thank you for taking the time to do this interview today with me and us the viewers of
the orthotropics channel when my children were 14, I've got twins, we met you for the first time and
they already had orthodontics and the orthodontist said it would be good to
you know get their teeth straight but you have a different opinion about that
well at the real reason is of course you should ask why the teeth are crooked in the first place
the orthodontists believe it's genetic and I am quite sure that it is environmental
it is obviously there is a mix but it is much more environmental than genetic what do you mean with
Environmental well environmental basically is our lifestyle I think it's true partly to the
fact that we live in houses partly to the fact that we eat we eat soft food and partly to the
fact that we only breastfeed for three to six months when it should be over two years
and how can the fact that we live in houses um make their teeth crooked one of the the houses
contain dust and dust contains allergens which cause allergies and if you have an allergy your
nose is very likely to be runny and often blocks so you develop the habit of keeping the mouth open
and that destroys the natural environment required for good growth so leaving your mouth open because
you have a blocked nose can turn your teeth crooked it can totally ruin your face and I think
that is much more important if you look at me my face is quite long that's because when I was young
I left my mouth open fortunately at the age of about 15 I thought I looked better with my mouth
shut and so at least I've got a bit of a chin but if I hadn't done that I would be much worse than I
am and I've now learned to keep my mouth shut with my tongue and my palate and that naturally causes
a better group okay so uh your treatment is called orthotropics um and you there's not everybody's
uh convinced that this actually works so what kind of evidence do you have that it does work
well I essentially my orthodontic colleagues and friends are quite sure does not work the
main reason is that they have done many research projects where they have treaty cases to try and
make the face grow forward, forward growth means good looking growth it also means room for all the
teeth it also means you don't have clicking jaw joints and it even more importantly it prevents
sleep apnea which shortens people's lives by 10 years or more. Why is that? Well if the face does
not grow forward as it should do then the throat is too narrow too small and it becomes difficult
to breathe particularly at night when the tongue drops to the back of the throat and many people
are unable to breathe for long periods at night and this most certainly does shorten their life
Okay but how can you prove that your method works? Well the problem with proof in this case is that
my treatment is based on posture the position of the tongue the lips and the jaw now in science you
need to be able to measure things accurately so that you compare them scientifically but no one
has yet been able to measure posture it's just not possible because it is continuous and therefore
the universities are basically not interested in something they can't measure orthodontists
measure things they measure the change in millimeters and degrees I simply treat cases
and measure the results does it look good or does it look bad now you can imagine that
it's very difficult to put numbers to therefore the orthodontists say my research is not valid but
in reality I have compared my treatment with their treatment on many occasions um on one occasion I
took a group of twins identical twins I treated one and I asked the orthodontist to treat the other one
in every case the orthotropic results were highly significantly better now that is a rare
finding in Orthodontics to have something highly significantly better but if we look at the picture
of Butta for example that you send us doesn't it genetically also occur that in that period of time
people's faces changed from child to manhood and the jaw with the hormones naturally will change
well I think we've known from experience that children very rarely grow from being unattractive
to attractive but often grow from being attractive to unattractive almost every child at the age of
six or seven is attractive but at that point the permanent teeth come in and that is when
appearance can be severely damaged by poor posture if your tongue does not hold the upper
jaw up and particularly if you drop your lower jaw down that will really spoil your appearance
orthodontists really don't um I should say that follow those thoughts at all but orthotropics
is designed entirely around that that's why we treat patients at the age of six seven or eight an
orthodontist mostly treat at the age of um 12 to 15. looking at Butta you can see that we treated
him he was told when he was young that he would have to have surgery to correct the position of
his jaws and his mother brought him to me and said could you treat him without surgery I said yes
and but what we did was to reverse the pattern of growth to that age and we started simply by moving
the Upper Front Teeth forward now many people would say they were two far forward to begin with but
no orthotropics believes that whole repertoire should be much further forward but we start by
moving the Upper Front Teeth but then we fit to an appliance which corrects the posture that's
the way they hold their tongue lips and jaw and that will then encourage the face to go forward oh
15 20 millimeters and more and orthodontists as I said earlier can't get forward growth of more than
three millimeters um but um they never talk about that. But is actually what you're saying if your
child has a good posture it will never need braces? You're absolutely right and that is why we put
our emphasis on training patients when they are very young the problem is that a lot of clinicians
and therapists give children exercises to keep their mouths shut with their tongue on their
palate but children are not very good at doing exercises and in my experience um about 20 percent
actually learn to correct their subconscious posture that is where they naturally keep their
thongue lips and jaw they will do it for exercises and when they think about it but the rest of
the time they have poor posture and hence they will get a poor result and an unattractive face
yeah so actually you should you should teach your child from from baby onwards to lips together
really I do wish that people would consider the possibility that it is postural orthodontists
very very few of them pay any real attention to posture some of them will send patients through
a myotherapist who will give them exercises but in reality the vast majority of people have irregular
teeth or long faces or longer than they should if you compare the skulls of people in the Stone Age
they had square faces and straight teeth all of them now in these this day and age very few
children um really look good after the age of six it's quite a small proportion and that's just due
to poor posture okay so if if there was a message to all parents with young children now that you
would would like to give them some advice what what would it be well I could say sell your house
and go and live in a cave in a mountain but not many people would follow me I could also say
eat rough raw meat and never cook anything again not many people would follow me but I could also
say feed your child breastfeed them naturally with no spoons low cups no bottles until about
two and a half years maybe three years old now again that is very unpopular people want to get
on with their lives but in reality we're talking about the quality of life if you want to have
a soft and easy life you'll have to put up with an unattractive face crooked teeth clicking jaws
and a short life because you've got to sleep apnea but it is always either the parents or the child's
choice well thank you I'm very much for this conversation uh I I hope you've inspired some
people and at least to think about it and also you've wrote a book about this for lay people
to read yes that is I think a book that everybody should read um it's called what will my baby look like
it's really for young mothers and it does tell them both what they can do and what might
happen well thank you John and I will hope to see you again maybe someday they like okay anytime