the orthodontists inherently believe malocclusion, you know, they think there's some environmental influences like thumb sucking, maybe a tongue thrust, but they inherently believe it's genetic, the predominately genetic, particularly the position of the bones.
And of course, when you think about that, the position of the bones, well, then we go across the public opinion. So clearly, when I'm talking about mainstream, are you boxing me within the profession of mainstream or generic mainstream? Because most people, because everyone with a face has got an interest in this subject because they've got one, tend to think that the way their face grew was genetic. So or largely, and of course, you look like your parents, there's no way around that.
But what I'm not saying, I'm not saying that the way your face should grow isn't genetic. I'm saying the way it shouldn't grow is genetic. So let's just unpack that a little bit. So we talk about your face having its full genetic potential. Now, if you're in an ideal situation, your face should grow ideally. So you've got your genes are right and your environment is right, then you get great facial development.
And of course, you see people walking off the African Serengeti, the Australian Outback, less of it now, because they're not so, don't such have quite such a traditional lifestyle. But all the Amazon rainforest, or, you know, some of these completely untouched places where they really are living stone age existence. They've all got fantastic facial architecture.
You see that guy for the African Serengeti, you know, all 32 teeth, so including wisdom teeth in beautiful alignment in big, wide, strong, well cut faces. Of course, those faces look good. And which is also looking healthy and two things. So that's kind of trying to, I'm sorry, that's the long version of where I differ from the mainstream. Now, how I came to conclusions. Well, of course, my father's John Mu. Yeah, he's one of the most outspoken orthodontists on the planet.
He's the guy that you know, none of this is new. All of this bits of information. I mean, it was it was all of this was talked a lot more about the turn of the 1900s. So 100 years ago, because it was just obvious that, you know, we hadn't had so much crooked teeth and suddenly crooked teeth would seem to be appearing from nowhere and all these problems.
And people were asking the questions why, of course, you had a lot of populations that weren't as developed. So it was that much easier comparison. You know, you had some societies that already relatively well developed. You know, you'd already had, you know, electric, you know, we had got gas street lighting and underground service and, you know, lots of London was pretty modern.
And yet you could go to lots of places in the world 100 years ago that were very undeveloped. And so this you had this, you know, much more contrasting lifestyles. And and also. It was early, you know, there wasn't that many crooked teeth even in the developed societies. And people were much more that a slight mindset difficult to describe. But it was a lot to talk about.
If you go back in some of the ancient texts, people talk about this. They were talking about tough diets. They were talking about breathing a little bit, not quite so much as they do now. Right. And so but my father was one of these people who was, you know, he's got great vision and he was putting more things together than other people and coming up with cohesive treatments and keys philosophies.
And he was sensitizing all this information, having his own ideas himself. And he, you know, is the father of vast swathes of different treatment processes and conceptual ideas and has influenced a lot of people, a lot of in. He has been an influence on many of the influential speakers that are influencing people today, even me. Now, I did my own reading around. I don't like to be I don't like to parrot what my father says. I want to see it for myself.
I mean, again, let's go back to Rob Coratini's book. You know, the wonderful title is it's not the most scintillating writer. How anthropology informs the orthodontic diagnosis of malocclusion causes. You know, it's not going to be a best seller. Yeah. But he and most anthropologists are putting this change down to I'm a change in diet.
So now one back a little bit. We were talking about being mainstream or not mainstream. If you pick up anthropology texts, most anthropologists, so what anthropologists have known for years and since we've had anthropology that you go back in time, everyone's got straight teeth. And the more also clearly anthropology is often looking at graves. That's often where they find material to look at, you know, by you know, because we would bury people when they die.
That then gets forgotten about. And then with modern equipment or by accident or you're making a building or something, you find a grave. And then the anthropologists can look at the grave and they discern information from what they see. And it was clear and obvious to them that the more sophisticated a society was, the more malocclusion and incorrect facial growth there was. So if I were to draw a nice line, you know, it really was a line. In fact, it's more a line like that.
But it made a nice line. It was clear and obvious. You know, you didn't need science to see this. You needed, you know, it was fairly obvious pattern of change that was going on. Of course, there's enough case examples with breathing and posture. So that's how I formed my idea. Sorry, Cameron. That's OK. When they were talking about diet, did they stress more the nutritional content of the foods that they were eating or the type?
No, no, no, no, no. You couldn't. It was very difficult. So the nutritional content. So we've got content and consistency. Yeah. OK. So you're going to really struggle with understanding content from a graves. I mean, it's very recent. I mean, we saw a there was a beautifully preserved house in the Fens in Cambridge that was recently found. So what they think that the people would live on these stilts and huts on stilts in the marshes.
And there was a probably a raid or something. And one of these burnt down and the stilts went so fast, the whole thing sunk into the mud and the mud preserved it very well. And they were able actually to look at the last dinner someone had and work out what grains were in this dinner. And then you got your bog man, people who were sacrificed or otherwise killed in bogs. Now, they don't know whether sacrificial people got special last dinner.
But you can look into their stomach and see what they had in them. But apart from these odd, rare examples, it's quite difficult to understand what the constituents of the diet were in the past. Yeah. So, you know, that's a bit of a black hole. But you can tell the constituents of diet because you can look at the wear on the teeth.
Yeah. And that's going to be, you know, they might have had a bit of sand in the diet, particularly if they were a grain based culture and they were grinding the grain to make flour. That's going to introduce some sand. You know, when we talk about the daily grind, the daily grind comes back from people grinding sandstones. And you can see all the women would have wear marks on their bones from where they would sit for an hour or two a day.
That was hard work, the daily grind, making flour. So apart from a little bit of sand in the diet, you can have a good estimation of how hard people were chewing from how much wear you had on their teeth. And of course, they had a huge amount of wear on their teeth in the past. A lot of wear. Yeah, I know Wesson A. Price stressed fat soluble vitamins in his work.
And since then, speaking to Sandra Khan, she seems to think that they are a significantly less important part as when compared to the consistency of the foods. You know, they were eating not only were they eating nutrient dense foods, but these foods were they required a lot of chewing and they required strong jaws.
What do you think? You know, is there a role of these fat soluble vitamins in malocclusion and facial development or is it if there is a connection, it's a tenuous one, in your opinion? Well, I'd like to see some evidence, Brent. It would be great to see the evidence. I mean, one of the things I looked at and I thought was interesting. So I looked at vitamin D. Now, I just thought to myself, OK, let's do a little bit of hypothesizing here.
So you're going to get more vitamin D in hotter climates, with sunnier climates, just to per se. Even if you don't stand in the sun, you're just going to absorb more vitamin D if you're in a sunnier climate. OK, you know, in Britain, here I am. I come winter months. I don't think I stand in the sunshine much at all because, you know, I work before sun goes up. So, for example, I spent some time when I was working in Denmark.
I would get to work before the sun comes up. I'd be in workforce comes up and I would leave after the sun went down. So I basically indoors the entire time where my office had a small window and where I worked in the clinic was considerably back from the windows. So I could go probably the darkest four months of the year. We're seeing no sunlight. Now, you then take Australia. So you've got an identically genetic population.
Yeah, from initially from the British who were in Australia and they've got a lot of sunshine and they tend to have a much more outdoor culture than you do in Britain and they're European. So I don't know that much different from Scandinavia or not, but you don't see the difference in malocclusion. You've got roughly the same level of almost exactly the same levels of malocclusion in Europe and Australia down the line.
Exactly the same. I mean, slight difference now because they've got more of an Asian genetic base from being close to the Far East. So you're not seeing a difference and you'd expect to see a difference. And then we are looked at vitamin A and of course, most vitamin A deficiencies are in the developed world. Yeah. And that's where you have the least malocclusions. Yeah.
So this is just me ballparking it. So, you know, I'd love that to be a vitamin A and D would be helpful for malocclusion because I could give my patients vitamin A and D and that would make what a difference that would make. But when you talk to the Weston A Price Foundation, they talk about this pre-term injury. As if you need to make certain that you need to have enough vitamin A's and D's and possibly K in your system, the moment of conception. Now that you know, that may be true.
That is one of those things that it's a little bit too precise and it's a little bit too. I would say a bit too easy of that to be an excuse. You know? Yeah. And, you know, we're going to reflect back and just look at the time of where Price. Okay. So Price was around at the beginning of the 1900s. He was a contemporary. So he was contemporary of Melon B. So Melon B found out with vitamin D Melon D didn't it? Wasn't it?
I can't remember. So it's been a while since I've been on Melon B. So Melon B had done the Ricketts in children at East London. And he'd worked out that was vitamin D. And of course, that was the first identified, proper identified vitamin. And of course, we'd already worked out from trial and error that scurvy limes and lemons and fresh fruit prevented scurvy. You know, the famous British would stock up on limes on their boats because limes would keep for a long period of time.
So that's why the Americans call them limeys because we had limes in the boats. And we would give those to the sailors on the boats and prevent scurvy. We didn't know why. But after Melon B worked out vitamin D, then they said, oh, well, maybe that's what's there's something in limes preventing vitamin C. And then, of course, all these other vitamins were coming down. It made absolute sense to Price that there could be a vitamin for these.
But of course, Price didn't exclude the consistency of the diet. He never didn't look at it. So if you don't look at something, you can't say it could not be from that factor. Yeah. You just won't say that. So, you know, as I said, I'm trying to follow the science. I'm trying to work out what's really going on, because that is what science is about. I mean, I had a long, long chat with Sally Fallon by email.
You know, I just you know, I met her at a conference, her conference. Yeah. And I had a chat with her. She's got a forceful lady. And, you know, I know there's a phrase in you should hear what other people are saying, because you'll learn from that. She didn't seem to be very interested in my opinion. I think I got a couple of words in the conversation. Yeah. And she was busy telling me and I literally I don't think she drew a breath on that.
And I then had this email. I just said, look, afterwards, I just pondered and I thought we didn't really have a good engagement. Of course, I one of my sort of oaths, I've got a lot of oaths to myself. One of my oaths is I'm going to leave no stone unturned in my quest for the truth. So I wanted to see whether there were some things and of course. So I kept in this conversation, I kept saying, Sally, what's the core base? You know, information upon which you're basing your information.
And we kind of had a circular conversation as I broke it down, broke her down on this. And eventually she sees someone else and says, oh, so and so. Oh, show him that paper on vitamin K. And I was in that paper that's in the singular. Anyway, she showed me this paper of the other person showed me the paper. And this is a famous paper. And I think it's in Proffitt's book where they have a was a bunny rabbit. I think bunny rabbit. Yeah. Rabbits. Yeah.
And they've starved them with vitamin K and they get stunted. Well, OK, two points on that. First of all, vitamin K deficiency is pretty difficult to do. You know, you know, you see people with vitamin A deficiencies, you see people with vitamin D deficiencies kind of exist. But as far as I'm aware, it's really quite difficult to get a vitamin K deficiency. Whereas we're seeing malocclusion on the goddamn whole population in everyone.
Remember, those guys walking up the African Serengeti often had a centimeter of space behind their wisdom tooth. Now we're talking about kids not only not getting wisdom teeth, that's almost endemic now. People turn around and say, oh, well, it's evolving. Have you read what Daffrin said? Do you understand what it says? Because you do, then you're not going to say we're evolving. Yeah. Maybe you've got some sort of epigenetic concepts and some higher level ideas, but it's not base evolution.
That's not how evolution works. Come on, be real. So we've got this major change in most of the people, and it just seems unlikely that could be a vitamin K deficiency. It just doesn't figure in my head. Then, of course, what you do notice with this bunny rabbit is that the face is stunted in a very symmetric way. So both upper and lower jaws are equally stunted. Now, that looks much more like a clever growth adaption because, yes, maybe vitamin K is causing a problem.
I don't know, looking at those bunny rabbits, that the teeth don't all shrink in size as well. So when you've got some of these generalized influences, the body is pretty good at making adjustments. So that everything works out well. You know, often one of my father's great things is a crocodile's mouth. You know, you've got a tooth that's a meter over there, and you're going to come meter back down the top jaw, go around the head to the bottom jaw, then go forward another meter.
So these teeth on the body are two meters from each other. How do they work out how they're going to meet? And yeah, they don't. There's no genetic programming. You've got local environmental stuff going on to decide how they're going to come into contact. And that's the only way it can really work. And then, of course, you've got to get programmed how those jaws come to roughly the same length. Well, probably a little bit of environmental control has to go on in that.
And then once you've got environmental control, you've got mechanisms for compensation. It's a well-designed thing. Animals, you know, life. They're well constructed. You know, this is a well-constructed concept. And I'm thinking, and this is my base premise, is that our growth has gone quite wrong, really very wrong already. OK, that's a sweeping statement, because I'm saying basically most people who are alive in a Western society are really quite deformed.
How else are we going to put it? You know, if you don't have space for your wisdom teeth, if your teeth didn't come straight naturally, then you've got problems with the way this grew and that could have other significant health effects. Crooked teeth is only a problem amongst quite a few problems. So if you had to steel man the conventional argument, like let's say you were arguing against yourself, what is the argument that you would make to bring your ideas down?
Oh, the big argument is it's very hard to get results. Right. That's what the, whenever I start in this engagement of saying to the orthodontists, oh, but you know, malafusions, environmental issue, the main causes, you know, the muscle effect, the resting posture, then function, they'll turn around and go, well, I'd like to see you publishing your results. And I go, OK, hang on. We've done a bit of a jump here and you've hopefully conflated two different things.
You've conflated the point that your malafusion's due to environment and you've jumped across because you didn't want to argue that, because that's signed, sealed and delivered. You know, there is no, you know, it's a steel argument already. There's nothing wrong about that. Then we've got the pathological process, which, well, no one ever talks about this. So I made a, I published a paper called craniofacial dystrophy.
And that's trying to describe craniofacial, because it's a subject, dys-incorrect, trophy growth. So it's incorrect growth of the facial complex. That's basically what it means. And it's trying to map out the pathological process about what goes wrong. So they skip that because, well, we never talk about that, do we? And yet we should, because if there is an environmental influence, there has to be a pathological process by which it works.
And no one's arguing, you know, here we go, Profit again. Profit doesn't go to an argument. He does say, and this is our loveliest graph here, you see. Here he's got that graph and he's saying, you know, they talk about, they don't know the cause. Only five percent of the court, part of it, they know the cause. And remember where he says malocclusion, known cause and normal malocclusion. Well, his normal malocclusion in this group here don't have wisdom teeth.
That's not normal malocclusion in my book. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, homo sapiens supposed to have 32 teeth, not 28. So I just don't buy that normal occlusion. OK, I think a lot's got malocclusion and you only understand that a cause of five percent, most of those are thumbsuckers. So he gives that argument. They don't cover up. So that you know, there must be an environmental influence.
And when someone doesn't know the cause and they've had DNA sequencing machines running 24 seven for two decades and they haven't still found the genetic cause, it's because they don't want to look into this environmental argument. So it's clearly a strong environmental role. That's a pretty steel argument. So we should have a discussion on this pathological process. We're dying for that. OK, I did enough.
I did a seven, five, six year letter writing campaign in the UK trying to get a debate on the etiology. Just, you know, we need to talk about why teeth are crooked, you know, to the British Autonomic Society, to everyone. Yeah, you know, I'll give you that link if you want to put them. Then so we should have the debate on the pathology. And, you know, that could I make that a steel debate? No, but I think I would win that on balance of probabilities.
You know, if you look at what Karl Popper was saying when, you know, the father of scientific philosophy who lived literally up the road from here, a couple of within a mile of this place. He was saying that you need a best fit hypothesis, and I think I could win a best fit hypothesis. So my weakest argument is on the treatments that I'm doing to try and change people, because it's hard to change people.
You know, if you if you put, you know, the principle of my treatment is people with good facial development tend to have straight teeth. People with poor facial development tend to have crooked teeth. So what I do is I try to change people's facial development. OK, with the premise that if they have better facial form, they will have straight teeth. I don't tend to make the teeth straight. I tend to sort of push them into a general position and expect the child to make their own teeth straight.
Now, if I want to compare my results with an orthodontist, what are they going to look at? Yeah. How straight the teeth are? Yeah. Now, they're going to put braces on. They're going to get straight teeth because they put a mechanical device to make the teeth straight. OK, I haven't got the teeth very straight. You know, there'll be gaps, there'll be rotations, there'll be little things, because I didn't make the teeth straight. I got the individual to make their own teeth straight.
Yeah. OK, now they compare and they go, I'm useless. I mean, they must think I'm absolutely incompetent. You know, I think the classic situation is, you know, let's say you're a dentist and this must happen to lots of referring dentists. They never refer me patients. And this is why, you know, one person comes in, a girl comes in, a guy or a boy, a man, I mean, sexist, a person comes in and the dentist looks at them and they've been treated by me.
Now, what I do is I do an intense phase of treatment and I keep them wearing an appliance that's guiding growth because growth takes a little while to happen as it happens. So they need to wear the appliance at night, at least all the way through the growth period. You know, orthodontists recommend a retainer for the rest of their lives. I just have, let's call this an active retainer, just during the growth phase. So they know they're still being treated by me.
The dentist looks at this person and the teeth are pretty straight, but the odd bits aren't quite right. The wide arch, I mean, it's huge. I mean, every single one of my patients ends up with these huge, great jaws. They're a lot, you know, and by default, I'm believing that means I've got huge airways. And of course, their faces are forward, so I've got loads of space back here. The tongue is never going to fall in the airway. I believe they're never going to get sleep apnea.
I believe they're much, much healthier. Faces are looking better. The teeth are considerably straighter than when they started. The upper six front teeth, I always get them straight. And that's what people want. That's what I'm happy with them. That's what the agreement I had with them before is. But of course, the dentist looks at this case and he goes, look, they've been under treatment for seven years and they've still not got the teeth properly straight. These guys must be fools.
They must be literally incompetent and on such a beautiful person. It's crazy. Now, that dentist hasn't been taking photographs. He can't remember that she looked like the backside of a bus when she started treatment. Do you know, he person looks beautiful. Next patient walks in. Perfect orthodontic result. Now, she's wearing retainers. She didn't wear the retainers. The result would go completely. I mean, really, it was relapsed is bad.
And the dentist goes, now there's a proper orthodontic result, the teeth fit together absolutely perfectly. I mean, I don't know if the individual really worries about the fact that she is molars are class one. She matches angles six keys of malocclusion. I don't think she really cares about that. All she wants is six upper straight front teeth. However, the dentist didn't take photographs. He's not aware that she used to look quite pretty and now looks like the backside of a bus. He, she or it.
So and that's the thing, you see, because we've got, you know, you were comparing apples and pears. And also, it's really difficult to consistently change people. And this is very early days. I clearly say to people, my treatment is terrible. Terrible. It is only, in my opinion, better than the alternatives. But if I've got a kid, you know, this is the thing I'm saying that, you know, the things that change, you know, look at my videos. You know, we had strong muscles.
And we kept a mouth closed, standing up straight. And what's happened? We've got weak muscles, softer than food and we're hanging our mouths up. So the faces drop down. And as the face drops down, it changes shape. Oh, I've lost the thread of my conversation there. Anyway, that's why I've left it because coming back to diet. Yeah, I think that where I think diet really does cut in here is in allergies. Right. Because so I think there's two things that happen.
The two major contributors to malocclusion are the muscle effect. So I say word effect because we're not sure if it's the amount of time you eat or the hardness of the food or what exactly you do with the jaws. But so we call it muscle effect. The second one, we think, is posture. So, you know, we should breathe out noses. Our ancestors breathe out noses. You get a blocked nose. You can't breathe. Your mouth drops down. And then what starts of an obligatory necessity becomes a habit.
If you hang your mouth out and you have weak muscles, your face drops down. It lengthens. And as it lengthens, that reduces the cross sectional area because, you know, the longer you get here, the shallower you get here and the shallower you get here, then you reduce cross sectional area and then you've got less space for the teeth. Bam, bam. That's malocclusion. Depending on what you do in response to this insult to your health depends what type of crookedness you get.
In a classic example, you know, if you go to the Western societies, we tend to this and we tend to get the bottom jaw set back. That actually what's happened from ancestry is this has happened. And if you go to the East, the East of the world, there's a tendency to drop the tongue in the mandible, hold the mandible forward. And that's a great way of clearing your airway. Your tongue, your face has dropped back into your airway.
Yeah. At some point, you move the mandible forward with the tongue in it, opens your airway, happy, you can breathe. What's the most important thing in your life? Anyway, so that affects the way you respond to it. And you may do that on a familial basis determines the type of pattern you get. The generic types of pattern is we've got this change in the environment. We never saw it on our ancestors.
You just don't get it in other mammals, wild mammals, you know, the ones that do screaming environmental change. But I do think that nasal obstruction that. That that is where I think diets really have come in to causing problems. You know, I hands up, I was a very unconvinced of the diets made any difference. I could go back to the noughties up until realistically. So I had Crohn's disease and I had two willyosucces resections, one in 98 and another in about 2003.
And in about 2010, 2011, 2011, I think I went to the Ancestral Health Symposium in UCLA in California. And I'm now taking steroids regularly. I'm getting a lot of pain. I'm regularly finding problems with my health. I walk around this conference and everyone's talking about paleo diet. This is real early days in the paleo diet. And of course, I've been sort of linked with the paleo group of this paleo groups ever since. And I just thought to myself, well, I've got problems.
I don't, you know, it looks like I'm headed towards another resection, another major surgery. I can't afford that time off work at my life apart from the issues of surgery. Everyone's talking about these diets. Well, I'm on the maximum dose of azathioprine, which is a tough old medicine, you know, it's immunosuppressant. I'm taking steroids regularly. I thought, well, solve this for a bunch of bananas. Let's give it a go.
So I started, I made my, I should have read some books, but it's not me really, is it? So I gave it a go. I thought, what sounds paleo to me? And I just had more meat. I cut out wheat and dairies and things like that. And it made the world of difference. So here's me having always just thought, well, it's just food, isn't it? And, you know, I was when I was in my 15, 16, when that growth spurt, I used to eat,
but I was eating a loaf of bread a day. We had this fantastic bakery and I was eating a loaf of bread a day. And I love breakfast cereal. I was, you know, I would sometimes go and buy a box of breakfast cereal and a big, you know, four pints of milk. And just eat a lot at one go. I loved it. I loved it. I had a sweet tooth. I love sugar. And hey, hope, funny enough, I had Crohn's disease. So where we go, we are. Nothing I like more than eating my words, you know, to be proven wrong is to learn.
Exactly. Yeah. You know, my phrase is, you know, to to swivel on a decimal point. A decimal point of statistical significance. If you can show me something that's statistically significant, hey, I want to change or change tomorrow. Being dogmatic does not help you. And, you know, I'm sure there's lots of people listening to me here will go, oh, well, he's wrong about Western prices, wrong about this. You know, well, show me some evidence. You know, please, I want to be proven wrong.
I don't think the vitamin A and D is in case. I don't think they're holding the argument. You know, you want to. And one thing Sally Fallon said to me, she just announced to me that, you know, they've managed to cure malocclusion in all of these groups. And they've got this whole society of people who have been taking vitamin A and D and K and their kids don't have malocclusion. Well, sorry, but some of these people are writing to me because their kids are requiring being recommended surgery.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. In my viewpoint, my hunch here is if you need surgery, then you've probably had a massive breathing problem that's. Being present for most of your growth and development that has probably had a massive impact on your cognitive development. Yeah. The research is pretty bloody good on this. Yeah, absolutely. You know, David Gonzal and other people showing that, you know, what do they get? Seven, ten point IQ jump in a year from treating people with sleep apnea.
Yeah. You can know there's nothing. No method of teaching could come close to that. You know, basically what you've got is people who can't, you know, you can't sleep properly. You it's so corrosive, you know, you've had a nice I didn't sleep well last night. Really badly. And I came in this morning and I was hoping to get some work done before this video. And I tell you, I was struggling, really, really struggling to get things done. I'm terrible if I didn't sleep very well.
Let's talk about the sleep connection with with facial development and how facial development, particularly the development of a long face like you were talking about before, how that impacts the the nasal passage. Just speaking from a personal point of view, I had conventional orthodontic treatment. I had braces and I have a quite a narrow V shaped palate now and my nasal my nasal passages. I can tell it's not what it should be. Nasal breathing is not as easy as I would like it to be.
And it's taken quite a bit of effort for me to learn how to breathe again. I mean, OK, I'll see if you can send us an image of from publication. It just shows the difference in the nasal airway between a ancestral pre industrial not even at that ancestral just pre industrial and post industrial nasal capacity. And it just it's so stark and so massively different that you're just going those guys would never get a block nose. Yeah, it would just never happen.
But it's kind of two places where so the basis if you've got your block noses hanging about, you've got weak muscles. Yeah, face gets longer. I mentioned a little bit like someone has a stroke. So if you had a stroke, you see how your face drops down. Remember, most strokes you see are only the facial soft, you know, muscles or facial expression. They're not the big, you know, big muscles. Yeah, you've seen someone who's a big muscle damage from a road traffic accident something.
It's massively more profound massively, but it's a little like we've got bilateral stroke, the face is dropping down as the face drops down. It gets longer and thinner. So you tend to get blockages up here because the whole space, you know, that nasal space gets narrower and narrower and you get blocked noses. Then also because the face is dropping down, it's down swinging. This is a concept of pre neofacial dystrophy.
It's downswing the tongue, which is attached here closer and closer and so on. And at night you can't breathe. Okay. So not only is the jaw getting narrower, it's getting shorter, but the whole jaw is moving down towards the airway. So it's this three dimensional change. Now, I think that, you know, we've got two things going on here. It's your environment's changed and that's largely the problem in the first place. That's why you needed to see an orthodontist.
Then there's this really, really controversial thing. Does orthodontics make it worse? Well, there's a large body of professional opinion that thinks it can make it worse. Look at some of the works of Bill Hang and my father just saying, hello, wake up. And they really wanted conversation. And the way that conversation's been treated is suspicious. Anyway, basically everything set back. It's narrow. Now, it's tough when you're in that situation.
Lead me with another question because again, I was thinking too deep. Well, let's talk about the environmental inputs that would go into creating proper facial development. What are we missing? Good facial development. Yeah. So the two, so putting in the hierarchy, I mean, it is muscle effect. Then you've got posture, how you rest the face. Then you've got function. So block noses really affecting the posture and to some degree function.
I went lower and I was starting to look at the next layer down on problems. You would look at things like breastfeeding and other things going down there. But and then general body posture and things like. But it's stick to the top one. So the top one now chewing gum. I mean, I'm going to plug in for this. My favorite gum at the moment is this one here. Stronger. I don't advocate people chewing gum because in theory it's perfect. It's a great idea. Just use the system more.
So I'm saying that clearly I use this system more. I've got huge great big muscles. Here's the lump of chewing gum I was chewing just before this interview. My muscles are still sort of like a post workout burn in my muscles. And I'm doing that almost every day. That's two sticks of the gum I just showed you. But I can't recommend that in case someone is going to get jaw joint problem. So hey, I can tell you in theory that makes a lot of sense.
You know, as a good point here, we all eat processed food. Either you buy it pre processed or you use your inbuilt processor. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now, if you don't use your inbuilt processor, it doesn't develop as well. That's not crazy revelation. You know, if I went down the gym and started exercising and using this unit of my body, it would get bigger. And no one's going to be surprised if I said that. And I go and meet this guy with a fantastic body.
I don't think he's been sitting on the sofa his entire life. I think he's got off the sofa. He's gone down the gym. Hope he's not used steroids. And that's obvious. You know, you can see. I can chew. Yeah. And I've got a big jaw. It can fit on my teeth and of course my tongue. So use it or lose it. I mean, if you're familiar, it's Wolf's Law down the line. Yeah. So using your system is massively important. Then, of course, breathing out of your nose is going to help.
Again, I used to dismiss where the air went. Okay. However, I think there is a it seems to be so when my youngest was getting real bad block noses, snoring, making a lot of noise because I knew the importance of that. So what I did, I widened her top jaw because I widened it. And this was an intervention. So I did four and a half, five years old. I widened the top jaw. That opened her airway up and then I started a lip taping. So this is, you know, some other intervention you can do.
I've got here. The brands are sometimes the kit is sometimes useful. This is a slightly more expensive tape, but you can use this during the daytime. And, you know, if you're going to do some work in the office. Yeah. Do that. And, of course, what you do is you get used to that. The one the nice advantage of this tape is you can put it there on the back of my phone. Well, next time I use my phone, I can pop it back on my lips again. So I don't have to go to the bar.
I don't have to find the box, take the box out, do it, because that is going to be a gumption trap. But I suggest you use the other micropore tape at night. Use that during the daytime to get used to it. Then use the other tape at night. Then work on your body posture and work on swallowing and all these other things. There's lots you can do. And of course, this is what mewing has become. Yeah. You know, I wanted to ask you about resting posture.
This is something that Sandra Khan sort of stressed a lot more to me. Yeah. Well, this is Sandra Khan was a big disciple of my father. Yes. Yeah. She spoke very highly of you. Yeah. Yeah. So she, she, what we're going here is to the tropic premise. And this is my father's concept. So I think that what the tropic premise was kind of his big baby. If you look at so much of what he thinks and what he says, it relates back to the tropic premise.
So the tropic premise. So a premise is a concept idea and tropos is growth. So it's the idea of growth. And he says, if you have the tongue on the roof of your mouth, if you have your lips together and your teeth in only a contact. And remember for those guys worried about holding your teeth together, if you have your tongue on the roof of the mouth, you don't clench. Yeah. Yeah. Not if your tongue's popular, it's not going to happen because you've got your reciprocal system working.
Okay. See my video, the cause and cure of clenching and bruxing. It's a great video. More information on. So the posture is vitally important. So I give a good analogy of this. I remember when I was in Brighton, I had a guy. I'm just sorry. Just checking time on that because we've got a time out relatively shortly. So when I was living in Brighton, there was an old lady who had this great big bony lump on her neck.
And I'd see her round as I walked around. And then hey, one day I'm working in the maxo facial department. I walk in and there she is sitting on the seat. And of course, I felt this mass and we x-rayed it and we didn't have three dimensional imaging at the time. But it was a bony lump. And it was basically we think it was somewhere around in the mastoid or somewhere around here in the master, you know, the sternocleidomastoid. So it's a muscle that comes from that lump there.
We think somewhere around there she got a little cyst or something in the bone and then just no one treated it. And what a cyst is that you have is skin cells instead of the outside the body they make they get mixed up and they get on a loop. So they make a sphere inside the body. They think they're still on the outside. So they shed skin and as they shed skin into the middle, skin breaks down and that raises this a little bit complex.
It raises the osmolarity. You know, it's kind of like the saltiness. And then that draws in fluid. And then because it draws in fluid, it gets a little bit bigger. But the process of it expanding is simply no more than a slight increase in fluid pressure. So it's a very light, mild pressure inside a space because you've got bone on the outside. Bone continues on the outside, but it had continued out to a lump, vast big here.
That was just a little bit of pressure, a little bit of pressure over a constant period of time. And so, you know, I'm going to say your tongue inside this housing here is a little bit like that cyst. And if you get your tongue up on the roof of the mouth, it's just going to slowly develop this whole bit of your face out. The problem is most people don't and most people lie to themselves about how much they do that.
And remember, the tongue should be sucked up and held there with suction. It shouldn't be pushing. Is that true even into adulthood? Yeah, yeah, it won't change. I mean, look at someone having a stroke when they're 80. You can gradually change the shape as you're an adult if you keep correct oral posture with your tongue.
Well, in theory, yes. I mean, when I'm looking at mirroring results and I occasionally have a voyage down that rabbit hole, I don't really see people identify with being much over 25 years old. Now, is that because the bones younger and different under 25? Yes, I think the bone is younger and more different under the age of 25. But I don't think it's something that inherent. I think that's one element. Sorry.
When I see people at 80 changing because of strokes, you think, well, there is a possibility of change. Now, is that change because you don't have growth hormones? You can't get that must be part of it. But also, it's probably the fact that you've become set in your ways. You've become a creature of habits. And, you know, the structure that you created with your old posture and function now makes your old posture and function the most comfortable posture and function.
Anything else is uncomfortable. So, you know, I talk about you have muscle memory and you have memory from form, form memory. So the shape you have is acting as a memory of past events. It's like a very deeply scored channel in a record. You wrote an old record of vinyl and it scores a scratch so deep you can't get out of it. You're in a tricky situation at the moment, as I understand it. You're on hold with these procedures. My life has been on hold for six years with this court case.
I clearly I can't go into the court case, but it's what I can say is almost completely philosophical. It's not about I've done something wrong or I've messed up or something, you know, I've really injured people. It's a philosophical case that it's about the treatment I provide. And the argument is basically I shouldn't provide the treatment and my annoyance with this whole case is that I spent six years asking for a debate on why teeth are crooked.
It's asking everyone. It says in this, you know, I say in profit, it says they don't know the cause. I'm saying there's a strong environmental influence and my whole treatment is based on treating that environmental influence. And the prosecution expert is saying it's genetic. I'm thinking we'll hang around. The General Dental Council, I asked this body if they could have it, they could repeat the debate of 1937 on why teeth are crooked.
I think they're a government body. I think the public would want them to do that. You know, I think that's a fair shout. If they're done what they should have done and literally that is just following the scientific process. I'm not asking for any more. Don't believe a word I say, but please let's follow the scientific process, starting with the cause. Why are teeth crooked? OK, start there, we work out.
Had they followed that process, well, then how could I be in a court hearing with the expert for the prosecution saying it's genetic? Don't figure. And of course, I make comments on what I think is happening and those comments need to be seen in context. And they've got to be seen in context of an environmental etiology. And then with that, a pathological, we have to have a pathological process.
And of course, I make comments based on a pathological process. And it's easy to sit back and say, oh, you can't prove that. Well, you know, doesn't mean it's wrong. It means people haven't been interested in proving it because they want it to be genetic. They want the problem. So, you know, you're saying saying unknown causes, you know, known causes only five percent. Well, sorry, please. And I have a debate with you about that.
Well, my understanding with with genetics was genes code for proteins. And, you know, it's it's to try and explain morphogenesis based and form based on genes is like trying to tell you what a house looks like just by knowing what the kinds of bricks that they used. It never really made sense that you could. Well, I think it is more we're more saying that if you draw the plan of the house, OK, it's great plan.
But if you know, if you've had several earthquakes and hurricanes and, you know, you know, you probably look at the plans. Well, maybe there's inherent weaknesses here, inherent problems here. Should an earthquake or hurricane turn up? Yes. But each hurricane and earthquakes can be different. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and that's going to shape what you eventually end up with 100 years down the line when it's been patched up numerous times.
Yeah. Well, it seems to me like you're one of the only people who is really looking into an issue that is affecting almost everyone. And then you look on the lock out of knock on effect. If this is the big cause of sleep apnea, which I personally believe it is, you know, that's what's killing 10 or 20 percent of the population a decade early. If it is, you know, you're having to hold your head forward because you're opening your airway.
That's one of the major contributors to forward head posture. Yeah. It's one of the major contributors to people not looking at this as a motive. It's a reason for not most people not looking as attractive as they should be. Yeah. Yeah. And it does matter, too. I mean, the literature. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A healthy structure looks good.
We're hardwired to be attracted to healthy people. And we were, you know, and the revelation, I think, that people are going to go through when they realize that their face hasn't grown as it should have and that it was either their parents or the negligence of medical professionals. Should that be the case? I think it's going to be a real big revelation. I mean, that's why mewings becomes so popular. That's why one of the reasons you're interviewing me now, you know.
Yeah, absolutely. How can people support you before we go? Okay. Well, please come and join my Patreon. That would be really cool. We've got a lot of information on Patreon. You can support. So I'm not trying to promote my type of treatment. I think that would be a mistake. You've got a mewing app coming out. You can go and see that. My mewing app is different from mine. Mine hasn't come out yet.
Typical. Yep. But also support prevent crooked teeth because my whole thing is prevention. You know, I'm trying to put together a technique to treat people, but that's hard work. And it's also it's not economically viable, really. It's hard. Yeah. But we should be looking at prevention because that's cheap, really cheap, simple, you know, messages like sit up straight, shut your mouth.
Chew, eat tough food. Yeah. So prevent crooked teeth, please support that. Come and join our Patreon and get the mewing app out when it comes out. I will put links to everything in the show notes. Mike, thank you so much for giving me some of your time. I'm really honored to have had the chance to speak with you. Keep doing what you're doing. Thanks so much.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to support Mike and his revolutionary work, please consider subscribing to his YouTube channel called Orthotropics, becoming a Patreon member of his, keeping an eye out for the mewing app that will be available soon and also supporting Mike on preventcrookedteeth.com.
There are countless resources on chewing, posture, bruxism, mewing and more on Mike's YouTube channel, so I strongly recommend you go there for further information. My conversation with Sandra Khan on episode 20 is also a great adjunct to this episode if you'd like to learn a little bit more. If you'd like to support this podcast, you can subscribe on Spotify and YouTube and leave up to a five star review on Apple podcasts.
This is a simple, no cost way to support my work and help me reach more listeners. Please feel free to leave comments on my YouTube channel as I really do try to read through as many as I can. I've also put links to all of my social media platforms and my website in the episode notes if you'd like updates on the podcast, information about health or if you'd just like to reach out to me in general. Thanks again for listening everyone, take care.