The Mouth Is the Key to Stopping Disease in Your Body (Webinar)

Hi, this is Dr. Nammy, and I am delighted to share with you a little bit about how your sleep is so important. So I’m going to go through why sleep is really important. I’m going to share with you a little bit about me. And what I’d really like to do is invite you to ask any questions, see how I can serve you. And I really would like to make sure that you…

My intention really for this is so that you really understand what’s going on about how your mouth is related to the rest of your body, and also how can I help you live a longer, healthier, richer life? How can I help you avoid disease and dysfunction? How can I avoid pain for you? And how can I be a partner in your journey? So I thought I’d share some information. So here we go, and we’ll go from there. So my name is Dr. Nammy, and I have been…

I am excited about sharing how the key to your mouth is really how it can help you stop disease, and that’s where we’re really going to be focusing our efforts on. And so here we go. I’ve been practicing for 18 years, and I’ve been a bestselling author. I’ve been on NBC, ABC, Fox, I’ve done functional medicine training. These are all really, really, really great things, but most importantly, what I’m most excited about is really serving you.

And really, I really want to share my passion about how the mouth is a window to your body, how can I support you, and how can I help you live longer, richful, joyful lives. Here, you’ll see a picture of me. This is our Indian nonprofit. This is where we’re able to serve children and women of India. We have a mobile dental van that goes out and provides free services and helps prevention, which is a real big luxury in India. So it’s really delightful to be able to be a part of this organization, or the Dr. Nammy Dental Bootcamp in India.

Dentistry Is Key to Disease Prevention

So I’m really proud of that, and I’m really proud of sharing how important the mouth is. Dentistry is no longer a stepchild of medicine. It is the key to prevention of disease. And when we look at diseases, how do we look at diseases? We really see a lot of different things. Common things I see in my patients on a regular basis is mouth breathing, snoring. I see that they have crowded teeth, dark circles underneath their eyes, and the majority of them have gut issues or some sort of autoimmune issue, whether it be psoriasis, whether it would be just Crohn’s disease. Any sort of autoimmune disorder or thyroid disorder is very, very, very common.

And I constantly hear patients are depressed or anxious. It leads to a lot of problems, how it leads to hypertension, leads to diabetes, leads to dementia, cancer, and of course death. And these are another things I want for you.

Gum and Endodontic Diseases Cause Inflammation

So I’m going to share with you how your mouth is related to the rest of your body. So here we go. When we see disease and dysfunction, we have actually found that gum disease and endodontic diseases are actually the root cause of inflammation, because we are looking at inflammation as the cause of any sort of diseases.

Of course we have genetics, right? Of course we have genetics, of course we have pollution. Those are all some things that are going to be around, but we’re finding that dentistry is really key because we can actually help control obstructive sleep apnea, also gum disease, endodontic infections, avoid having mercury fillings and things of that nature. So all disease usually starts when you’re younger. So the best way to look at it is if you look at children, and you can take a look right over here and see who you look like out of these children.

And when we see these children, couple things I’m noticing far off to the left is that the lower chin is really recessed. And when that lower chin is really recessed, it’s telling me that the airway has a concern. And when we see the child in the middle, you can see the dark circle, is just super tired. Same thing with the one on the right, really sweet child, but just tired. Now, let’s look at a couple more children, and let’s see what they look like. You can see, again in all three of them, that they’re really tired. You’ve got the head tilt on one side because she’s probably grinding and that jaw joint’s in the right position. You can see the one on the right, just they’re exhausted. It almost seems like they don’t have the vibrancy that we really want to see in them. And I put children here because, even like children, us adults look like this, right?

Compromised Airways Cause Many Health Problems

Sometimes we just feel really exhausted and tired. That’s a number one excuse we hear is, “I’m so exhausted,” or “I’m so tired, I’m overworked, I’m tired.” And our bodies are actually designed to be highly functional. So we’re not meant to be tired. We’re meant to be able to live long. We’re meant to be able to accomplish a lot. We have evolution on our sides, so our bodies are meant to adapt. And when we look at something like this, I like to look at some of the visible symptoms that we saw, right? The crowded teeth, the swollen, dark circles underneath the eyes, the head tilts. But all of those are actually a result of a underlying condition, which is called an compromised airway.

Now, you’re thinking, hey, dentist, why are you talking to me about a compromised airway? Because a compromised airway actually is a result of your upper and your lower jaws, and it actually has to do with… If you’re not breastfed for two years, the tongue doesn’t develop properly, and that weak tongue doesn’t allow or doesn’t signal the sinuses develop properly.

If you’re not eating hard foods, the muscles aren’t developing properly. And then also, if you’re having braces, you’re being constricted or had been constricted when your body should have been growing, so it’ll cause some concerns as well. And we’ll walk through this as we continue to see this presentation.

Now, of course, I want to give you data. So there’s Dr. Corruccini. He did 30 years of research, seven books, and he studied twins. And homozygous twins means they’re identical. Their DNA is identical. And what he found is that people who breathe through their nose are like this on the right, and people who breathe through the mouth is on the left side. You can see the people on the left hand side, or the skulls on the left hand side are highly… What should I say? The right word I like to use is almost… There’s a lot of disease. They’re missing some teeth, of course, but a lot of degenerative diseases.

And so I ask you, who would you want to be like? Would you want to be like the person on the left or the right? I would say the person on the right would be really where I would want you to be, and that’s my desire for you. And so one of the things we found is that… Let’s actually go back. We also obviously didn’t want to just study dead people. We wanted to study alive people.

Large Dental Arches and Good Tongue Posture Associated With Lower Rates of Degenerative Diseases

So what we found in alive people is that people who are living in the jungle, they’ve been breastfed for over two years, they have hard food, what we found is that they have no degenerative diseases, and that these really large arches. And these arches are really great because their tongue posture is really great, they have these big sinus cavities, and it works really well. So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is it’s important for you to eat tough foods, right?

Breastfeeding is really important because it signals proper sinus and your brain and your airway development, and that’s really, really, really, really key to learn. Also, moderate intervention with braces limits growth and causes disease, and we’ll work through that in a little bit. So western culture has caused a lot of concerns.

What we’re finding is that in 50% of the population, first generation, second generation is about 70, third generation is about 85. And again, if we’re not breastfed, the tongue does not develop properly. If the tongue isn’t working out by breastfeeding… Because when the baby latches onto the breast, it has to work really, really, really hard. And as it works hard, it signals a sinus and the airway to really, really, really develop properly. And if it doesn’t, it becomes a concern. You can see in the middle, there’s a child with braces. And of course, if they’re bottle fed, it’s going to… If children hasn’t been breastfed, they’re going to be bottle fed, most likely they’ll need braces and the soft food diet, which causes another concern.

How to Promote Health Jaw Development in Children

And so the way we really want our children to be or kids to be is really promoting hard foods, breastfeeding, and really allowing their upper and lower jaws to develop properly. Because they’re still developing, we want everything to develop naturally.

So Dr. Wallace went out and did more research, and what he found is that it’s super important to have the tongue position. And the tongue position is really key because the tongue acts as a scaffold for the arch and the sinuses. So if the tongue is at the roof of the palette, that’s wonderful. You can breathe through your nose. Air can go through the nose, through the back of your throat and down. What we’re finding is because the children have not been breastfed, the tongue is not able to go all the way to the top, and it causes mouth breathing. And that’s a huge concern because then we end up with this V-shaped arch versus this U-shaped arch here, and it causes obstructive sleep apnea, and it’s a huge concern.

Again, you can see prehistoric arches. They were wide and they were really broad so that there was enough space for the tongue, as well as the sinuses. And this is what we call the functional airway. So we want the air to go through the nose, through the back of a throat and down, and that’s how we want everything to go. So when there’s a narrow… You’re actually breathing through a narrow straw, and we really want a garden hose.

The Importance of Oxygen

And that breath is really important. That air is really important. Because when you’re able to breathe through the nose like that, it really makes a huge difference. Having that oxygen is the one thing your body cannot live without. Your body needs oxygen. You’ve got eight minutes before you go brain dead, right? You can live a week without food or water, or years. You see swamis do this in India all the time.

But with oxygen, we all are on the same plane. We all have eight minutes before our brains stop working because all of our cells need oxygen to live. What we always like to do is take a CT scan to really figure out what is your airway like? Is your airway showing us that you’re a mouth breather? Do you have sleep apnea? We want to see where the tongue position is. And once we figure out where everything is, we can learn to optimize it. And this is a really great video because it goes through how important braces can be.

Historical Changes in Human Face Structures

Just a few hundred years ago, the human face was different. It was forward grown. Her wide profile and large dental arches ensured straight teeth and room for her tongue. Most importantly, she had plenty of space behind her upper jaws so she could breathe through her nose with ease. The modern face has changed. From childhood, her dental arches are less developed, crowding her teeth and giving her less space for her tongue, which impacts her airway.

Many believe this stems from a number of causes, such as allergies that affect breathing. Another is the poor nutrition and softness of modern diets, causing toddlers to have underdeveloped chewing muscles and smaller dental arches. Because her upper jaw is too far back, she will struggle to breathe normally through her nose. To get more oxygen, she will compensate by opening her mouth to breathe, bringing her lower jaw down and back, creating a downswing of the face. This is how her undergrown upper jaw creates the appearance of buck teeth. She’s actually compensating in order to breathe.

If not corrected, the problem carries into adulthood. Extractions were documented in the 16 hundreds as a way to treat crowding. Although they’re a quick fix, they don’t treat the problem of underdeveloped arches and have been implicated in harming the facial profile, making them the subject of much debate even today. In order to breathe, she will slouch her head forward to prop open her airway, creating a lifetime of neck and back pain. This is the infamous forward head posture.

Healthy Airways Are Crucial to Survival

Having a healthy airway is crucial to the survival of life, and especially so during sleep. When muscles around the throat relax during sleep, a healthy airway stays open because the tongue is sitting forward and has enough space to be suctioned up against the fully grown palate. With underdeveloped jaws and dental arches, the palette is too small for the fully grown tongue, which is sitting back to begin with. When she sleeps, her tongue does not suction. Rather, it falls back and cuts off her airway. This is obstructive sleep apnea. like crooked teeth, it’s a modern condition.

However, it can reduce life expectancy. Not surprisingly, obstructive sleep apnea is marked by the same traits that describe the headgear effect. Both jaws are grown down and back, creating a clockwise rotation in the lower third of the face. The myth of the overgrown upper jaw that needs to be held back has long since been replaced with science. Science has shown that young children can be bucked tooth naturally, and that the lower jaw catches up over time with a fully developed upper jaw.

Essential to this is nutrition, the use of chewing muscles early on in life and good breathing habits. This means breathing through the nose with the mouth closed and the tongue resting up against the palate.

Also, the practice of maxillary expansion has been shown for over a century to correct crooked teeth and improved nasal breathing space. And since 1918, oral facial exercises have been shown to correct mouth breathing habits.

How Braces Affect Dental Arches

So I share this because it’s really important to realize how braces have a detrimental effect on upper and lower arches. What happens is when the braces are put in place, it actually restricts growth. And what happens is that the tongue is a muscle, so it’s going to continue to grow because there’s no stimulus to stop, but the jaws are shrunk together.

And if the jaws are shut together, right above the upper arch is your sinuses. Those the sinuses will get squished and they don’t develop properly, so people end up nose… Well, as they actually should be nose breathing, end up mouth breathing. So that’s a huge concern, and I’ll go into why it’s so important in a little bit. And the same thing with the lower arch is that the lower arch is super small and the tongues too big, so it’s going to cause obstructive sleep apnea because it’s going to obstruct the airway because it’s too big and it’s going to fall back when you sleep. And that’s what we find.

How Snoring Indicates Compromised Breathing

Here’s some children. Again, we see a lot of snoring. You’ll see what happens actually when we can actually close the mouth. And that’s an alarm bell. When somebody’s, that’s an alarm bell. That’s just somebody gasping for air and wanting more air. We as a society think snoring is so normal. It actually isn’t. We’re not supposed to be snoring. We’re not meant to be snoring. When you hear that, that’s actually somebody struggling to get air into their body. And this is an alive person that happens every single day in many of our homes.

Hang on. Watch. He’s holding it. He’s holding it. He’s holding it. He’s holding it. He’s still holding his breath. And he’s going to gulp again. There he goes.

See that struggle?

Again. And again, he’s holding. He’s holding. He’s trying… There he goes. This has been three minutes and 15 seconds, and you can see how many episodes he’s had of not getting breaths in. Now, watch what happens when I take his jaw and I just bring it forward. I can… Let’s see if I can open the airway. Let’s bring his airway forward.

And I also want you to notate how sweet and angelic the baby looks now. Before, when he was grasp gasping for air, you could see the struggle. You could see that fight or flight responses like waking up in that grunt. But you can see, as we move the jaw forward, the baby’s able to breathe really well, and you can see how comfortable and angelic he looks and very relaxed. This is what we want for ourselves as well, to be able to have that dream state of sleep that I talk about, that state where we’re able to fight, infection, fight, heart attack, heart disease, diabetes, anything like that. What we really want is this dream state of sleep, which is so important. And you can see how wonderful he looks.

His airway, I’m opening his airway, just pulling his jaw forward ever so slightly. And now he’s breathing through his nose quietly. His mouth is a little bit open, but he’s breathing through his nose just quietly. He’s breathing. You don’t hear him anymore. And all I did is gently bring his jaw forward.

And the reason we do this on children is I don’t think adults will let us put our hands in their mouth while they’re sleeping.

Nose Breathing for Better Health

But here’s a conclusion. The conclusion is that when that lower chin is too far back, the jaw or the airway is occluded, and that’s why we have to open up the airway by expanding the jaw. And so we’ve talked about nose breathing, mouth breathing. Let’s kind of delve into that a little bit more. So the reason why mouth breathing and nose breathing is very important is because… First of all, let’s try. You take a breath through your nose, and then let’s take a breath through her mouth. I wonder if you noticed the differences. I noticed. So I found myself, when I was breathing through my nose, I was relaxed. But then when I did a mouth breath, I felt like I was taking the ear and spitting it right back out. I didn’t feel like my body was actually absorbing the oxygen, really, and I didn’t really get a lot of great benefits out of it.

And so the reason we actually look at nose breathing and mouth breathing is if… We always study monkeys, right? If you close a nose, you’re going to start breathing through the mouth, and that’s usually just what happens. That also causes crowded teeth. That’s what happens when patients say, “I had braces when I was younger, but my teeth all crowded.” It’s because you can’t breathe through your nose. That’s the reason why the teeth crowded again.

And so we’ve got to look at it. There’s a deeper condition or a deeper issue that we need to address. It’s not just your teeth didn’t have memory. It’s really that your airway is obstructed, and the way that when they did braces, actually stopped you from breathing really well. So again, when we look at breathing, we want to be able to breathe through the nose. When you breathe through the nose, the air goes through the nose, and there’s these turbinates. And those turbinates actually warm the air. They convert the oxygen into nitric oxide. And that nitric oxide is a vasodilator, so it helps fight heart attack, heart disease, diabetes.

How Nitric Oxide Improves Your Health

Nitric oxide is also a scavenger. It actually increases a growth hormone. It actually activates a lot of hormones that fight disease and dysfunction, also helps fight cancer. So nitric oxide is very, very, very important. And the only way your body produces it is really the air through the nose, and is produced in the sinuses. And so that nitric oxide is really, really, really, really key to your entire body.

And nitric oxide is the one thing, along with oxygen, it takes the oxygen and converse nitric oxide, so that way nitric oxide can signal all these hormones in every other parts of your body to repair itself and live longer, healthier, be able to breathe, be able to function, be able to look, stay young. And that’s what we really, really, really want. We also want the tongue to support the sinuses because when the tongue supports the sinuses, they can drain properly, so that way you don’t have this kind of constant sinus congestion or anything like that as well. And of course, we do more research. Again, nasal obstruction leads to mouth breathing, lower tongue posture, leads to higher diseases.

And we really, really want to have nose breathing. And nose breathing is the key, is the key, is the key. It’s also linked to ADHD. If you’re not nose breathing, mouth breathing, you’re not sleeping really well. It’s going to cause attention deficit disorder. And we talk about children, but it actually happens in adults too. I have had so many patients I’ve been able to take off of ADHD medications in our adulthood just by fixing their airway. And the reason I bring this to you is because it may not be what you think. You came in thinking that I’m just here for a cavity fill, or I’m just here just to look at my gums, make sure I can get a cleaning, but Dentistry is beyond that, and what I want to do for you is beyond that.

Contact Dr. Nammy About Disease Prevention and Vitality

My goal for you is to be a partner in your journey and to really show you and really share with you how you can prevent diseases long term and how you can live long-term and avoid problems. And so I invite you to be open, and I invite you to ask questions, and I invite you to be a partner in my journey and in your… Well, and let me be the partner in your journey too. So please reach out to me should you have any questions, and let’s connect, and let’s support you, and let me know why I can best serve you. That’s really my ultimate question for you. Thank you.