Is there an epidemic of small jaws?

The first issue: food

The beginnings of our airway disorder epidemic can be traced back to the 1800s. In 1790, 95% of Americans lived in rural areas.

With the industrial revolution and shift in population towards the cities, farmers began industrially producing food to meet demand. However, the mass production resulted in food becoming:

• too soft

• less nutritious

With the softer food, our jaws didn’t need to work as hard to chew the food. So the lack of force applied on the jaw bones resulted in widespread underdevelopment of the jaws. Weston A Price’s body of work Nutrition and Physical Degeneration was a major stepping stone in unravelling this root cause.

Dr Price travelled the world and studied the dental health and jaw structures of indigenous cultures isolated from Western diets. He noted straight teeth with no cavities and wide, broad jaw structures. Price also found that once these cultures began eating a Western diet, dental crowding was more prevalent as was narrower jaws.

This theory was further supported by the work of famous anthropologist Corruccini.

With softer foods, the facial muscles didn’t need to work as hard to swallow, particularly the tongue. So muscular dysfunction is widespread, in the form of:

• dysfunctional swallowing

• low tongue posture

So due to the modern diet of processed, soft and industrialised foods, there was muscle dysfunction leading to a lack of stimulation of jaw growth.

What’s the structure that lies right behind the jaws? The airway. So the lack of forwards growth of the jaws, has led to our airways being compromised.

On a side note, the highly processed nature of our modern diet has also increased rates of obesity which also contributes to the high percentage of the population with OSA.

So what effects does the underdeveloped jaws have on our health?

1. With jaws not growing forwards enough it means they sit further back in the skull. This compromises the structure that sits right behind the jaws: the airway, which leads to a high prevalence of breathing-disordered sleep. The fragmented sleep has devastating consequences on our systemic health.

2. The mandible (lower jaw) is locked tight in behind the underdeveloped maxilla (upper jaw). So our jaw joints (TMJ) are much further back into our skull than they are supposed to be. This results in TMD as well as overstimulation of the trigeminal nerve. TMD is underdisagnosed and misdiagnosed. Sufferers have varying degrees of clinical signs and symptoms so all patients with jaw underdevelopment should also be screened for TMD. Left untreated, it is a significant contributor to many chronic illnesses.

3. With the airway compromise, we lean our heads forward to help us breathe. The forward head posture impacts our upper cervical vertebrae alignment. With the upper cervical vertebrae out of line, the nerve signals from the brain to the spinal cord, and vice versa, are interrupted. So our nervous system cannot function properly. Does a kinked garden hose release water out the end?

All this and I haven’t even mentioned the cranium. When the jaws, breathing, spine are out of alignment, you can be sure that the cranium is compensating in some way as well. Given the brain is housed in the cranium, a compressed cranium can squeeze on the brain and create significant dysregulation in the central nervous system. This is why I work alongside cranial osteopaths who help balance the spine, cranium and breathing as I use appliances such as the ALF to balance the jaws.