I am sure you can see I take this breathing thing pretty seriously! Things you maybe didn’t know about.
Did you know that your tongue posture is important for facial development and a nice wide hard palate?
Not only so your teeth have enough room to fit in your mouth but more importantly, so you can breathe! If we don’t have our tongue on the roof of the mouth, our hard palate will become narrow and there will not be enough room for our teeth to fit.
An even bigger problem is not being able to breathe through your nose.
Let me tell you about my Dad.
We used to get into a debate about this from time to time. He used to say: “No, no, you were just born with too many teeth in your mouth!”
Unfortunately, this was one of the times my Dad was wrong!
As I started to take a huge interest in this, I later learned that my jaw, teeth, and nasal congestion stemmed from my not breathing properly at a young age.
I didn’t have enough room in my mouth for all my teeth, and my hard palate didn’t have a chance to form properly.
The lower jaw got in on the action to create space by moving forward to try to open the airway.
If my parents had not intervened, I would have been stuck looking like the Tasmanian Devil (as my mother once told me).
Why?
First of all the body is great at adjusting and attempting to keep us safe.
Since I had poor tongue posture and was not breathing through my nose.
I suffered from allergies, wheezing, and congestion as a kid.
I remember coughing and wheezing so bad that I would throw up! It made it challenging to play sports, and I felt nervous every time a wheez would happen.
Knowing what I know now, I am convinced I did not breathe properly.
If you’re not keeping your tongue on the roof of your mouth and are a mouth breather, you are changing how your face looks.
You will most definitely have crooked teeth, grind your teeth, loose and moving teeth, congestion, and potential health conditions down the line.
Our dentist and orthodontist friends can help create a wider hard palate and help straighten our teeth but, in the meantime, we better ensure we have good tongue posture and can breathe through the nose properly.
So the next time someone tells you that you have too many teeth in your mouth.
Call their bluff.
It is not that we have too many teeth in our mouth. We just don’t have the room!