Our environment shapes how we grow. The daily pressures and habits are extremely powerful in affecting the way we move and function. An understated aspect is how your home can affect how your child grows up looking!
The importance of environmental factors are clearly being ignored and could greatly assist the field of orthodontic therapy and general health. Professor John Mew developed an interest in the science of facial growth. Seeking alternatives to facial surgery he returned in 1965 to University College to specialise in orthodontics. Since then he has been developing non-surgical methods of correcting unattractive vertical growth in children’s faces.
In the 1970s he wrote several papers on the new sub-specialty of ‘Orthotropics’ which aims to encourage horizontal growth by changing oral posture. He has written a textbook and published many articles internationally on this subject. John has recently been described both as “a maverick” and “the brightest orthodontist who has ever lived”. It was the science and environmental factors of facial development that interested Prof. Mew to seek alternatives to facial surgery and specialise in orthodontics.
This article summaries an interview, in which he goes over some of the environmental factors that can affect the growth of your face, and hence, affect how you look, including your own home.
What kind of growth do we want for the face and head?
However, in typical treatment, orthodontists offer fixed braces or ‘train tracks’, usually accompanied with extractions and sometimes jaw surgery. The belief is it is too difficult or impossible to alter the growth of the jaws. This form of traditional treatment has been used for about 100 years and orthodontists are fully aware that it can damage the teeth and face and also that the crowding tends to return later. For example, In the UK only 5% of Orthodontists inform their patients that there are alternative methods, such as guiding the growth of the jaws ‘Orthotropics’.
You can imagine the expense that parents have to go through in order to correct their child’s teeth or jaw alignment!
Forward growth is good looking growth. It also ensures room for all of the teeth. More importantly, it prevents sleep apnea, which shortens one’s lives, according to some studies, by ten years or more.
This forward growth also creates a bigger space in the throat to breathe, particularly at night. Dr Mew explains: “When the tongue drops to the back of the throat, and you are unable to breathe for long periods at night.”
A good facial posture involves the mouth, tongue, and neck being in good position. However, this has been neglected in scientific research because it is simply not very feasible to measure posture per se. But by measuring the results, you can see how particular changes in posture can affect facial growth. Whether the result looks “good” or “bad” is also tricky to quantify, but you can assess the function of how the mouth and tongue is.
Dr Mew called his approach orthothropics. One way he sought to prove this was to treat twins; he would treat one while another orthodontist would treat the other. In every case, the twin treated by Dr Mew showed his method taking into account posture worked significantly better.
Why is posture so important for young children?
The cranial base is said to reach 87% of its growth by 2 years and 98% by 15 years of age.
Around age 5, the cranial base has completed 90% of its growth and, from then on, can be considered relatively stable as the remaining 10% of change occurs in the next 10 years.[1]
It is known that maturation of different components of the craniofacial skeleton reach their completion at different time points. It is also considered that some components of the anterior cranial base are the earliest structures in the skull to reach maturity in shape and size at about 7–8 years. This is earlier than the teen years and even early adolescence that convention suggests.
The changes in the craniofacial structure do not stop with the onset of adulthood, but continue, though at a significantly slower rate, throughout adult life. However, these changes tended to be of small magnitude compared to the tremendous changes during early childhood.
How can your home affect how you look?
Have you seen your room when a shaft of sunlight crosses a bedroom?
Allergies and blocked noses can start soon after birth. They are a response to tiny particles of dust in the air, and are becoming increasingly common in industrial countries. The most common allergy is to house dust.
Do you use air conditioning (with all closed windows) often as a matter of habit?
These habits contribute to mouth breathing. Over time, blocked noses lead to open mouth postures, which derails the optimal development of the facial structure. From the Orthotropics blog:
The genetic influence on facial development is obvious and environmental things such as thumb sucking has long been recognised. It is not often appreciated how influential the environment is and what a dramatic effect on facial shape changing this can make. (…)
Nearly all children experience at least one blocked nose in early infancy, most have complete nasal blockage for days at a time, when they are forced to lower their tongue and open their mouths to breath.
This becomes a habit during the very period that they are learning to walk and program their postural centres. This picture shows the effect of this on a child who was almost fully grown but developed a blocked nose causing his face to grow down, the effect on younger developing children is even greater.
Critical points in facial development
Around ages six and seven, the permanent teeth start to come in. A child’s appearance can be severely damaged by poor posture. This factor has been overlooked in orthodontics, which is why Dr Mew says orthotropics treat at a younger age by age seven whereas orthodontics treat patients older in teenagehood.
You can watch the interview with Dr John Mew here The interviewer asks the tough questions https://youtu.be/SVeTRz6qY18
Resources & References
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8317569/pdf/i0003-3219-87-6-897.pdf
[2] Orthotropics. Information For Parents. https://orthotropics.com/information-for-parents/