Hi Friends and welcome or welcome back to my YouTube channel! I'm Priya Mistry, the TMJ doc.
This video is about tongue posture and diet, and how these two factors affect
orofacial development. This topic is one that I feel very strongly about because correct tongue
posture and a healthy diet that encourages us to actively use our facial muscles, can have an
enormous positive impact on the development of the mouth, the nose, and the jaw. Conversely,
incorrect tongue posture and a diet that does not encourage us to use our facial muscles,
can have an enormous negative impact on these same structures. For those of you who don't know me,
I'm a General Dentist with a practice dedicated to taking care of patients with TMJ Disorders.
I practice in beautiful Portland, Oregon with my wonderful mentor, Dr. Arthur L. Parker. If
you don't already, make sure to check out my Instagram! My handle is: the underscore
tmj underscore doc. Also follow me on Twitter - tweet tweet @Priyatmj. I post on Instagram and
Twitter quite frequently about TMJ tips, trivia, just information in general - so if you like to
geek out on this stuff like I do, be sure to follow me on both of these! So let's get right
into it - first we will talk about the tongue and then we'll talk about diet. With the tongue,
we'll be talking about correct tongue posture, correct swallow function, and how the tongue
can affect our ability to breathe through our noses - yes, it does have an impact on that!
Let's just start by doing a little exercise together. Where is your tongue right now?
Is it resting on the floor of your mouth? Is it jutting forward? Is it resting between your teeth?
Or is it up against the roof of your mouth? Do a little check as to where your tongue is
and then now let's compare that to correct tongue posture. What is correct tongue posture?
Correct tongue posture is having the tip, the middle, and the back of your tongue up against
the roof of the mouth with a light suction. When the tongue is in its proper resting position from
infancy onwards - yes folks, infancy onwards - it's exerting pressure onto the roof of the mouth
(the palate) allowing it to grow and expand to its full genetic potential. When the palate expands
to its full genetic potential, there's enough room for all the primary and permanent teeth
to fit in that arch without crowding. These people that have that proper resting tongue
position from infancy onwards, typically do not have crowded permanent teeth and these individuals
typically do not need orthodontia; they don't need braces! When the palate or the roof of
the mouth expands to its full genetic potential, we typically see that the mandible - this lower
arch here - also follows, and it comes down and forward and expands to its full genetic potential,
accommodating all the lower teeth without crowding. So remember, when you're at rest,
when you're not speaking, when you're not eating - your tongue should be up against the roof of
the mouth with a light suction.. and that's the tip, the middle, and the back of the tongue.
As you're watching this, many of you will probably realize that your tongue is down
on the floor of the mouth or kind of towards the back of your mouth, which is not ideal.
Proper swallow function is also important in the development of the dental arches. Let's do another
little exercise together. Go ahead and take a moment and gather up all the saliva in your mouth.
Before you swallow that saliva, I want you to kind of focus your mind on monitoring yourself through
your swallow - from beginning to end. Go ahead now - swallow that saliva and monitor yourself.
Where was your tongue throughout that swallow? Did it jut forward? Was your tongue on the floor of
your mouth, and did you have to nod or kind of bob your head to really fully be able to swallow? Or
was your tongue up against the roof of your mouth as you swallowed? The correct way to swallow is
to collect the bolus of food - or saliva in this case - on the front surface of the tongue. The
bolus is then moved to the back of the mouth with sequential squeezing of the midline of the tongue
up against the hard palate. This requires a front to back rolling action of the tongue,
while pressing up against the hard palate. During this process, the sides and the tip of the tongue
should be anchored to the inner gum lines of the teeth. This area is also called
the alveolar ridge. Once the bolus reaches the back of the mouth, this triggers the pharyngeal
swallow reflex and we go on to swallow, and it goes on into the esophagus and onwards.
The correct swallow function as well as the correct tongue position require the tongue to
be up against the roof of the mouth. This pressure again over time will encourage and help the palate
to grow to its full genetic potential making it so that all the permanent teeth can fit into
that upper arch without crowding. We swallow one to two thousand times a day, depending on
which source you're looking at, so that's so many opportunities missed if we don't have the correct
swallow function to allow that palate to grow to its full genetic potential. Imagine how many
times we're just sitting at rest when we're not eating, when we're not speaking! The tongue should
be up against the roof of the mouth, exerting pressure, encouraging that palate to grow.
Then you throw in how many times we swallow a day. There are so many opportunities for our palate to
expand to its full potential if the tongue is in the correct position. If the tongue is not
in the correct position at rest, if the tongue is not in the correct position when we swallow,
there's a lot of missed opportunities for the palate to expand and grow. Now let's move on to
how tongue posture affects the development of the nose and the ability to breathe through our noses.
The roof of the mouth, or the palate, is also the floor of the nose. If the roof
of the mouth develops wide and flat, then the floor of the nose also develops wide and flat
this lowers the risk or the chances of having a deviated septum, which then enhances nasal
breathing. For more about the abundant benefits of nasal breathing there are two videos that you can
watch: "Somnifix: How it Can Help You" or "Nasal Breathing vs Mouth Breathing". Both of these are
on my YouTube channel, so please do check them out because nasal breathing has enormous health
benefits! Now let's talk about diet. How can our diets affect our orofacial development? Well think
about processed versus unprocessed, whole foods. Examples of processed foods include: breakfast
cereals, cheese crackers, cakes and biscuits, and microwaved meals. Examples of unprocessed foods
are: vegetables, grains, fruits, nuts. Which of these are easier to chew? Processed foods are way
easier to chew than unprocessed foods! So chewing breakfast cereal, chewing a cookie or a cracker
that just sort of dissolves in your mouth is a lot easier than chewing an apple, a raw carrot,
etc. Processed foods make it so that we don't have to use our chewing muscles as much as we would if
we were eating a diet high in unprocessed foods. Whole apples, raw carrots - lots more chewing
muscles used here! Eating unprocessed, whole foods allows our chewing and facial muscles to develop
in such a way that inward forces are being put on the dental arches. Then you take the tongue
up against the roof of the mouth putting up and outward forces on that same arch. These opposing
inward and outward forces together then form arches that can accommodate all of our teeth,
including wisdom teeth! If you look at the skulls of Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon,
none of them had crowding! None of them needed to see an orthodontist to get braces. They
didn't need their wisdom teeth extracted. Why? It's this their diet and their tongue position!
If you don't have correct tongue position, if you don't have correct swallow function, if you don't
have a diet rich in unprocessed whole foods, what can you do? Well the easiest one to fix, right off
the bat, is the diet. So go out go out today and start buying unprocessed, whole foods! Focus on
thoroughly chewing your food and utilizing your facial and chewing muscles. Start with an apple
a day - an apple a day keeps the doctor away, right? Start with that! That's an easy fix. Now
let's address fixing correct tongue posture. Many people with incorrect tongue posture,
many people whose tongues are on the floor of their mouths or on the back of their mouths,
have what's called a tongue tie. Please check out my video called "What is a Tongue Tie"? For more
information on this, for even more information - you could read "Tongue Tied" by Richard
Baxter. Reading this book changed my life and it changed the way that I practiced dentistry. It's
a wealth of information and I highly recommend it, so I've linked that in the description box below.
Keep in mind that the use of pacifiers and the habit of thumb-sucking can also increase the risk
of long-term low tongue posture. To obtain correct tongue position and correct swallow function,
it's absolutely imperative to get in touch with a good Myofunctional Therapist or MFT.
If you're not familiar with Myofunctional Therapy, please watch my video called
"What is Myofunctional Therapy?". It contains a ton of information and details as to what this
kind of therapy is. MFTs are well versed in diagnosing tongue ties and they work
with their patients to reach four goals: 1) exclusive nasal breathing day in and day
out, 2) correct lip seal - lips together at rest, 3) correct tongue position, and 4) correct swallow
function. Lastly, you may be wondering, "why is a TMJ dentist talking about tongue position and
orofacial development, anyway?". Well, I'm doing so because the vast majority of my TMJ patients
have incorrect tongue position and incorrect swallow function, which negatively impacted
their orofacial development, which then led to their TMJ disorders. I see this connection
every single day, so highlighting this topic and spreading awareness is very important to me.
These TMJ Disorders can be debilitating. They can really hold people back from meeting their full
potential in terms of life! I hope this video shed some light on how strongly correct tongue posture,
correct swallow function, and a good diet can really affect orofacial development.
If you like what you heard, if you learned something new, please click "Like" below,
SUBSCRIBE to my channel, do all the things, and as usual - feel free to leave questions or comments
in the comment box below! And remember, my friends, you can never have TMI about TMJ!