this is the story of William he is now a normal looking 15 year old but as an eight-year-old he
had quite an underbite my bottom jaw was in front of my top jaw teeth so i if i can do
it now it's like it's quite um uh it's not it's not like a normal look if you go i mean
the dentist gave us the advice to go to an orthodontist
where they would probably have to do some sort of surgery but we didn't obviously want the surgery
so i spoke to my friend and she spoke so highly of dr Mew and she told me it showed me the pictures
of how her son's face was and so you know that was you know a miracle how he had changed because
it was quite bad um so obviously i'd put my faith in Clara and went to see dr Mew when William first
came in i saw a difficult class three situation he was stuck like this that's not gonna change
by itself he's not gonna recover and class threes at that severity frequently go on to need surgery
and it it it upsets me that they're just not given the consent they're not told that their options
fortunately William and his mum found out about the options and after one visit to the clinic in
pearly they decided to start treatment with dr Mew which is not the easy way but a long trajectory
for the years to come starting with exercises and retainers what happens is the you get the braces
and you're given a little key and then you you turn the braces on which means the whole brace
like only slightly just like like millimeters not like even smaller than millimeters just widening
your jaw slowly slowly slowly you like turn it on like every week every day like compare it like
compared to like what stage you're at in the process and then you at night i used to wear
like a head brace and what it would do was pull my top top jaw forwards like with elastic bands
similar to normal braces and like you know they were quite like um taut elastic bands so they they
just pulled pulled your top jaw forward and then whilst you're to allow the room because as i said
before how um your top jaw would widen it allow allowed your bottom jaw to fit in basically yeah
so is it hard work as a parent no not um at the beginning it was easy much easier than um
as he got older he got more adolescent and didn't want to be seen to be wearing
a brace at school which because it was removable he could take it out and it was
he was in control of it or rather if it was a permanent one he would have been stuck with it
taking out the retainers normally slows the process down but dr Mew has found a
solution to this problem the first thing we're doing to make sure people wear their retainers
is we have timers embedded in the retainers there are little chips that just record the temperature
every 15 to 20 minutes depending on how we set them he times your wear and if you don't have a
good wear it's like it's not the best if you get on me and it's not a telling off but it's um like
he prefer you to have a better time apart from the technical tricks an orthotropic treatment
is always the team effort between doctor patient and parents the appliances we use aren't everything
i cannot make people change you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink
and there's a certain elements that i can't enforce on people so the wearing appliance is one
thing but i want people to change i want people to learn to swallow right to stand right to rest
with their tongue on the roof of the mouth and the appliances can't do all of that wearing them is a
good start and that's part of the process but once you get to a certain point you've deeply
ingrained the lessons into people and they don't need to wear their retainers anymore they can stop
William like most of my patients has asked to wear a retainer at night an active retainer
something that's actually training them for many years after treatment so now he's only wearing
something at night and we ask them to do that for usually for two years after growth is finished
and then they're cured but they don't have relapse and you know that's how it should be
you know none of our ancestors wore retainers at night they didn't need orthodontics so it's
yeah whenever you use removable appliances you face a problem with people not wearing them
he's definitely a hard task master when it comes like wearing your brace and stuff and
like the change i think that's a good thing really because it's it's your face like it's
what you're gonna live with for the rest of your life while William is happy with this treatment
there are still a lot of patients with underbites or other problems whose parents do not know of the
existence of orthotropics as it is not standard information dentists have to hand out as an option
aside from orthodontics shouldn't more dentists or more parents be informed about this treatment
in an option yes yeah because he never gave that option to me and if Clara hadn't said
i would never have known so yeah yes most definitely it should be available to everybody
or everybody have an idea that there is another alternative rather than surgery when William
asked his dentist once about orthotropics he even got advice not to do it my dentist like
warned me about people that say they can do all these things pay like lots of money and not to
get anything out of it in the end i think you use like the word cowboys our name is blackened
so they say the best way you can't fight someone destroy their reputation because of their view
that regular orthodontists might damage facial growth Mike Mew and his father John Mew who
invented the treatment are heavily criticized and even demonized by some people who put their faith
and income in regular orthodontics they say the Mews can't scientifically prove orthotropics is
working it must hurt hearing this over and over again deeply in fact it's that while that is one
of the reasons that's given me as much passion to drive myself forward i've seen my father who has
basically run a charity for the benefit of mankind for the latter third of his life being
ridiculed and accused of everything from charlatanism to gold digging to being cowboy to
um having no idea being stupid um misinformed and that that nothing
rattles you nothing boils your blood more than knowing that it's
the complete opposite and it is the opposite the very much opposite
few people have ever i mean ever given so much to humanity and been so derided by the very people
doing what they're accusing him of and that just makes my blood boil i am going to get that changed
there is absolutely no doubt it is my mission to get him the credit he deserves before he dies
or loses his marbles even after a few years of orthotropics claire never told her dentist
they had started treatment with dr Mew he was a family dentist and i didn't want to go against
perhaps his advice but he didn't know we had gone to dr Mew but he was very pleased
that his teeth were getting in line and i think he thought it was just happening
i'm stunned i mean it i mean how can the case like that just magically correct itself
um you know you you i rarely ever see someone with the size of dental arches William has
except in my clinic where everyone has it i mean i often wonder what dentists might must be thinking
when they look at my results you know the size the stability the change in facial form
you know they must just think oh he got lucky in the end William feels like he's the lucky one for
getting a treatment that probably prevented him from jaw surgery later in life what do you see
now when you look back at your pictures when you were eight um i think you definitely see like you
can definitely recognize that it's me but um it's definitely a drastic change like you wouldn't get
this through like normal braces or anything i think it's a really good opportunity for like a
confidence booster as well what do you think would have been different if he hadn't had
this treatment um he no doubt his jaw would have been like bruce forsyth all hanging out and just
you know it wouldn't have perhaps looked so handsome as he does now i don't know
you don't really know he can't imagine what he but you know his chin was obviously protruding
so it would have only increased as he grew older from eight to fifteen sixteen you know it would
have made a big difference because he was still pretty at eight but you can imagine if he had
not had it done he would have probably got more ugly i'm so proud of him oh why wouldn't you be
yeah i'm like looking back on how i was then to now i i'm very glad that i like went through the
experience put the like hard work in to get like these rewards so i think it's really beneficial