Wendie Trubow, MD, MBA, IFMCPPresident at Five Journeys, Functional Medicine & Wellness Provider, Best Selling Author, Passionate Champion for Health

Why Nasal Breathing Starts With Jaw Development

26 May 2026 · 1 min

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1:03

In this brief educational monologue, Dr. Wendie Trubow explains that the conventional orthodontic approach of applying braces around age 12 merely aligns teeth but fails to address underlying jaw growth, muscular development, and breathing patterns. She argues that intervening earlier to support proper jaw development creates the anatomical space needed for consistent nasal breathing, which in turn improves sleep quality and overall health. Conversely, smaller jaws often lead to crowded teeth and force mouth breathing, a habit she describes as unhealthy both day and night. The speaker emphasizes that focusing on jaw growth, rather than waiting for later orthodontic correction, is the key to fostering a healthier child.

Chapters

Why are we having this conversation? What's, what's important about it? Yeah, there is a big difference. So doing the traditional model of braces at 12 and above does work on the teeth and it can make your teeth straight. Like, that works, but it's not addressing the jaw growth or the muscles or the breathing. And so the why is that if we help the child earlier and get involved with jaw growth, as the jaws grow, we breathe better. And if we breathe better, we sleep better. And if we sleep better, we're healthier. So that's kind of the short story, but the big difference is between nose breathing and mouth breathing. So we want a child to nasal breathe day and night. That's where you have your pathway to optimal health. But in order to nasal breathe, we need the jaws to be the right size. When our jaws are smaller, we might see crowded teeth, but when the jaws are smaller, it's hard to breathe through the nose. And when it's hard to breathe through the nose, you breathe through your mouth. Day or night mouth breathing is very unhealthy. So yeah, the why is You can have a healthy child through jaw growth and development that leads to nasal breathing. Whereas if we waited until 12 and just get the teeth straight, all we have is straight teeth, but we might still have the same unhealthy child behind the scenes.