Episode 56: The Tongues Connection And Its Impact On The Body With Daniel Lopez, DO

Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I'm your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified orofacial myologist, feeding specialist, SLP and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissue and airway space. I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to get this information out to the masses. Let's get started. Hi and welcome to episode 56 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Daniel Lopez joining us. Daniel is a board certified Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine physician and and Regenerative Medicine Specialist at Osteopathic Integrative medicine in Lakewood, Colorado. He is a 2007 graduate of Midwestern University's Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine in Glendale, Arizona. He has been studying the effect the tongue has on the body for over six years since the birth of his first daughter. He has lectured at the IAOM convention in 2018 and he's been featured on podcasts where he discussed the topic of the tongue's relationship to the rest of the body. He's currently putting together an online self help course for patients titled the T Element and working on more advanced courses for professionals. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm very excited to have you here and to talk all about the tongue and the impact on the body.

Thank you. So glad to be here.

Yeah, you have no idea how excited I am because I think that something that's not talked about enough is the full body impact and how just this little thing in our mouth is responsible for so much. So let's take a nose dive into that topic and talk to us about how you got started with just exploring the tongue in general to begin with.

All right, well, I'm an osteopathic physician first of all, and I've been in private practice for about 10 years and for a long time I spent a lot of time understanding the importance of, say, the jaw and I felt like, all right, the masseter muscles of the jaw seem to have an impact on the rest of the body and so I work a lot with cause and effect. So for example, if I got the muscles of the jaw to calm down, I Would check other places in the body to see if they structurally felt different. And I'm not talking about maybe a subtle change, like, oh, this might feel like it's a little bit different. I'm talking like a night and day, like this didn't move at all. And now there's a lot of motion here kind of thing. And so, but by doing that, it gives me real time feedback of what's happening. And after my oldest daughter was born at. Sorry, I turned that off yet it's still.

I. I know these things happen.

I. After. After my oldest daughter was born, when she's six now, she was a huge baby. But when my wife went back to work after two months, she couldn't actually drink out of a bottle. And so we knew a little bit about tongue ties and lip ties. So rather than taking her to the pediatrician, which we knew the pediatrician was going to say, like, no, they don't need it, we kind of bypassed that and made an appointment, had her tongue tie and lip tie released. However, I watched her latch immediately before doing the release and then immediately after. And it just, it kind of blew my mind because her whole face changed. It was like her face got wider, her upper lip got pinker as it seemed to get more blood. And so then after that, I started thinking, well, you know, is this something I need to be thinking about for my patients? And so because of that, I started thinking, well, I need to find an adult who's tongue tied. And still being kind of naive at the time, it took me a while to realize that I was tongue tied. And so then at that point I was like, well, that's in a way, like, that's kind of a blessing because I have a knowledge of the body and anatomy that other people don't. So I'll be able to interpret things a little bit differently and be a little more aware potentially of what things are changing and whatnot. So I found somebody in the phone book or just not in the phone, but nobody uses the phone book anymore online, just dating myself. And I found somebody online near my office and turned out that he did tongue tie releases. And I asked him if he would be willing to do it for an adult and all that. And he said he would. So I went and he was kind of asking me like, well, why do you want to do this? And I told him, I was like, well, I've been told most of my life, life that I mumble and things like that. And I didn't really want to be like, well, I'm Just doing this as an experiment to see if it's like how it's going to affect my body, things like that. So, so I went in and you know, he did it and it was honestly one of the, like, it was a life changing experience. Like even as soon as he was done, I remember sitting there and feeling like my airway was open in a way that I had never experienced before. And I was still numb. It was just, I could feel, feel the relaxation there. And I reached back and I was like, my head is sitting on my neck differently. And it wasn't that my neck was stiff per se, but it had definitely even gotten more relaxed and had changed. But then I started to notice other changes. Like I could take deeper breaths and swallowing was different and even the shape of my tongue had changed. But then I noticed even just in my arms, like this used to be like a lot more indented in here, like from the inside, like it was pulled in and then suddenly it had filled out and hump on my thoracic CT junction there had sort of flattened out. And, and then, you know, I noticed that finally the masseters that I'd been working on for years trying to figure out why they never stay released after I released them, like just relaxed and stayed relaxed. And so at that point it really just got me started on, on this whole trying to study this. And, and the thing that I wanted to know was how do I explain that, you know, you cut a little bit under there and then there's this whole body wide effect. And so that's really what I then really like spent the next several years trying to figure out and explain. Because as I started sending other patients who I thought were good candidates and I was learning more, a lot of them were describing similar things. But after my first tongue tie release, I went back to the dentist and I was like, you know, it was amazing. And my only regret is I didn't do it like 30 plus years ago. But after that I was like, I still feel like there's some, some more that is still left intact there. So he went back and did it again in the same way. And then after that second time, I didn't really feel like it made a big difference. So at that point I kind of felt like, okay, I'm done. You know, I've probably maxed this out and then let it go for a few years. And then eventually I went back and started revisiting the issue and started looking at anatomy a little bit more in depth. And as I was doing that, I Started to realize that really the way the tongue is connected to the rest of the body is like down to the chest and the diaphragm and mediastinal region. So there was this strong pull in tension. And so it dawned on me. I was like, well, if we shorten this space here, when the muscle, the tongue tie, causes the tongue to contract, we're essentially taking this space and compressing it down. And so it's causing a lot of this forward head posture. But a lot of that also makes it really difficult to swallow properly. In a way, it's the body trying to compensate so that the tongue can actually lift up and rise so that people can swallow. But as I was doing that, I was like, well, I'm not really tongue tied anymore, but I wanted to put tension on that system. So I arched my back as much as I could and I tilted my head back and I realized that I couldn't swallow. And I was like, oh, great. I figured out a way to show people who aren't tongue tied what it feels like to be tongue tied. And so I ran over to my wife, who isn't tongue tied, and I was like, try this. So I had her arch her back and tilt her head back. And I was like, now try to swallow, thinking, oh, I've got her. She's not going to be able to swallow. And she just swallowed like it was no big deal. And she looked at me and was like, what? You know, and. And so then at that point, I was like, what just happened?

Like, why can't I swallow?

Why can't I do it? So I was like, if I'm not tongue tied anymore, then I should essentially be able to swallow. But then it dawned on me. I was like, oh, I've. As I started look at it, look at it a little bit differently, I realized that I still had a big portion of my tongue tie and tact. And I think that's what I was originally feeling when I went back for that second round. It was just that they never went back deep enough. And, you know, I realized that when they were eventually, or when they were first initially assessing it, that, you know, they were pulling the tongue out, you know, and sticking it out to see how far it would come out, and then sticking the tip of the tongue to the roof of the mouth and all that is fine. I'm not opposed to that. But I was like, I don't ever do those motions, like, regularly in a typical day. I'm not sticking my tongue out at people all the time or sticking the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. So it dawned on me, I was like, well, the motion that really matters and the one that I struggle and can't do is for the back of my tongue blade to rise up and down. And so then at that point I was like, well, why are we doing all these things and not focusing on how well does the tongue. Is the tongue able to rise and fall? So, so then I went back and had a third release. Not because it, any of it had grown or reattached or anything. It was just realizing I've missed a lot and a lot's been missed. So I went back to, at this point I had moved and I was somewhere else. I went back to, I went to somebody else and asked her if she could do it in this way that I had been describing and get the piece that I, that I had felt was still, still needed releasing. And she did that and she went much deeper than I'd had before. And it was, it was very painful that night. And. But I did also notice that I had a lot more spinal motion and things like that. And so in a way after that initial soreness where I was questioning whether I did the right thing or not, I did feel like it again made it another big change that was important that my body needed. So that's more or less kind of where I've gotten to. And so because of that, I've always spent a lot of time wanting to study then how it is the tongue is affecting the rest of the body. Again realizing when I'm treating people, if I treat their tongue, I'm always assessing other structures of their body throughout their body. And then I'll go and treat their tongue and then reassess them to see, to get some real time feedback and where I can then say, okay, I see this pattern on almost everybody. Like a lot of times I'll see the sternum release. And for example, If I treat 90 people and release their tongues and their sternum releases and then suddenly I treat one and their sternum stays stiff, then at that point, you know, it's like, okay, I've seen this pattern enough that I felt like that should have released that, but now I got to figure out what else is going on that is preventing that sternum from releasing. But anyway, that's more or less kind of my long winded story on how I, how I got into all of this. But it's been a fascinating journey and I still keep learning more and coming up with more interesting ideas and observations. That I like to share.

I love it. I mean, I think that I've talked to a number of providers on the podcast, and I always find that there's a high percentage of us that have been through this ourselves that either, like, I'm going through adult expansion, then I had ortho relapse, and I did all the things, you know, in the past. And my daughter's in an ALF and she's 4, and she had her tongue tie release it, too. And my, you know, my other one had her tongue released at five days of life, and I had my mind released after the two of them probably should have done the expansion first. But either way, my tongue does fit up there in the posterior portion. And I'm constantly like, we need to expand a little more because we need this. We're still trying to turn the maxilla on one side a little bit and going to. I work with the PT who does, like, manual counter strain. And so he's been. He does a lot, you know, what you're explaining. I've learned a lot through him because he does that where he touches one part of the body, he goes, oh, we need to address this part of the body, like, completely opposite end. And I always joke, I leave there feeling like I've had this full body massage and he barely touched me because it just. Everything feels like it's flowing, it's working, it's in alignment, and it's really. It's just very fascinating. So would you say that the tongue is the most important place to treat or, you know, what do you feel is, like, the most important part of the body?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like the tongue is often overlooked by most people that do bodywork. But just through my studying different places in the body, like I said, I spent a lot of time. I've spent a lot of time treating the head and the jaw and everything like that. And what I've just. The conclusion that I've come to is just that the tongue essentially has the most impact on almost everything. So I've gotten to the point where I'm like, well, if I had a hypothetical scenario where I had a patient come in who couldn't speak and I could only do one thing on them, and I have no way to evaluate anything that's going on with them, I would treat the tongue because that has the biggest impact. And I guess as we go along, we can talk anatomically, maybe why, why that is. But I do find that the tongue is a huge component for neck and pain, tension headaches, chest Tension and then, and definitely other problems throughout the body. So.

Yeah, so what would you say? Some of the, I mean, you listed some of them, but are there certain patterns that you see in people who have tongue ties that like, you meet somebody, you either see them or touch them and immediately you're like, oh, I know what's going on here. Are there certain things that are pretty frequent pattern wise?

Yeah, definitely. For one, I mean, I feel a lot of tension in the neck. But it's not just the tension that people have in the neck. There's also in the front of the neck, which I think is also an under appreciated area. People are always complaining of the back, of pain in the back of their neck. But when you're talking about the pharyngeal muscles and the esophagus and the trachea, all these places in the front that really are major components of neck pain, tension headaches, again, it's part of this potty posture that can be pulling people down and potentially causing other problems. But in terms of also why I consider the tongue to be the most important place is also because when we're looking at the tongue, there's the musculoskeletal attachments of the tongue. You've got the tongue attachments to the soft palate, the styloid process, the mandible, the hyoid, and all these places are super important. But then fascially, the fascia is attaching to the cranial base. So to me, this is the reason why, for example, when you, when you look at a mouth breather versus somebody who typically breathes through their nose, the mouth breather has the longer face is because of that, the pattern that takes place because of that, from that fascial pull of the cranial base. So that pharyngeal basilar fascia is attached to the pterygoid processes of the sphenoid and then also to the, the petrous portion of the temporal bone, the occipital, the occiput from underneath. So when it, when it pulls all that down, it creates in the cranial osteopathy world, that's called an extension pattern, the adenoid face. But that's essentially what happens when you pull those pterygoid processes forward. Then there's the, you know, the tongue's attachment to the, essentially the, the esophagus, the trachea. You know, it's really just a visceral attachment. But that visceral fascia is also incredibly strong. I mean, I don't know how many people necessarily always Think about the tongue. But every time you swallow, what the tongue is actually doing is lifting up all your organs. I mean, if you're thinking about it, it's pulling your esophagus, it's driving it up. You'll feel your trachea come up and down and you're. Your lungs aren't just free floating in your chest. They're anchored down to your chest through ligaments onto your diaphragm. So it's essentially putting tension on it and coming back down. So it's really strong in that way. Then there's also just the cranial, facial and airway development portion of it that happens from proper tongue function. I think that's why the tongue is important to treat. And I know I'm on some Facebook groups. I've seen people say, you know, like, well, just because you change the structure doesn't mean that you change the function. And for me in osteopathy, you know, there's this reciprocal relationship between structure and function. So if you change the function, you're going to change the structure. But the thing to me is, just because you change a structure doesn't mean that the tongue function is going to change. Like, you've got to change the whole thing. I mean, and for most of us who have underdeveloped jaws and in a whole slew of things, it's not just that, you know, you can pop somebody's neck, for example. I mean, that's. And think that you've changed the structure and suddenly the tongue is going to function differently. You've got to change the whole thing, essentially re establish a normal mandible in terms of how it would have developed in the first place and get everything that's associated back. And I think then at that point you've got a much better chance of having a normal function. Yes, there are behavioral components, but I'm just trying to point out that just because you change a few things here and there doesn't necessarily mean that you could make the conclusion that that's going to change the tongue function because you haven't changed necessarily everything. But then with the tongue, there's also the. It's got innervation from the trigeminal nerve in the vagus. And the thing about those is, I mean, first of all, we know the vagus affects the rest of the body, that, you know, that's the whole parasympathetic component there. But the trigeminal nerve does too, in a less direct way. And you know, when the trigeminal nerve is one of the muscles that innervates the dura mater in the cranium and also the muscles of mastication. So when I was looking at these masseter muscles, trying to figure out why they weren't releasing part of that connection there between the masseter muscles and their tension, why they wouldn't release was because of the influence from the tension and sensory innervation they were getting from the tongue. But then that also creates a change in the dura mater, which again, is. Goes from inside the skull all the way down to the tailbone. So then you get changes all the way through as you reset or get a change with the trigeminal nerve. Then lastly, I just wanted to point out again, the last piece of why I think the tongue is the most important place to treat is because of all the fascial connections. We talked about how the tongue is fascially connected to the visceral fascia, which is considered the strongest fascia in the body. But then when we look at the tongue is strongly connected to the hyoid through the hyoglossus. And so the hyoid has. There's the investing layer of fascia around the neck. This is just around the whole neck. And then there's a. It's like a big tube and then two smaller tubes inside of it. And the tube in the front is called the pre tracheal fascia. That fascia attaches to the. To the hyoid as well. So now we've got two of the three fascial layers in the neck that are continuous with the rest of the. Throughout the rest of the body, attaching to the hyoid. So that would also potentially explain a way of how there can be such big, distant effects. So, anyway, I hope that all kind of makes sense.

Yeah, no, that's wonderful. In a very simplistic way. I taught some of this. We have a feeding course, and I am teaching them about tepidural tissues and a little bit about orofacial myofunctional distillation disorders, but also want them to consider the full body connection. And so I share podcast episodes with them to listen to. So this will be added to it for sure. But, you know, I very simplistically just said to them, like, you look at the muscles and you look at the nerves, you look at all the innervations from the tongue to the hyoid to the esophagus, the trachea, you know, we get. What are some of the chief complaints we get when we get feeding patients? We get Complaints of reflux or air aphasia or, you know, and a lot of these children have tethered oral tissues, but what is that doing to the rest of the body? And so I just wanted to get them to start thinking about some of these things. And so you gave a really deep, great example that I'm gonna be like, you guys have to go listen to this right now. Because I think that it's just a fantastic way to demonstrate the connection throughout the body and how you can't truly separate one part of the body from another, even though it tends to be taught that way. Or just as though, you know, well, this doctor treats this and this doctor treats that, and this specialist does this and this special. Like you said, it's more about, like, the function and the structure. And, you know, it's almost like chicken or egg. Which one came first? Does it matter which one came first? We know we probably have to deal with both, and we know that if we change the structure, that might change some function, but it's probably not going to give you full function back if you have these certain, you know, habitual patterns in place that we need to treat therapeutically, behaviorally. But who knows? You know, I see various things depending on the age of the child and just how many other factors are at play in my patients. And so this is. This is just so helpful because, you know, I always make it very simple. Like I said, I tell people we're connected from the tip of our tongue down to our toes, and just learning about even the different fascial layers goes, I think, goes to show how we are ever so connected. So thank you for that. That was really awesome.

Yeah, I mean, my focus has always been like, you know, trying to, you know, as I've been doing this, you know, when I, when I myself or sent to other patients to have tongue tie releases was to try to explain all the different things that they were describing, not necessarily be like, well, that can't happen. You know, it was more like, okay, this seems to be happening. So how do I describe and explain that in a way that's. That's anatomically acceptable to me? Because I've also, on certain forums, people are like, well, how, you know, how does the tongue tie affect the reflux, for example? And I go through this whole anatomical, detailed explanation. And then somebody was like, well, it's just. It's a midline issue. And I'm like, well, but that doesn't explain anything to me. Like, that doesn't for me, like, explain, like, well, why you Know, and so, yeah, that's what I, that's what I like to hear is to understand the anatomy.

Yeah. And so then with that understanding, when you get in there and you treat the tongue, are you able to. I guess my question is this. I get patients in here, for me, where it's sometimes they're borderline and we're looking under the tongue and we're going, well, is it that they actually have a tongue tie and that tissue down the midline is in fact tight, or is it that maybe some of the surrounding structures are carrying tension from other maladaptive patterns and if we treat some of those, maybe we can gain full function or we can gain, not maybe full, but we can gain more. And maybe they don't need a frenectomy or maybe, you know, or maybe they end up needing one anyways and at least we've now prepared them better for it. So we always advise in pre op and post op surrounding that procedure and a team body, a team approach with whether it's MYO and the release provider and bodywork osteopath or whoever's involved. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I mean, for me, again, I kind of look at it from two different directions. I mean, I've looked at things like, okay, well, if I release the diaphragm, how does that affect the tongue function? But in a sense, when somebody has a tether nowadays, I'm more aware I have a pretty low threshold in terms of recommending a release. And the reason for that is that I've also come to understand that I can't overcome the effects of the tongue tie. I mean, I can overcome it maybe temporarily, to a certain degree, but in the long run I don't feel like I can because then the more after I release it manually, they're going to leave my office, they're going to talk, they're going to swallow, they're going to breathe. Fairly common. It's like you can't avoid not using your tongue and the more you use it, if it's tethered, it's going to just cause the tongue to reclaim back down. And so I tend to have that low threshold for that reason. Knowing that it's potentially going to affect craniofacial development, airway, things like that, even with adults, I still think it's worth doing. But then let me think. Sorry, I lost my train of thought there.

Yeah, I was curious because sometimes I get like borderline cases and I have to wonder is actually the effect of the frenulum or is it possible that surrounding tissues could also be tight?

Yeah, exactly. That's a good question. And that's where I was trying to go is I've gone through and kind of looked at it in both ways, like, okay, let me start, like, again, go through and evaluate a person. And I'm like, all right, there's stiffness here. There's this problem here. There's this problem here. And you kind of make this mental note, and then you kind of go back and you're like, all right, where do I begin? And generally, what I have found is, like, for example, let's say somebody's chest is really stiff, and they have a tight diaphragm and frontopericardial ligament, which is the ligament that anchors the pericardium of the heart down into the diaphragm. And what I've noticed is, okay, let me try to release that, and I'll work on that. It maybe feels a little bit better, but I can't get it to change very much. And then I'll go up, treat the tongue, and then I'll go back and recheck that. This suddenly is much more pliable, and there's a lot more freedom there than there was before. And often the patient will be less sensitive in the area. So in some ways, I use that to kind of tell me, okay, which one is the main problem in it? And to me, it doesn't make. At least it didn't make sense initially that I was like, why would this be suddenly, like, more impactful of what's happening down here? It seems like it should be the other way around, where you release the diaphragm and then suddenly this can work. But more often than not, I find most problems tend to originate in the tongue. And that's one of the reasons I kind of go back to. I think this is the most important place to treat because I will get a bigger change with the diaphragm by releasing the tongue manually than I generally will by trying to start there.

Okay, that's really helpful. That's good to know. I have another question. I know we were talking sort of about, like, the adenoid face and the long, narrow face. One of the things I was talking with another myofunctional therapist about on the podcast recently was the impact on the eyes and on vision. And so is there anything you can add on that topic or share with us? I know that her thought was that she was. I don't remember if it was a certain occlusion pattern or malocclusion. Pattern, I should say dentally because she's an rdh. But she did speak to like the high, high vaulted narrow palate, which tends to. Then she also sees the vision relationship change as a result of that, which we know is obviously a symptom we see in a lot of our tethered oral tissue patients, that high, narrow vaulted palate. So can you speak to that a little bit and what you see?

Yeah. I actually wrote an article, a blog post on my professional website about this a while back. But for a long time I had been trying to figure out when, when I was evaluating people's palates, why, when I would get to the palatine bones, I was like, well, it feels like they're jammed forward and I could even like jam so hard that they've dropped down. There's a little ridge there. And I didn't fully understand things at the time. And so I was like. But at the same time I was like, this doesn't make sense to me because swallowing is a front to back motion. So I was like, why would the palatines be getting jammed forward? So at some point, somebody, a dentist came to our office and she was just telling us about, I think, dental expansion and all that. And she talked about, she said something about how they did that, and then somebody's vision got better and suddenly there wasn't anything that she specifically said that was like, oh, but it just. That kind of like triggered the light bulb moment for me where I was like tongue thrusting. It finally dawned on me, you know, like, again, if we're looking at fascially, that the fascia that is continuous of the tongue attaching to the cranial base and the pterygoid processes posteriorly of the, of the sphenoid bone. Every time you're tongue thrusting, you're pulling the pterygoid processes of the sphenoid forward. And what that does is they sit right behind the palatine bones. So if you're pulling them forward, those are just going to push the palatine bones forward. Now the ridge that I was feeling that, you know, as I was feeling the back of the mouth now I've come to think, feel like, okay, that it's probably more from the maxilla is coming up than the palatine is dropping down. But I have noticed that when I decompress the palatine bones and I get a little pressure off the maxillas, that the maxillas go from being more beak shaped in a patient where you feel them ahead of time and then you release, you know, palatine bone, it'll flatten out a Little bit. So you'll feel immediate change there. And those are the type, the types of things that I look at. But anyway, this still hasn't fully answered your question about vision, but the reason it's important is because the palatine bone, the maxilla and the sphenoid all form the orbit. The maxilla forms the primary portion of the floor of the orbit. The palatine is a very small portion, but it doesn't mean it's insignificant. And then the sphenoid forms a big portion portion of the back of the orbit and has all the, has the extraocular muscles attaching to them and the optic nerve and the other nerves going to the eye passing through foramen in the, in the sphenoid. So if there is a change in its, in its ability to develop normally in the orbit, because if the, if the maxilla is high, if you got to think about it, you know, if the maxilla doesn't develop normally and it's high, it's going to push everything. And so that all these other structures in the orbit have to try to adapt. And we don't necessarily always think about the orbit itself as needing to be developed properly for vision. But vision is very sensitive mechanism. Your eyes first of all need to be sitting equally in terms of vertically and then also anteriorly in the eye sockets to be able to process the information that is coming in them properly. So any disturbance in that can potentially affect vision. And so when you have changes with that, then it affects things. One thing that I've noticed treating a lot of tongues is that, and I know this for myself is that oftentimes the tongue isn't tethered equally either. Usually one side is going to be more tethered than the other. In my case, my right side is more tethered. And this potentially would be a reason that I would consider going back and having another release would be that I can feel that my right, the right side of my tongue being more tethered is even though I can get it up to my palette, it doesn't quite have the same. It's like it doesn't reach in the same way. So you know, when I look at my, when I've studied my face, for example, because I know people do this all the time, right?

If you're in the bio world, you might.

And again, I wrote an article about this on my blog, but I was.

Like, I think I have it here. That was sent to me now that I'm recalling the osteopathic integrative medicine on how swallowing correctly can Affect your eyes.

Yeah. And so, you know, I'm like, if I stick my tongue out, the right side of my tongue is narrower than my left. If I, you know, if I look at my jaw, like, underneath my jaw is. The space from right to left is narrower on the right. You know, my fate, my whole face is also narrower on the right. But then also, I don't have as good a contact with the. With the right side there. But then also, if you were to look at my eyes, like, and you're trying to look at things vertically, like, my right eye is also higher because my maxilla is higher on the right as a result. And so these are, these are all things that are affecting, again, kind of craniofacial development, but also how the eyes are going to be functioning and developing. And so if they're not equal and you don't have that symmetry, you're going to potentially affect vision. I mean, it's. It's strange to me that now we've, you know, in our society, we've gotten to the point where, like, glasses and braces and having wisdom teeth removed, like, to us, it's become so normal because it's become so common, but really it's such a. It's a sign of a huge problem, and we've just gotten so used to it that we think it's normal, but that's not how things were a thousand years ago. Anyway, that's.

Yeah, it's fascinating actually, to hear that. I mean, I. I'm the only one in my family, despite having orthodontic relapse and having my tongue tie released just a couple years ago, and despite having, like, lifelong issues from. Since birth from. With feeding and all that fun, you know, all the fun symptoms everybody with more severe tongue ties have. I'm the only one in my family who does not need glasses, which is interesting to me because, you know, my palate is not really high and narrow, but it was high and narrow enough to throw things off. I have a deviated septum. And I've also had issues where, like, I've got a gut ptosis in my left lid. And, you know, there's just all kinds of. In the left side of my body. Just seems to be like my weaker side in general with injuries. And I was always told that, oh, your left leg is shorter than your right leg. Until I went to somebody who finally adjusted my hips and said, no, actually, if we put your hips like this, your legs are exactly the equal length. Your body just has a tendency to turn and the hips kind of turn, and that carries everything else, and that's affecting you throughout the whole body. And when they said that, I was like, well, that makes so much sense because my entire left side has seemed to struggle my whole life. So even to the point where that's the side where the maxillus turned is turned on the left side, the right side seems to be okay, and my mandible seems okay. But the physical therapist who does the manual counterstrain with me at my dental appliance adjustment appointments, and I see him in between, too, because I'm at a point where nothing will change unless he's doing the work. He's the one who pointed that out. When I initially thought my mandible was out of alignment because my upper and lower central incisors don't match up. And I look back at pictures, I'm like, well, this has been going on for a while. Why has nobody ever said anything or noticed this? So it's pretty fascinating. Just the whole body impact, it's really kind of crazy, right?

Well, I mean, I have a dental implant that I got put in, like, between high school and college. And, you know, back then when I had it put in, it was perfectly aligned with all my other teeth. And since then, since I've had all this. All this work, and I'm actually getting dental expansion as well. But in the last 10 years or so, after I've had all these things changed, I've noticed that my teeth have shifted except for the dental implant. So now I kind of have this thumb sucker pattern. And I'm like, it's not that I suck my thumb, it's this implant that. That now is, like, sticking out and probably need to get that fixed at some point. But it's not an easy process. So I'm not really trying to push for that.

Yeah, no, I think a lot of people in our space probably do spend more time than the average person looking at our own faces and our own alignment issues and in our own mouths. And you start to go down this rabbit hole of like, oh, well, look at that. And now that makes sense. Now I understand why this happened. And, you know, with my appliance, it's actually forced an open bite. And so my teeth are all out of. Are all misaligned at the moment, but faces on the side, but all for a good cause. We're working, working on that. But it was interesting because I had permanent upper and lower retainers that held my teeth in place for most of. I think they were put in when I was A teen. And finally, at 30, I was like. I was told these would fall out when I was 20. Like, do we want to keep them in? Do we want to take them out? And they're like, we can take them out. So they took them out. And then, what do you know, all my teeth started to shift. And I was like, hold on a second. Like, this has been holding something in place for, I don't know, 15 years. And you take it off, and with a matter of weeks, months, things start shifting like that. That can't be right. Like, something's up here. And so it was a really interesting journey to start down, figure out the root of that problem. Is there anything else you can think of, just in terms of, like, the tongue and connection with the body that we haven't covered? I know we've covered a lot.

Yeah. Let me tell you a quick story, and then I'll share something else I've also kind of thought about. But a few years ago, I gave a talk about how the body was connected to the. Or how the tongue was connected to the rest of the body at a IAOM conference. And about a month before, I was invited to give that same talk to a group of dentists at a course here in Denver. And I was giving the talk, and I was kind of going through this whole thing, actually talking about how the Palatine. I was finding that they were jammed forward. And so, you know, as I'm going through my slide, I asked the question. I was trying to figure out why the Palatines were jammed forward. And then from kind of from the peanut gallery, one of the instructors for that course, you know, just blurts out, like, you know, like, they aren't, you know, and so. And then I asked some other question. He was like, they're not, you know, kind of a thing. And. And it just threw me off, you know? And then I kind of got through the rest of my presentation, and I felt a little bit, you know, like, oh, my God, am I doing the right thing, going and giving this presentation? Like, everybody's gonna think I'm an idiot, you know? And I was like, I have. Nobody's come and spent time, like, to see what. How, like, I really operate into. Let me justify, you know, my claims and things like that. But as soon as I finished that lecture, probably about 15 minutes later, I got a call from my dad, you know, I was like, well, this is weird. Why is he calling me? And he was like, well, I don't want you to be concerned, but your mom was in a car accident. And so I was like, oh, okay, well, everything's okay. She's like, yeah. But later, it turned out that she had broken her sternum. And so. So I went home shortly after that, feeling, again, kind of sorry for myself. Like, oh, do I really know what I'm talking about? I'm kind of an idiot, all this stuff. But one of the things about it is my parents live within walking distance, so my mom is a big fan of osteopathic treatment, and she asked me to treat her. This was a unique thing because I really never had the opportunity to treat somebody who's had a fracture, like, within hours, you know, or even that same day. Like, usually I don't see them until much later, but as I was treating her, you know, I'd spent time working on her chest very gently, you know, all that. I was like, feels okay. Like, I'm. I feel like I'm making some progress, but there's still some things there I can't quite figure out. And finally, after a second or two, after a while doing that, I realized, you know, I was like, well, you know, I just gave this whole talk about how the tongue is connected to the sternum and all this. I was like, well, let me. Let me do the, you know, talk or walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And so I treated her tongue. And as soon as her tongue released, she took this deep breath. Her chest goes clunk. And then she was like, oh, now I can breathe better. And the interesting thing was, you know, they had told her at the emergency room, you know, like, you're going to be the most sore tomorrow, and it's going to take you this long to recover. The next day, she was not as sore. She felt better. And then her recovery was about half of what they had projected for her in terms of how severe her pain was gonna be and all that. So then at that point, I was like, okay, let me. Kind of like, I'm. I feel like I'm misunderstood, but I. I do feel like the information I have is valuable. Yeah. So, you know, I do feel like, again, that kind of going back to how important the tongue is. But, you know, one thing you mentioned earlier that I did want to speak to a little bit in is that, you know, you had used the term of, you know, the tongue is connected from the head to the toes. And one. One observation I had made, because in the past, I'd always been like, well, you know, telling people, you know, like, the way the tongue develops embryologically is similar to how the, you Know, the. The webbing in our fingers and toes develop, you know, where we start out looking like aquatic animals, the webbing recedes, and until we get to where we need it, and then at that point, we're. You know, then that process stops. But in the tongue, it doesn't seem to complete. And. But I was like, why doesn't that ever happen to fingers and toes? And most of the time, I treat my patients with socks on. But eventually I started. I had a patient a few years ago who was like, oh, I had really bad bunions. And she was like, I feel like I probably. I've had them since I was, like, seven. In the past, I had always. I had often been like, well, a lot of this is related to, you know, the way the shoes reshape the feet and all that. You know, we're constantly putting our feet and. And something that's gonna potentially reshape it. But I was like, I can't. I can't explain that. By. At seven years old, you would have that already. So I was trying to figure out, you know, like, what is. Why is this? And as I was treating her, I realized, you know, I was like, her webbing was like, all the. Close to her. The tips of her toes. Wow. And so then I was like, well, this is probably why her feet are deformed, you know, in. In terms of the bunions and everything, and why it's so severe. So then at that point, she was like, you know, she was like, my sister. Her feet are even worse. And she was like. And I'd been talking to her about how the webbing probably was it. And she was like, yeah, and her webbing is even worse than mine. So at that point, I started looking at it in terms of, like, okay, well, you know, are web toes a common thing? And the more I started looking at it, like, it's actually very common. I went to a study group a few months ago for a group here in Colorado, and I kind of brought that up to them. I was like, well, you know, a lot of times when I see tongue ties, I'm also seeing, like, the web toes. And somebody there was like, well, I've got a tongue tie. Can you check my toes? And sure enough, like, you know, she took off her socks, and I tried to spread them apart. And I'm like, yeah, you've got webbing here. Because. And I think the best way I can describe it to people who don't know how to assess for that is, like, if you try to spread the toes apart, if what stops you is not the joint itself, but the tissue. Then that's probably going to be. That's likely to me a reason that from web toes. So I've started to see a lot of that and I don't have any research in terms of like, is there an actual connection there? To me it makes sense, but I don't have. It's just an observation that I've made. But with hands, I've only seen it one time where I've seen somebody who got webbing. Like, but. But to me, like, the thing that I really found interesting with that is, is that now I see it pretty regularly where people are like, they come in, they're like, I have bunions. It's really bad. And I look at their toes and they've got web toes. And I'm like, well, this is probably why. But. But the thing to me is like, if. If the webbing of the toes is by itself is enough to cause that kind of effect, foot deformity. Think about what's happening with a web or, you know, a tethered tongue, because the tongue is also very dynamic structure. So anyway, I just wanted to point that out and it's something that I think if you start looking at, you're going to find it a lot more than you may have even realized.

I'm over here looking at my feet going, do I have web toes? I know I had a tongue tie and I know that I've got other, you know, midline issues. But no, it's really, it's really interesting once you start to go down the rabbit hole of, you know, all things tethered oral tissues and then obviously the impact on the full body. It's fascinating. And it's actually have a meeting, we have an upcoming meeting with our study club virtually, and I want to ask them, you know, if they've noticed anything as far as web toes go. And I'm sure they're all going to take off their shoes. And it's funny because we won't be in the same room together since virtual right now, but everyone's gonna go like, hold on, let me look at my feet. See if I haven't seen this clinically because it's a lot of like, RDH's, dentists, you know, myofunctional therapists, speech. We do have an osteopathic couple in our group and then we have a vision therapist and some other dentists. So I don't know how many of us maybe the osteopaths, but I don't know who else is actually looking at feet typically, but now it's something that I want to be like, hey, can you take off your shoes? I'm curious to see your toes.

I actually don't usually have patients take off their socks. So it's. I mean, now I often do and when I expect to find it, and I usually do.

I mean, it's funny, interesting. It's very fascinating just how everything is so interconnected. And, you know, I know there's. There's a. People say there's. Oh, there's a lack of research to say this and to show that and to demonstrate that. And we get that. Even on the topic of like, sippy cups, people want to know, well, where's the research to show that this sippy cup is producing a tongue thrust pattern? I'm like, drink from it, you'll feel it. We don't always need research when we constantly see things repeatedly clinically. Evidence based practice is. One level of evidence based practice is clinical experience and what you're seeing clinically. So I think it's really awesome that you're putting this information out there and sharing it, despite the fact that there's always going to be hecklers that don't agree with us. I put myself out there all the time with this podcast. Things where I'm like, you know, I might change my mind five years down the road and go, what was I thinking when I said that? But it's what I know right now. It's what I see clinically. It's what I know from speaking to so many awesome colleagues in this space. So I think it's fabulous that you're putting yourself out there and sharing this information because it makes sense to me. And I know that this is the kind of information that really helps a lot of the myofunctional therapists and other professionals that are listening to the podcast. So thank you.

You're welcome.

Is there anything else that we didn't cover that you want to share?

Let me think. Just briefly. There's a. I wanted to share another just basic idea that I'm sure a lot of people probably have already thought about this. But, you know, I've also spent time, you know, we talk about having the tongue up on the palate and how important that is in terms of normal facial development. But. But I also just wanted to point out that there is a dynamic process going on when the tongue is just resting on the palate. It's not like it rests on the palate, and then it's just there Motionless, doing nothing. Because if you take a moment and put your palate on the roof of your mouth, close your eyes and meditate on that for a little bit, like, take some deep breaths. What you're going to feel is that what you're going to notice is that when your tongue is sitting there on the palate, it's going through a rising and falling, not necessarily separating from the palate, but when you take a deep breath in, your chest rises, trachea comes up, pulls it, and it pushes the tongue up. And then when you exhale, the opposite happens. And then the tongue drops down a little bit, but then also it's coming forward and back. So it's. When it comes up, it expands a little bit. When it drops down, it narrows. And so you've got this coming up, expansion coming down and narrowing. And then at the same time, it's also coming up and forward and then coming down and back. And I think that's part of what triggers that motion there. And I also, from just. I theorize that that also has an effect on how blood flows on the other side, you know, and it helps pull blood from people who potentially have the bags under their eyes, things like that. But that was just an observation that I've made that I haven't really ever heard people necessarily talk about it. I mean, cranial, like osteopaths have talked about it in terms of cranial motion and things like that, but I haven't really heard anybody specifically talking about it in terms of that whole process.

It's an interesting concept. I mean, it makes sense if we think about, well, the tongue just lightly, gently resting up on the palate is not going to shape the palate just by holding itself up there. But that change between pressure of, you know, tongue coming down, tongue going back up, and, you know, maybe it's. There's more pressure, the tongue against the palate at one point and then decreases a bit. I mean, that would make sense to me just from knowing how things work in general and how some of the treatments work too, that are very light touch, but a little bit of pressure, but then we kind of back off or, you know, it just. It makes sense to me that that would be responsible for shaping the palette the way that it does. And obviously, when we don't have that any pressure up against the palette, things just collapse. So that's pretty cool. It's insightful. It's very interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Any other cool things you have to share with us today? I'VE already learned so much.

No, I just hope I've been able to give you guys a lot of value. But I did want to mention, you know, I'm putting together this little mini course website and it's called the T element. And so if you go to the te-element.com, you can. And right now it looks I'm kind of going through this course on how to like build a sales funnel and all this stuff. My ultimate goal is to try to get it to the masses. But so if it looks a little bit cheesy and all that, I apologize for that. But if you do go on there and you get on the mailing list, you know, when I finish putting together this course, what I plan on having for it is showing a way that I think hopefully you'll find some value out of this. Where I show how the tongue and where it is in its position is affecting a real time change in the body. So I'm going to demonstrate with a partner how you can have them move their tongue and you're going to be able to feel and see the shape of their body changing and adapting as that happens. And I think that's something that hopefully will be really valuable for even the oral myofunctional therapists or anybody else, because then once you learn that, you can start sharing it with your patients and showing them like, okay, this isn't just something that's happening here, it's something that's happening in the rest of the body. And then also probably what I'm doing, one of the things I want to do with this course is also put together a little meditation, like I was saying, like a tongue meditation. Like I was where you could kind of go through and try to feel this whole, this whole what? How it's. Everything is kind of flowing and moving in concert. That's potentially affecting the palate and the cranial shape and all that. But it is interesting because, you know, as with how the face develops and in underdeveloped jaws, you know, we often kind of get stuck thinking, you know, it's. We have this underdeveloped jaw, but the tongue is still the same shape. But it's not just the tongue though, that is being affected by this, it's the whole area. So sometimes we have to keep that in mind because it's easy to forget that. But that's the only other thing I was going to mention.

Awesome. I'm a little bit woo woo. So I really love to hear that you create this little meditation because I'M like, oh, I need this meditation. You have to send it to me. Yeah, I'm excited to check out your course when you launch it. I think that would be really awesome to have that demonstration. I completely forget why we even do this. It's completely slipping my mind. But I know we have tests where we ask people. I don't remember if it's stand up, put your tongue up on the spot and hold your arms out and provide resistance. And then you have them drop their tongue, and you try it again. And when they drop their tongue, like, they can't provide the same amount of resistance against you pushing down on their arm as when their tongue was, like, up in the palate. That may have been it. Or I might be totally botching that whole demonstration, but I remember we learned that in my mayo course. And the other thing that comes to me is that the person who does a lot of work on me at the beginning and end of every session, he's always testing me, like, putting my elbows near my body and my arms straight out. And he does this little ext scratch test thing. And then he'll kind of like, you know, push. He'll be like, okay, give me resistance. And oftentimes, before he treats me, it's either asymmetrical, like, I can do it more on one side than the other, or it's just kind of like, whoa, that went in really fast. And when he's done, he does it, like, with the arms out, too, with, you know, testing up and down and then testing in and out. And so anyways, when he's done treating me, I can always see the changes. I'm always. I'm able to provide more bilateral resistance, equally more equal resistance on both sides compared to, like, the pretest. And so it's pretty cool to see that and to see, like, that impact, you know, before and after within that same session.

Yeah, I mean, I really like what I was intending with building this. This whole course was, you know, showing people how they can actually manually release their tongue and this whole oral area that I think could be really impactful in terms of, again, neck pain, headaches, all these things. So that was really the whole intention of the course, but kind of as a side thing, I was going to add all these different pieces of awesome, you know, because I do feel like it's helpful to have that kind of proof, you know, where you can. Where you can show, you know, how the body structure and posture changes immediately when somebody changes their tongue positioning. To me, it's not that it's not about resistance because there definitely is that. But I think that can sometimes also be perceived in like oh, that's a subjective thing, they're faking that and all that. But the way I really have come to understand it, it's not something that somebody can fake, you know, and but you can see a change happen. So then in those cases I think that it's hopefully a beneficial way of or a different way of showing the same thing that might maybe potentially be a little more convincing.

Cool. I love it. Well, I can't wait for it. This has been amazing. As I mentioned, we will include you had provided a research paper that we'll include in the show notes as well as the telement.com will include that as well so that they can get on your wait list. And I can always talk course creation stuff all day because I just launched one in the middle of the pandemic and we're launching another thing in the summer. So I feel your pain there. Lot to learn. While the back people don't appreciate we'll just put this little plug out there people don't appreciate all of the extra work that goes into creating a course beyond just the content, which also takes a lot of hours to create and put together as well. So the labor of love.

Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, we'll make sure that that's in the notes. I'm also going to attach that Vision article. I don't know if that was the same one that you linked. I don't think it is. But on how swallowing incorrectly can affect your eyes since we did talk about that too. So yeah, so I think that one.

I have my it may be on my professional pages daniellopezdo.com and then a lot of times I post the same things over on my practice page which is oimcare.com but probably I've got more material on daniellopezdo.com in terms of all my tongue tie history and experience. So that would probably be the best way to go or the best place to go to if you want to read what I've written about those things.

Okay. So we'll put that in the show notes as well. So anybody driving you don't need to write all this down. It will be in the show notes. We'll have all those things linked. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all of your knowledge.

You're welcome anytime. I love this. It was fun. Yay.

We can do it again.

All right.

Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more of these Myo Tots, Airway and Feeding related episodes. Be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com forward/the untethered podcast if you found value, others you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook on my Facebook page at Hallebulc and Bing on Instagram at Alibulcan. And you can head over to theuntetheredpodcast.com to grab a copy of the Show Notes, where you can also subscribe to be kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes.