Episode 76: Myospots: Correcting Oral Rest Posture One Spot At A Time

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 76 of the Untethered podcast. Today we have Dr. Shahab Faragala joining us and Dr. Ibrahim Aldi. Dr. Shabab is a holistic dentist who graduated from the University of Queensland in Australia in 2001. He owned a dental practice for almost 10 years and now works for Gold Coast Holistic Care. He has completed coursework in temporomandibular joint dysfunction, sleep dentistry, buteycho breathing, and now specializes in treating children with orofacial muscular imbalance. He co invented and co founded MYO spots Australia in 2018. Dr. Ibrahim Aldeep has a PhD degree in pharmaceutical sciences. He he has almost 20 years of laboratory research experience in the field of drug design and discovery. He published more than 30 research papers and has six drug discovery patents. Ibrahim's research interests are mainly in the field of infectious diseases and respiratory viruses with a focus on discovery and development of novel antiviral agents against parainfluenza virus. He works as a research scientist at Griffith University in Australia and is also the co founder and co director of myospots Australia.

Okay, so we're pretty laid back here as well.

I love it.

Queensland's the laid back state of Australia.

It's amazing. One day, one day I will make it there when we're not in the middle of a pandemic. Okay. All right. Ready?

Yeah, sure.

Well, and Ibrahim, I want to thank you both so much for joining me today on the podcast. I'm really excited to have you here.

Thanks, Hailey. Pleasure.

Yeah, thank you, Hattie.

Thanks for having us.

Us.

So I would love for you to tell us. You know, obviously we're here to talk about Myo Spots and a bit more beyond just myo spots themselves, but give us a little bit of a backstory on myospots and how they came to be.

Okay, well, I can probably give a little bit and Ibrahim can elaborate. But my story starts with the stoma hissive and what we used to use for patients. And the problem was that I wanted to train people, children especially, to raise their tongue to nasal breathe. But one of the issues was I suspected that the stoma yousif had some additives that I wasn't comfortable with because I'm a holistic dentist. And those additives were. As I spoke to Ibrahim and discovered more, it turned out that some of them were rubbers and synthetics that weren't supposed to be used, and they weren't even indicated for oral use. And then later on, I found out that the material had porcine in it, which is kidney. And unfortunately, that doesn't go well with vegans and vegetarians initially and Muslims and Jews and some people who just want to be fully informed. So that excluded me from being able to use anything that has the same concept of dissolving in your mouth. And that's when we thought, well, Ibrahim was the first person I approached, actually, and he was the perfect person because he is very well qualified in the field of drug research. And when I spoke to Ibrahim, he then said, well, let's try and do this. And very quickly, he was able to come up with a formulation that could work. And I let Ibrahim sort of take it from there from what he did from that point on.

I'm gonna pause for one second. There's a little bit of feedback. I'm not sure where it's coming from when you were speaking, though. So I don't know if it's coming from Ibrahim or if it's coming. I don't know if it's the headphones and something from that.

Do you want me to take him off? Oh, is that better?

That is. I think that is better. I'll let you know if we hear it more.

Hold on a second. Can you pause for a second? I'll just turn off the fish tank bubbler.

Yeah, I don't think I can hear that, but I heard a little bit of feedback from. And it might still be there even with the headphones off. So we will see.

Hopefully. That's a bit quieter.

Okay, perfect.

So we'll turn it over to you, Ibrahim.

Okay, so we don't need to start from the beginning. I just continue from where.

Yeah, I'll edit that out.

So, yeah, actually, as she had mentioned, to be honest, I was totally outside the field of orimology, and I work mainly in drug discovery and drug research. And Shahab is the one with the clinical expertise. He works with patients and he used rheimology in his practice for a long time. But we are close friends, we know each other for a long time. So one night we were actually together going to dinner and he started the conversation. So he told me, brahim, I have an idea. It's going to be something good if we can do it. And he started to explain to me actually what's our melody? And as you know, the idea actually was already there. The idea of the importance of tongue exercise and training people to correct their tongue posture, correction of mouth breathing and the importance of nasal breathing. And to be honest, personally, I didn't know too much about it before. So it was very good educational decision for me as well. And I started to read more to understand it. And again the challenge actually that, okay, we know now what we need to have, we need to translate this into a product. So we need to have a product that's as natural as possible, safe, can be used by children, preferably has some flavor, safe sweetener. So it's acceptable, they love it, yet it still adheres quickly, dissociates slowly. So it allows, ideally we're talking about one hour of optimal exercise. So we took it from there. We started to get some formulation testing prototypes and we start to produce product on a small scale, on a lab scale. And after that was actually the challenge of okay, how now to translate the. To manufacturing at commercial scale, large scale and follow the standards. Actually the product itself, it's going to be considered as like a medical device because it's an exercise for muscles. However, when you look at the formulation, the shape of it, it's more like a close to pharmaceutical product. So it needs to have a pharmaceutical quality. And just to make the long story short, so we approached actually a number of pharmaceutical manufacturers, started here in Australia, but we also were looking at those with high expertise in the field. So luckily at the end we managed to find a good partner in Switzerland, Sino Pharmaceuticals. They were interested in actually take the challenge and trying to optimize the formulation at large scale. And yeah, luckily we managed at the end to get a product manufactured in pharmaceutical facility at high top quality, yet having the same formulation. We were actually aiming at having being safe and biodegradable as we mentioned. And we understand the importance of being so transparent of what's in there. When you give someone a product to put it in his mouth or in his kid's mouth, he needs to be sure that it's safe enough. So also one, one Important thing was, okay, we will invest time, money, effort in this. We need to protect this as an intellectual property. So that's actually why we filed a patent application before. Actually we move forward with industry engagement. And this actually gives us more freedom and confidence when we disclose transparently what's inside the product, what's the composition. And yeah, as I said, this is, we understand this is actually a right for the consumer. He needs to know what's in there and he needs to be sure that it's safe enough.

Yeah, as a consumer, as both the mother of a child who's going through myo, we've done expansion and growth appliance on her. And you know, I've done it myself and now I've also got patients. I can appreciate that because I think, you know, being in the US things are not disclosed as much as they should be and it's really hard to trust something. You know, you even start to wonder, what are the sources of these organic products? What are the sources of these? We know a natural really means nothing in the U.S. right? But like, we know when it's coming from other countries, it's very different. It's much higher quality than, you know, even the non organic things are much higher quality than the organic things in the U.S. so it's, it's nice to be able to speak with you all and that you have that appreciation for. Let's patent this so that we can be fully honest with our consumers of the product and we can actually tell them what our proprietary blend is of the ingredients going into this. I think that's so incredibly important and I really respect you both highly for that because I think it's something that's really missing in the marketplace, especially one that's highly driven by pharmaceuticals in the U.S. so, you know, it's really, it's really refreshing too. You know, I felt safe putting it in my mouth. I felt safe trying it with my 5 year old. And I know a lot of my clients, if they know if I recommend something that it's something I absolutely use myself. I don't recommend something I would never use for myself or my own child. So that speaks volume. So thank you for, you know, for creating something of high quality.

Thank you.

Honestly, that's the thing, because when actually Shahab start to talk about what some people use, which is like the stomach or other stomach protecting wafers or powders or pastes, I start actually to dig deeper to know what's exactly inside there. Because it's, because this is not a product for Intraoral use, it's for external use, so they don't have the obligation actually to disclose everything inside it. And I had to do some research to know exactly what's in there. And yeah, I was surprised, honestly, to find a synthetic polymer inside. And I know maybe with a good intention. Many practitioners are using because they value. They understand the importance of the oral myology, training of tongue muscles and correction of nasal breathing.

But.

You know, it's still something that. Having one good piece with one bad piece. So you're providing a service, but you're actually giving something that's not really safe. And that's why I thought, okay, the benefits are huge, so we should definitely get something that's, that's totally safe. So you provide 100% benefit to patients from both sides. And yeah, I'm happy that we ended up actually having that safe product. Yeah.

One of the other issues is that you have a large number of practitioners using things like stamens, Ethernet, chloroplast, but there's a huge number of practitioners that will refuse to use it as well. And we want to engage those practitioners so that it's available to everyone. Because the problem is if you have very reputable practitioners that are not that they have no tools to use it and they refuse to use something that's not TGA approved, that's a Therapeutic Schools Association Australia, it's not approved here, and it's not recommended or indicated for oral use, then they really have nothing to go by. And that was one of the reasons to try and engage the larger group of people so that everybody has the option of being able to use something like that.

Yeah, I mean, I had bought the chloroplast early on in my MYO career, and I bought some other things and I tried them on myself first. And when I tried to get it off the top of my mouth, I was like, I can't get this off. And one, the children are not going to like this because if they feel like something is stuck up there and they're already orally defensive and it's not something they can easily remove, this is just not going to go well. That was number one. And I'm like. And number two, but something that really doesn't come off the top of my mouth, I don't think I want them swallowing that. That really doesn't seem, you know, because the whole idea is that you're breaking it down over time and it's flavored and, you know, there's other products that have been made that have flavors to them, but similar, you know, very sticky, tacky, hard to get off of your alveolar bridge. It's like, it's really stuck up there. So, you know, I tried it on myself twice, I think I ever used it with two patients and I was like, I can't in good faith recommend this. Like, this is horrible. I mean, I know it achieves a really great thing. And we're talking about nasal breathing and it's supposedly short term, but if I'm telling a child to use this daily for even 30 days, like for me, I was like, I can't, I can't do that.

So yeah, one of the other things as well is that Ibrahim and I sat down together to try and use ingredients that were already in use in food products. So we didn't want to use something that was outside of what's already. So we know like, so things like xanthin gum and agar, things that are used, tested and there have been no issues or from my knowledge, very minimal intolerances from them. So that was something that worked well to our advantage because we found out, okay, these are the ingredients that work. How can we put that into the product rather than go the other way around? And that has helped us a lot.

The main three ingredients actually they are food ingredients. So that's actually what the safest list of ingredients that we can choose from. So yeah, as you have mentioned, we start to look at what, what could be the safest less of ingredients that we can choose from. And one more point also actually that I want also to highlight that when as a person from like I would say external to the, to the oromology field. When I started to look into the field and what research is available in it, I started to realize the gap further because you'll find huge amount of research talking about the problems of mouth breathing and the importance of nasal breathing, linking mouth breathing to a list of conditions which we will prob highlight quickly in our interview today. But I didn't find probably any proper research that contains an intervention. How to correct mouth breathing to convert the mouth breathing, correct mouth breathing to nasal breather and measure the effect of change, which is very important research that actually represents a big gap in the research area. And the simple reason why, because there was no proper tool. And that's another key issue, honestly, if you also look at the medical research space because as you mentioned, having the stomach or other products that are not actually approved by FDA or TGA here in Australia or proper Food and Drug administration authorities makes it almost impossible for clinicians or researchers to get ethical approvals to use this product for patients. So this made a gap. This made a big gap. And this is actually why, as she had mentioned, so many practitioners, they avoid to work with oral immunology because they know that there are issues and there is lack of tools. So hopefully, this tool will actually make a change. Big change in the research area as well.

Yeah. And as the therapist who does this type of therapy, I. I appreciate it, because we can teach a patient where the spot is 2 to 3 millimeters behind your upper central incisors. Put the tip of your tongue up there. Let's hold it up there. Great. Okay, you can do that in my office. Let's play a game and hold it up there for 15 minutes. Great. You can do that in my office. Now go home and do it. And as soon as they start doing their homework, reading a book, watching tv, they're doing something. And now it's passive. It's not an active activity anymore. We know that tongue is just falling back down in the mouth. And so I really like having something that they can have in their mouth that becomes a touch point for them because it helps kind of keep things activated and keeps that tongue up there while they then start to engage in more passive activities. And now we can rewire the brain differently, Right? We can start to change those neuromuscular patterns and actually create effective change. And so that's where I think it's so important to have a product like this that allows us to actually generalize what they're doing in office or doing for homework and make it an actual, you know, lifelong change. So that's, you know, I think it's really fantastic for that purpose.

And also the biodegradable nature of the spots actually ensure that the spot will not dissolve unless actually it's being touched by the tongue and saliva. So if the tongue is just sitting low, ignoring the spot there, it's gonna take much longer actually to dissolve. So you can know initially that, yeah, it takes, like, three hours instead of one hour. That, yeah, the tank is too lazy. It's sitting down. It's not actually weighting enough. And you can observe by time that this three hours is becoming two is becoming one, which means that, yeah, tank is actually changing the habit, and it starts to elevate and touch the spot.

That's a really great point. I like that.

It becomes like, a diagnostic tool.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's a really great point. You know, I've started to see some others who have either purchased Myo spots or some. You guys have sent some samples to some colleagues of mine, and so everybody's trying them now on Instagram and showing, you know, okay, this is where it is. Okay, that was pretty easy to put in. And it's still in there. 10 minutes later. Oh, it's still up there. So I think no one really had this idea that, like, oh, it's actually going to be up there for an hour, even if my tongue is on the spot. So when you said that, I was like, oh, that's really, that's really good. That's some key information because I think also parents can help to monitor it a little bit better at home. You know, we'll say to parents, well, how's it going? You know, is there tongue on the spot? And they'll be like, well, the mouth is closed. And I'm like, well, that doesn't tell me anything. The mouth can be closed with the tongue down. The tongue can be between the teeth with the mouth closed or even up against the teeth. And so I think this will also give parents a better way to monitor that. So at home, they can actually give us real feedback to say, well, the spot, you know, actually dissolved after two hours or one hour or however long when they go to check in. And then hopefully the child won't get, you know, as frustrated with them being like, what's. What's your tongue doing? Let me see in your mouth. What are you doing? Is your tongue up? Because every time you ask, of course, the kid goes, yep, yep, my tongue is up. It's on the spot. I don't know about that. So that's, that's.

You may even notice changes in the salivary flow as well. So initially, when their mouth is closed, it may improve over the following weeks. So it might disassociate or dissolve quicker. That's something we haven't really tested, but that's something that may occur. And we do have some of the flavors that are in the pipeline that will actually put a little bit of stain on the tip of your tongue so that you can actually go, okay, show me your tongue. When they poke their tongue out, if it's got the colour in there, they'll be natural colors, but you'll see the colour and you'll know that, okay, you've been putting your tongue up or you haven't. So that can be used as a diagnostic tool. And parents can look at their tongue, their children's tongue, and say, yes, you've been doing correctly. Practitioners as well. So it makes a Big difference. When you're able to say, okay, their mouth is closed, how do I know their tongue's going up? One is that you can look at the time of dissolving. If it dissolves within like, 45 minutes to an hour, then you're on the right track. If it's extending there for a couple of hours and there's a problem. And two, with some of the other colors that are coming out, you'll be able to tell. So that's great. That's a good way of going, knowing.

That's great. You know, sometimes we have kids who are going, oh, I don't know. If there's, like, a posterior tie here, maybe a little too tight, and they have a tendency to, you know, they'll say their tongue is up, but they put the tongue. The tip of the tongue too far back in their palate. And sometimes they'll even flip their tongue so they actually make contact with the spot, but it's with the underside of the tip of their tongue and not the actual side of their tongue. So that's really cool, you know, especially because when I tell parents this, they're like, they kind of like, they don't really understand the full extent of what I'm saying. They're like, but the tongue is up there. Isn't that the whole point? You want the tongue to be up? I'm like, yes, but we really want more than just the tip of the tongue resting up in the palate. So we can't have the tongue flipping over this way. So I think if we can show them, well, hey, look where the spot is. It's leaving a little color right there. And parents can see that, I think, whenever we can visually, one, show the patient, whether it's a child or an adult or definitely the parent of a child, that feedback is so, so very valuable.

And sometimes I even get the. The children to put it in the posterior part of the palate, of the hard palate. So they've got two up there at the same time. I usually get them to do that maybe two weeks into putting one spot, then they'll put two. So then by that time, you should see, like, a couple of spots on the tongue.

I like that. Now do you see? I mean, I know that we can talk about changes in behavior and sleep and all that, all that fun stuff just as a result of the tongue being up in the palate, but when do you feel like we start to actually see changes? Like, have you. Has there been any work done within your clinic with your office as far as children using it and knowing that the tongue is actually up on the spot. And after a month or after two months or anything along those lines, we feel like parents might also start to see other things changing within their child. Whether it's better sleep or anything. Thoughts on that?

If they're using it, if they're compliant. So let's assume they're compliant because some, like some kids, forget to put the spot initially, but eventually, if they're compliant, then you would expect as quick as two to three weeks to notice behavioral changes. And it's amazing because you get an agitated child, a child that doesn't sit, you know, they kind of got ants in their pants all of a sudden. They're calmer, they're a bit more focused. Their sleep tends to improve. Things like in some instances, bedwetting improves. So you get, like some children that, you know are frequently bedwetting and, you know, within a few weeks in some children, you do get an improvement there. Just seeing them walking to the clinic with their lips closed is, for me, that's a winner. And you go, okay, this child came in. And I'll usually video them. So I have a video like, of them without them even noticing. And they'll have their mouth open and, you know, sometimes they'll be, you know, that droopy sort of face where the shoulders are on forward and even initially, the moment you put one in. Now, I've had patients that come in, they're due to seeing ENT to get their adenoids removed, and I'll do a test on them to see whether or not their nose works. So normally I'll get them to put like a small bit of water in their mouth, maybe like a small sip, and they've got to hold on to that water for a couple of minutes, and you probably do the same. And if they, if they are able to do that for two to three minutes, then I say, well, their nose works, right? So if their nose works, then, then maybe we could get them to breathe through their nose throughout the whole day. Now, the night's a bit different because sometimes you get more inflammation as you lay down and the turbulence can swell up and things like that. But if we can get them to breathe through their nose during the daytime, that's a big plus, right? And you notice that in some children, they develop a habitual nasal breathing just by using their nose. A lot of times, just not using their nose causes that inflammation. It's that whole thing of use it or lose it, and they stop using their nose Then it gets more and more inflamed. So I see changes pretty quickly. And the changes I'm talking about are not morphological. They're more behavioral and muscular, and that's what you aim for. So as soon as you get that muscular change and you go, okay, you're in the driver's seat, you can redirect things 6 months down the track, 12 months down the track, but you've got to get that tongue up. You've got to get the lips together, You've got to get breathing through the nose. But I definitely see behavioral changes within a couple of weeks. And that's just for my. And obviously it's subjective because it's in a clinic situation. It's not a study or anything like that.

Sure. But I think that there's not enough of that level for case study type of research even out there yet. Because everyone always, whenever I share these stories, everyone goes, well, write that up in my spare time.

Sure.

But, you know, we know what we see as far as changes go for their patients. And so I know there's definitely a time and a place for all the actual, you know, the level one, level two studies. But I think it's really, really very cool that we can report on that, because that's what parents care about. Parents don't. Parents don't care if there's a level one or level two study on this. They're going to care. If you were able to help their friend's child gain better sleep, their behaviors improved, they are able to learn better, they're able to attend better. They're not maybe the bedwetting, like you said, has stopped. I know that there's a high correlation between bedwetting and obstructive sleep apnea. And so we see that obviously if we can change the sleep and the child is able to get restful sleep and we maybe now their tongue is not falling in the back of their mouth and blocking their airway when they're sleeping, and they're not jolting themselves awake and wetting the bed. You know, that I think to any parent, like most parents have no idea that's even related until they meet one of us when we start to explain that, you know, this is actually highly related and they're like, bedwetting. How does that have to do with their mouth? That has everything to do with their mouth. So, you know, I think that those are some big life changes. That when we can get those quickly for a patient, I mean, that really gets them on board, and then they're like, okay, what else do we need to do? Let's do this. So I love hearing, you know, I love to hear that's what you're seeing in your clinic.

One of the things that I have a problem with is that, you know, you hear about how important diet is for a person and you hear about how important exercise is. Everybody knows it, but nobody knows the importance of. Well, I shouldn't say nobody, but a lot less numbers know about the importance of nasal breathing and lip seal and tongue posture. And I say to, you know, a lot of people that don't know anything about. I said, well, if you think about, like, the importance of diet and exercise, well, the third one in there, let's not assume that we're talking about mental health, but just physical health at the moment, although they overlap is nasal breathing. And if you're doing the other two, but you're not doing the nasal breathing, then you're missing out on a lot of health benefits. And actually, you can have the opposite. It can actually really damage your growth and development. And that's something a lot of people don't know about. And when you tell people for the first time, they're shocked. They're either shocked or they don't believe you.

I've actually used that with some of my teens, some of the teen patients that I've treated to tell them, like, if you want to improve your swimming score, your time on that swim, or you want to improve as a gymnast, I mean, we need to look at your airway. Because if you can breathe better, then. And they're like, what are you talking about? And when you start to explain to them, and I don't know all of the mechanics behind all of the sports science and everything, but I know enough to basically say, look, we can make you better at your sport if you can breathe better. And these are often children who are coming that might have severe tongue ties and their tongue is really stuck down in their mouth. And no matter how much therapy we do, like, they're still going to need that frenectomy. But we're really looking holistically at what can we achieve a step one before we even send you out for a procedure, how can we prep you? How can we see what your body really needs? The step one. And then let's talk about prepping you for a procedure, if that's the next step. But in the meantime, we still need to work on getting that mouth closed. If you are. If you're able to nasal breathe and getting, you know, the nasal breathing going and so, you know, it's really, it's been very fascinating because I had several patients that were really like, go, go, go, athletes. Like, they were up at 5:00am you know, doing their sport before high school, and after school they were just exhausted. And I was like, well, anybody getting up that really is going to be tired by 3:30 in the afternoon, but at the same time, like, you should not be. One of them also had horrible insomnia, couldn't sleep. And I actually think that she was having such horrible obstructive sleep apnea because of her tongue tie that she, her body just was like, we're not sleeping. Like, this is dangerous. Like, I'm just not. So she would sleep maybe three hours a night. She was trying to get up and do swim team at four in the morning after not sleeping. And I think she ended up quitting in the end because the mom was like, it just wasn't, it wasn't healthy for her. This was not sustainable. And I was like, no, it's not sustainable. But they were able to get her help and I think it was her choice to give up the sport. But at the same time, you know, just look at the impact that it has on people's lives and they have no clue that it's all starting here. So, you know, there's definitely a lot of education to be done in this area.

I mean, you think about, like, people like elite athletes. Roger Federer, have you ever seen, like, when you see the way he breathes, he's an incredible nasal breather. Soccer, you can look at Cristiano Ronaldo, you can see how he breathes through his nose like a very. Even if you look at the, if somebody's into mma, you look at Jon Jones, incredible nasal breather. These are elite athletes in various different fields. They're all breathing through the nose. Golf players as well, if you look at all of those, the best often breathe through their nose, but there are some exceptions. I think American swimmer Michael Phelps, he shows an upbreather, but he's an interesting case because when I look at him, the amount of exercise he does, he's maintaining an elevated carbon dioxide level just by the amount of exercise. Long term, I don't know how he's going to be, but he's able to compensate for that because of the amount of swimming he's doing hours and hours. And he eats like, you know, 10 times a day or whatever it is, I'm not quite sure, but the amount of calories he consumes. But generally, if you want to do A sport where you need calmness of mind, you need focus and all those kind of things. Mouth breathing is essential. And, yeah, a lot of people don't realize that. Sorry, nasal breathing. Mouth breathing is detrimental.

Yeah, yeah. No. And there is some discussion. I don't know how much truth there is to this, that Michael Phelps apparently is now working on his jaw. And, yeah, so he's actually out of Baltimore, Maryland, which is like an hour from where I live. And so there's a lot of people around here who are, like, very pro Michael Phelps, because, you know, oh, he's from my town. And so that whole, you know, everybody in America loves Michael Phelps. But, yeah, so there's. It's interesting because there's, you know, when you get together with other myofunctional therapists, obviously, it's very easy to look at celebrity pictures on the computer and go like, oh, my goodness, like, look at that jawline. Or look at this, you know, Oh, I bet you that they have a tongue tie. Or I bet you that they don't nasal breathe as much as they should. It's like when you put your MYO eyes on, you just can't take them off. But it's. Yeah, his mandible is incredibly small. And, you know, so it is interesting to look at the shape of his face, but also to see how much harder he must have to work to overcome.

I wonder if he had something like asthma when he was younger or. I'm not.

I think I actually feel like I heard this. He did. Yeah. I feel like I heard that he had a history of airway issues. And, yeah, it's fascinating. I'd have to go back and look to be sure, but, yeah, it's always fascinating. I'd love to have him on the podcast and talk to him about what he's. It's very interesting because I follow some other people that I've just been in business with in the online space were not in this space, and one of them was so funny because one day she started talking about how she had to go and start this orofacial myology thing because she can't breathe through her nose properly and her tongue is down. And she went, you know, and so. And I was like, wow, this is getting out into the mainstream. She's got a. This woman's got millions of followers. And I was like, this is so exciting. This is the kind of news that makes my day.

That's cool.

So, yeah. So where do you feel like. Do you have any bigger future visions for myo spot so where do you guys plan to take this? I mean obviously it's an amazing thing that is now making it into the US market. And I know a lot of us that are trialing these out are showing, you know, our colleagues on Instagram and once we start using them, obviously we'll more frequently ensure that families will share them with their kids, with their friends and it'll get bigger and bigger. But do you all have some type of a bigger vision for myo spots?

Yeah, actually speaking about myself as mentioned because I like maybe two years ago, a bit more than two years ago, I didn't know nothing actually bonds or amealogy and while actually I'm working in research field of pharmaceuticals, I myself I was a north breather and I didn't know actually how bad it is until I start to read proper research. So lack of knowledge is a bigger challenge and we are happy that it's probably a very simple tool, easy to use that maybe can help us to spread this knowledge to everyone. And honestly this is what we are dreaming about and what we, what we are aiming for is actually to use mind spots to educate people about the importance of nasal breathing and how huge and big the change can be just by such simple exercise. So yeah, our actually main target and big dream is actually to spread the awareness, increase the knowledge about this. And because again they are both linked together. Myspots as a product to introduce it to anyone needs to start by speaking about the problem of mouth breathing and the problem of incorrect tongue posture. The other part of future plans, we are talking about actually improving the product itself and now reaching the stage of having the product manufactured by pharmaceutical facility. We have plans hopefully I would say maybe not too far in a few years maybe we can have this product also fortified by vitamins and minerals. So people who use it regularly can also benefit from the intraoral or very quick absorption of minerals and vitamins. And especially looking at kids who use the product as probably the majority of users, they will probably have some other issues, have some deficiencies in vitamins, in minerals. So if they are using the spots two or three times a day for a few months, it's gonna be very good also to get dual benefits. So this is also actually what we have in mind and we already working on research and it's not going to be a very difficult thing to do because with the current manufacturing method we use, it should be easy.

That's great. So I have a question to have about your clinic. So do you primarily do dentistry? Do you also do Orofacial myology. I think our listeners would be curious to hear, like, what do you actually have in your clinic? Or how do you operate, I guess. And.

Well, I work for a practice. The main place I work at is called the Gold Coast Holistic Dental Centre. And I do mainly there, I do a mixture of dentistry, but probably half to three quarters of the time I do oral myology with children. So I work between the age bracket of three, sometimes two, right up to about 15 years old. So mainly the children I treat, they'll come in chronic mouth breathers. They will have poor tongue postures, they'll have maligned teeth and things like that. But I always, whenever I treat any of these patients, I'm never, ever treating crooked teeth. And I tell them, if that's what you primarily want to treat, then you should see an orthodontist, because that's not what I'm treating. As soon as they understand, okay, look, this guy's actually treating the musculature and that there is a problem and it can be fixed. So some of them will choose to as a standalone treatment. They'll come in and get the oral myology. And I'll use a combination of things like my spots, and I might use palatal expanders. I might sometimes use different types of taping methods for their mouths and a whole bunch of different exercises. And so some of them, if they come in nice and early, and I'm talking about four or five years old, I can actually get them to a point by the time they're about six and a half, where hopefully they'll be okay. And they've developed really good habits, they can breathe well, there's a lot more space in their mouth, and then they can go from there. Then you get some other patients that will come in and say, look, we're going to go to the orthodontist, and we have an orthodontist in our practice as well. I won't have a dentist who practices orthodontics. So what will happen is that they'll come and spend three months with me where then I'll teach them how to breathe through the nose, how to elevate their tongue, how to improve their orofacial musculature. So things like you already know, like when they swallow, there's no movement in their mouth and things like that. And the moment they've developed the strong tongue muscles and these muscles here start to relax, then they can go afterwards and get their orthodontics done. Because what happens is that now this is all Stable. So their orthodontics should be, in theory, quicker because their tongue is helping to promote the expansion and retaining. And additionally, if you've got things like anterior open bite, which responded really well to this type of treatment. So rather than trying to pull teeth to sort of go back to where they are, where you teach them to put their tongue out of the way so that the teeth start to come to the right place. And then once that happens, what makes the orthodontist life so much easier? So they know that, okay, if they get that particular treatment, then the orthodontic treatment is a lot easier. So that's the kind of treatment that I do. And I spend a lot of time with children one on one. So, yeah, I don't like it. I know some practices, they treat it in groups, so they'll treat like five or six kids. But I prefer just to treat them one on one and put the focus there. I'm not saying one way is right, one way is wrong, but that way I. My energy, it means I can't see as many people, but it seems to work quite well for me.

I appreciate that because you, you know, a lot, it sounds like, you know, knew a lot about the myo, and I wasn't quite sure, like, how much of a role you played in that. And I was like, feel like you're, you're working with these kids a bit more than like our traditional dentists here. So a lot of our holistic dentists here will take the courses, so they have an understanding of what goes into orofacial myology. And, you know, they're taking a lot of this same courses that the myofunctional therapists take. But then, you know, they're becoming like a fellow in orofacial biology. They're not really doing the actual treatment. They're working with the team, like you said. And so either maybe like a registered dental hygienist might be doing it, or a speech pathologist or so on and so forth. So that's, that's really cool. I can appreciate that a lot because, you know, obviously you have the dental side, but then you also have the myoside, which is really nice to, to understand as well, since you've obviously created a product that you weren't just saying, oh, these kids need to keep their tongue up in their mouth. Like, you really get it because you're working with them both on the dental and the MYO side. So I love that.

And my daughter, sorry, we recently had a case of anterior open bite. And this Was amazing because it took from. I don't know how far, but probably about that much open bite. And what would that be? Almost like half a centimeter. And so that took us six weeks. And the teeth are just about touching. That was amazing. I'm like, oh, that just blew my mind away. Not every case responds to that. You've got to be honest. But the takeaway message is that this child managed to get a tongue in the mouth instead of. Because it was related to tongue thrust. Some are related to tongue thrust, some related to thumb sucking, some related, whatever it might be. But in this particular case, it was a tongue thrust and six weeks complete. Almost complete resolution. And so with this particular child, we'll probably keep him on the therapy for another few months. And if they're all good, they're good to go. And so it does happen. You do get really cool results. And I wish all orthodontists will use oral myologists a lot more because they make the perfect team. And, you know, there's some. In some situations, they see each other as competition, but really they're part of a team. And if they work together, they can optimize the results, they can get quicker results, they can get more efficient results, and that would be ideal. And that's something we're trying to promote as well.

That's fantastic. We really. I feel like the D.C. metro area where I am in the United States is starting to come around. We've got several holistic dentists nearby. I work very closely with one who's a good friend of mine who actually grew up with. And she and her partner, they both own the practice and they both. Her partner does more of the orthodontic. They both do dental work, but they do dental appliance. And then she actually is orthodontist as well. So they use, you know, they use the ALF appliance, DNA aga, the list goes on. And so they really try to match the right appliance for the right patient, which is wonderful. And they also understand the importance of, you know, myofunctional therapy, which is wonderful as well, because we work really nicely together. But what I've started to notice is that more and more traditional orthodontists are starting to refer. And it started with the cases where they were putting dental cribs in. And they're going, this child is still getting their tongue around the dental crib up against their teeth. Their teeth are flaring out. You know, what is going on? They'll say, like, they have a really stubborn tongue. Or I'm like, well, this dental group is, you know, whatever. I'm not a dentist, so I won't comment on them, but I don't love them. And then we've got the kids who obviously go into orthodontic relapse, you know, or the adults like me. So that's where we really talk to these orthos. Like, if you're going to do traditional orthodontia, by all means, go for it. But before you take those braces off, they need to complete their MYO program because, you know, and at that point, it's tricky, too, because it depends who they're coming from and how they're doing the appliance work. Sometimes that. That RPE goes in. It's in for three months. They take it out, they put the braces on. Sometimes they leave the rapid palatal expander in after the expansion is done to hold. Hold the width of the palate while the braces are in. And I'm like, I can't do Maya with an RPE in the mouth. Like, that's not gonna work. I can't get the tongue up in the palate. So it's, you know, it's both frustrating on certain levels, but also I appreciate that they are starting to come around. And we. Look, we've had some orthodontists who go, okay, well, if you're gonna be. If they've committed to working with you, I will take that dental crib out, you know, but I need to know that they're actually being seen in your office, but before I actually remove it, because I don't want them to do further damage to their teeth that we worked so hard on. So it's definitely a dance. But I was that mom who, at 4, you know, my daughter, when she was 4 a year ago, was like, nope, we're putting the ALS in. We're going to grow this mouth forward and sideways. And it was pretty cool. She just had it taken out. She had it for a year. And she's, you know, we're working on, like, one or two speech sounds, but as far as, like, thrusting her tongue when she's holding her tongue is really up in the palate now. And, yeah, I'm that mom who my kids won't smile for a picture, but they'll suction their tongue to their palate at the same time. So it's like, we do. MYO is basically our life in this house.

Do you know what? On that point, with a lot of the removable appliances, one of the Things we did test early on was the adhesion of the My spot to an appliance. And they stick. So there is some possibility to be able to put the my spot on an existing amount. You're not going to get the therapeutic effect of like, for example, the neurofeedback where the tongue touches the palate. And you get that sort of. You will get some kind of muscle memory forming with the tongue even touching the appliance. So you can actually put a spot up against the appliance itself and that will help a little bit. So we did test that. I haven't been doing that very much because some of the appliances that I. That I make, there's a little space on the end spot. So I can actually get them to go there and I can put the My spot in that little space. But if you've got a palatal coverage, you may still be able to put the my spot on the appliance and get the same kind of training.

Good to know. It's good information. Yeah, we. I was using the DNA appliance and it was like my whole mouth was. I was like, how does anybody's tongue find its way to the palate with this big thing in. It's just impossible to fit my tongue in there between the top and the bottom appliance. But no, it was. I really like the alf, especially for her because the way that they. They notch the appliance or, you know, right behind the upper central incisors, almost like, hey, put your tongue up here. But a lot of it, you know, they say that they're supposed to find their tongue, their tongue's supposed to find its way up there because it's putting a teeny bit of pressure on that area. I still don't find that that actually happens for my kids. They still, you know, my patients do, like, they still need the MYO program. So I think, you know, even for them, like, MYO spots would be fantastic to be using along with that appliance. Yeah, that's been. I love it. I love it. Anything else that we haven't covered or that you'd like to add about the product or.

I don't know. Vereem, any thoughts? No.

Again, as I mentioned, just to be honest, because it was really fascinating to me to realize the wide range of impacts of mouth breathing and how actually just a small change shifting from chronic mouth breathing to nasal breathing can make. Because, for example, I honestly, before going deeper into this, I was never expecting that there is a link, for example, between dermatitis and mouth breathing. And yeah, this is proved with high quality research. Different types of allergies, including dermatitis, rhinitis, asthma, they are all related to inhalation of large amount of allergens. And again, breathing through your nose actually allows you to filter most of these allergens and get rid of them before they reach your body and the respiratory system. So in addition, of course, to the snoring and sleep apnea, because probably this will be the main thing that most of the people would think of when you talk about the effects of mouth breathing, but also dysphagia, because chewing efficiency and swallowing efficiency, they are also very much linked to, in one sense, to the strength of over muscles and also to the mouth breathing. And as I said, because myself I was a mouth breather and yeah, it's really difficult to chew food efficiently if you are breathing and eating at the same time from the same space. So this also was another thing. And again, as I said, I think it's a big mission. We actually dedicated to put all our work in it to increase awareness of importance of nasal breathing. But I think we need a lot of help from all people who are interested in this space to give us a hand and actually increase the awareness of importance of nasal breathing.

Yeah, no, and I love the point that you made because I think that it doesn't get said enough and I don't think enough people realize that mouth breathing impacts how you chew and how you swallow. And when people say that, they're like, well, what does one thing have to do with the other? Well, like you said, it creates an imbalance in the oral musculature. You know, as soon as a patient walks into my office, I can tell which side of the mouth they chew on. I just look at their face and I'm like, they chew on the right side of their mouth. I can see, see that this side is more overdeveloped than that side. And so I'll have them, you know, we'll do our eval at the very end. I always have them have a snack and they have to do different things. For me. It's really silly. And I'm like, okay, we're going to chew it up and right before you swallow, open your mouth and show me your tongue. And sure enough, it's either scattered everywhere or it's all the way on that one side where they chew. Right. So you know, when you start to realize that this is also interrelated and that mouth breathing, if the mouth is hinged open and the muscle are not activated properly and they're not being used properly. Of course that's going to impact sleep when they're sleeping and what their mouth does when they're sleeping, it's going to impact how they chew, how they swallow, how they speak. It's incredible. I've received patients that have been in years of speech therapy and they could not correct certain sounds. And then we do my. I basically tell the parent, look, you know, one, your child, usually they have a pretty severe tongue tie if that's the case. Not always, but, you know, like, we've got a myofunctional disorder here, and there's a pretty significant tongue tie at play as well. And we need to see, like, I don't know if we need a procedure or not. Let's, let's work through this for a couple weeks and let's see what happens first. But when we get to the point of trying the program out and parents really like sitting here like, okay, here's another speech pathologist telling me they were going to fix the problem. And then the child actually starts to improve and the parent is like, oh, my gosh, wow. And the child has now graduated out of my office after six months. And that could even include a frenectomy. Right. And we've now got him eating better, he's sleeping better, he's speaking clearly. And these are sometimes teenagers who sound like they are in kindergarten because of how severely impacted their speech sounds are. They're really hard to understand. And that also then ties into social, emotional. Right. It's much more farther reaching than everything we talked about. There is that mental health piece that I know we alluded to much earlier on, and we didn't really talk about that, but the mental health piece of how they appear and how they, you know, making friends, how easy it is to make friends. If people can't understand you or you're a really messy eater with food all over your face, you're probably not going to be the most popular kid in school. And we've had a lot of kids who, you know, we've just seen such a change just in a matter of weeks to a couple of months, all of a sudden they're. They're more energetic, they're more outgoing, they're more confident. And so I think, and even adults, I work with, adults who, you know, it's impacted all kinds of things for adults. I had one realtor come to me who said, I just want to be able to say my wedding vows without being tired. And she had. It was 10am when I assessed her and she said, I've had one client call this morning, I've had a cup of coffee, I'm here. I am physically exhausted, like, I can't talk anymore. And I was like, it is 10am in the morning. Like, that's not okay. And she's been living her whole life like this. And so after the procedure, then it, you know, came. She was like, oh my gosh. Like, I didn't know what I was missing. Because you just learn to live with what you live with. You don't know until somebody brings it to light. And so, you know, I think that while we're talking about like a product that might seem so tiny, you know, it's this tiny little thing that goes in your mouth and we're trying to achieve nasal breathing and trying to get you healthier. I think that the actual impact on life and mental health and just, you know, full body health is just, it's so far reaching. And when people start to realize that, I think that, you know, it will become more of a mainstream conversation.

100%. I think you're right. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of, like what Ibrahim was saying. There's a lot of really high quality research out there that makes all those links like altered speech. There's some high quality research to show the link between mouth breathing and altered speech. There's another paper out there that talks about the oxygen deprivation to your prefrontal cortex mouth breathing. And when you got oxygen deprivation because of that, then, well, you're predisposed to attention issues, concentration issues. There are research papers that link ADHD to mouth breathing. And so even though it looks like we're doing, you're doing something small by getting into nasal breathe, well, the ramifications are huge. And so that's a very, very important point as well that you mentioned. But to tie it in with the tongue elevation, well, the moment your tongue is elevated and on the spot, it's hard to actually mouth breathe because once your tongue is up the roof of your mouth, you pull that whole structure up and once that whole structure goes up, your lips come together and you start nasal breathing. And there's even research paper to show the correlation between tongue elevation to the roof of your mouth, an increase in physical strength, and it's measurable. We're talking like 30% increase in physical strength. And there are papers to actually support that. And that's amazing. So, like what you said, it's very small. It looks like you're doing something very Small, but the actual effects are huge. And it can change people's lives. We all used to be nays, I believe anyway. I personally believe that you go back a thousand years, the vast majority of people were nasal breathing. And now we're talking about it could be as high as 50% of people are at some time, mouth breathing. And so that's something that, that's a problem, right? It needs to be fixed.

It's a huge problem. And you know, what I've been trying to do a lot of education on is educating parents of infants. Because we know that the swallow develops by 12 weeks in utero. And so that's happening by the end of the first trimester. That's the swallow you have already in utero. You're born with it. Well, if this baby pops out and the mouth is open, there's things we can do early on to guide that jaw closed and guide the tongue up in the mouth. And it's, you know, if we can do that with infants and hopefully decrease, you know, over time. Who needs myofunctional therapy come age four? That's huge. And so, yeah, we try to do a lot of education on, in the infant space, especially for the therapists who are getting these babies and working with them. Because one thing that I realized was, number one, in the United States, there just are not enough universities that teach how to even do pediatric feeding. And so we created the 12 week course. And then when we created that, I pulled in other specialists that work in arenas that I do not specialize in within that space. And my specialty is tongue tie and myo. And so I said the other thing that nobody's teaching is what do we do with these kids who already have dysphagia and they're having trouble breastfeeding and bottle feeding and parents are just at their wits end. Nobody's talking about their tongue or their airway, like their mouth. We're talking about feeding. I don't get it. Why is nobody teaching this? So we included a module on tots and a module on Maya within this 12 week course. And you know, everybody's like, whoa, this just makes so much sense. And I'm like, if we approach this more holistically, like we're not doing like traditional myofunctional therapy on these babies. No, we're learning, like, what is the goal? Well, the goal is tongue up on the palate, you know, tongue on the spot, mouth closed, nasal breathe. And if we can get a baby to do that, how much better their feedback. Feeding is probably going to be, you know, it's just we really have to look at it from, from birth, from in utero, because like you said, you know, going way back, this wasn't an issue. But now that we are so, you know, with epigenetics and how over industrialized things have become and how we, at least you know, in the US Everybody's eating such processed foods and things that are broken down. It's. We're having a collapse of airways, a collapse of the jaws, you know, and so that's, you know, I, I have my whole family going into appliances, but I know that's not typical of everybody out there. And that was the funny thing about this podcast was I went to go find the podcast. I was like, there's gotta be a podcast on this and I can learn more about and listen. And it didn't exist. And I was like, oh, man, now I gotta create this. So, you know, it's been really fun for me because I get to meet a lot of people in the space and have really amazing conversations and learn from. From others in this space. But it's also been really inspiring and fulfilling to me as well, because now I have parents who are starting to listen to the podcast and my parents contact me going, I've listened to all of the episodes. I'm like, you've listened to all the episodes? I don't even re. Listen to the episodes. I mean, I have the conversations, but they're like, yeah, so where do I find somebody that can do this for me? And I'm like, okay, this is very exciting that this is where this is leading to. And I'm like, if I can be that, that networking person, that connector for families to start to get the help that they need for their children or for themselves as adults. You know, I'm like, my work here is done. And I think that's very much so in alignment with, you know, the purpose behind your product. And I think that it's fantastic to have these options to share with families.

Yeah, that's so cool what you're doing. You're moving the. Moving, empowering the parents and general public rather than sort of giving it, keeping it in a very small domain. That's fantastic because that's what we want to do as well. We want to get everybody to know about this. There shouldn't be a hidden knowledge. People should know straight away, okay, there is an issue.

My intention was like, professionals need to know about this, which they still do, right? We still need to get this out to all the professionals. It's really cool, too, for families to come, come and be like, well, I was listening to this podcast and I heard this specialist say this. And so I'm wondering, like, you know, why aren't you doing this? Like asking a doctor or asking a professional?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good.

The families can advocate for themselves now and they can really, you know, start to understand the reasoning behind why we're telling them what we want them to do. And so, yeah, so thank you guys so much for creating this product. I'm excited about it. I know it's going to go far, and I can't wait to see where it is even a year from now, because my kids are obsessed with their vitamins in the morning. So for me to maybe even give them something like this and be like, hey, let's try this vitamin and stick it in the top of their mouth and see what they do with it. I'd love to try all those out when you guys get to that point. That's very cool.

Great. Yeah, we're looking forward to that as well. Thanks for that, for doing this.

One last thing, Hallie, A quick message that we would actually love to deliver through your podcast is, as we said, that the best way to standardize a protocol of treatment is actually to do proper research and bring it to people research. And as you said, we, of course, like everyone else, is trying to protect his own intellectual property. But we are, we are encouraging actually everyone who is interested to take part in research from his own expertise to do it. And we are so happy to provide all type of support and help. We can do so, as we said, because nasal breathing and the complication of mouth breathing actually overlap with many areas. So everyone can take it from his own area of expertise and actually dig deeper to get actually the bottom of it and how actually he can. How much benefit he can get out of it. So, for example, I'll just give one a quick example. And I know that this is one of the big public health issues is antibiotic overuse. So when we talk about chronic inflammation of tonsils and adenoids in children, which actually is highly associated and linked to mouth breathing. So once you correct, go back to the root. Once you correct this, instead of having 10 to 12 infection episodes throughout the year, they can drop down to one or two. So you improve the health, you limit the use of antibiotics, you minimize the chances of having antibiotic resistance to develop. So we can talk actually four hours about the potential benefits. But again, it needs all to go through proper research. So again, we are so happy it's a product for everyone to use, and whoever is interested in doing research on the product in every area in any application, we are happy to get in touch with and facilitate things for him and probably give advice whenever needed.

Fantastic. Well, what we will do is make sure that MYO Spot's website is included. Included in the show notes. Is there any particular way you want them to get in touch with you? Is it through the website? Or is there a different way also.

For the Instagram account?

Perfect. Okay, so we'll include the Instagram account and the website. I have those both here in the show notes. And that way, if they're interested in doing any research and connecting with you on that, I'm sure that you'll get some inquiries. I know that we do have a lot of research nerds that listen to this podcast. We will definitely share that. The other thing I will say, too, is that we recently started this MYO membership, this monthly thing, so I'll share it in there as well and let them all know if anybody's interested in doing some research that, you know, you guys would love to connect with them on that front. I think, look, I'm all for it. The more research there is out there to support, you know, what we're saying, and hopefully that will be the driving factor to get more professionals on board. Because I know they're all looking for those, you know, random control trials, and they want that level one, level two research. And sometimes that can be. Can be trickier, depending on the population you're working with and what you're trying to. The research design and what you're trying to, you know, to prove. But the one thing you said that, you know, has not been well received by American myofunctional therapists is that, you know, the. My own daughter, for example, had size 3, 3 plus tonsils right before she went into her ALS appliance. And as the expansion started to happen, I noticed that the tissues started to shrink. And so I made a comment in a Facebook group of myofunctionals of myofunctional therapists, and I got, like, my head ripped off. Take that post down. There is no research to support this. This doesn't happen. And I'm going, what do you mean, this doesn't happen? She used to breathe through her mouth. She had hugely inflamed tonsils. Like, you could see veins running through them. But she was never a kid who really got sick, so they didn't want to remove them. The ENT said, oh, his words were, they're unimpressive. And I was like, I'm very impressed by those tonsils because I'm very concerned about how much they're blocking her airway. And I'm also very concerned about the fact that maybe her adenoids are also enlarged. If her tonsils are that severely enlarged, they weren't kissing. But I'm like, we all know that narrows the airway. So she went into that ALF appliance. She did not get sick once last winter. The tonsils went down. They're still down. So they're maybe like a size 2 now, but they're like a size 2. And they don't look inflamed. They look like they're just kind of hanging back there. And I'm like, I'm okay with that. Because her airway is large enough now we know that she can nasal breathe. She's sleeping with her mouth closed. She sits passive activities with her mouth closed during the day. The tongue is up. And so I'm confident that we're good now. Right. But I also know that that had to do with the combination of the oral appliance and the orofacial myology together. So, anyways, all that to say, I would love to see, you know, research in that area, because that's just. It's been hard to get, even the myofunctional therapists who see this in their practices on board with actually believing that, you know, the tissue inflammation is related to mouth breathing.

Was there mouth breathing in that situation?

So she was. It wasn't severe. It wasn't like a drop jaw with, like, severe mouth breathing. But she was definitely, you know, her mouth was always slightly open. And when you go into preschools, I mean, it's a cesspool. Like it is. Just there's a lot of germs that you. You experience. And so she was constantly getting sick, but not getting sick to the point where they wanted to put her on antibiotics all the time.

I'll send you through a couple of papers that indirectly support what you're saying. One of them shows that the inflammatory mediators are higher. Now we're talking about two or three times fold higher in mouth breathers versus nasal breathers. So you get actual. You get a drop in inflammatory mediators the moment you start nasal breathing. And inflammation as, you know, inflamed. That's why they call it inflamed tonsils, because they're inflamed because of inflammation. So that's one issue. The other thing is that palatal expansion has been shown to increase the volume of air going through your nose. And that just increasing the volume of air, I mean creates like your fascia starts to move and start. So we remove and recontour. That has a huge effect as well. And the last point was the nitric oxide that has anti inflammatory effects in itself and it does cause some vasodilation in some areas in your lungs and it may even cause vasoconstriction in some other areas related to your tonsils. So put all that together, you can make an argument that your tonsils can get smaller in some situations by starting to use your, if you, if you're able to starting to use your nose more often. So I'll send you those papers, Sophie, if you run into those people again, you can actually say here you go, have a look at these. What do you think now? Yeah, you do need more research to specifically look at that. But there is a lot of evidence that's starting to show a different picture about nasal breathing versus mouth breathing. For sure.

I love it. That's fantastic. Made my day. I mean it's, you know, you know what you see in your patients, you know, what you see in your own child. Right. But until sometimes there's that physical evidence and you've written in a journal somewhere to support what you're seeing or saying, you, you're always going to catch people who disagree with what you have and even when the research is there. So sometimes they disagree. But you know, with running this group that we're running now, one pillar, one of the four pillars is pulling together research reviews for our members so that we are actually I've got a couple myofunctional therapists who are also speech pathologists who we're trying, whatever the monthly topic is, we're trying to source research related to the monthly topic so that we can review it for them, tell them what level of evidence it is. You know, really just tell them like this is what they did in the study, this is all what the results were. And that way when we do come up against other providers or even parents, we can say, well here's a nice one sheet explanation of this research article and this research article and this one. Because I just think that if we can make more sense of the research that's out there and try to integrate it and pull it together, that's really going to help everybody. So I would love to see those articles.

Yeah, we'll send them through.

Thank you. Thank you. Any last words? This has been fantastic.

No, really, look, I'd Just like to thank you and thank everybody who listens that we really appreciate that you're bringing the word out there for not just my spots, but all types of holistic approaches to trying to, you know, improve the health of children through nasal breathing and mouth breathe. Like, you know, reducing mouth breathing and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, we really appreciate this. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I appreciate it as well.

Thank you. Maddie. Thanks. Thanks a lot for having us.

You are more than welcome. 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 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 @hallebulckenbiz, on Instagram @hallebulcken. 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.