Hi Everyone and welcome or welcome back to my YouTube channel! My name is Priya Mistry and I'm
the TMJ doc! Today's video is about tongue tie, nasal breathing, airway, and TMJ. Yes, it sounds
like a lot but they are all related! Do you wake up multiple times at night? Do you ever wake up
gasping for air? Do you wake up feeling unrested and groggy and tired in the mornings? Do you find
that you breathe more through your mouth instead of through your nose? Are you prone to headaches,
jaw pain, neck pain, jaw joint noises, or ear related symptoms - like ear pain, stuffy ears,
vertigo? Do you have clicking or popping in your jaw or has your jaw ever locked? There's likely a
connection between all these symptoms, and if you watch the video until the end you will understand
why! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Priya Mistry and I'm a General Dentist with
a practice dedicated to taking care of patients with TMJ Disorders. My practice is in beautiful
Portland, Oregon and I'm creating these videos as a way to just get some more information out there.
So let's get right into it! Underneath our tongues is a band of tissue called the frenum. The frenum
attaches the tongue to the floor of the mouth and if this attachment is too tight or restrictive,
then this is called a tongue tie. I have other videos on tongue ties,
so please be sure to check those out if you want to explore this topic further - and just what
a tongue tie is in general. If the tongue does not have the freedom of mobility that it needs
to rest in its proper position - which is up against the roof of the mouth with a
light suction - then the roof of the mouth or the palate will probably not grow to its full
genetic potential, particularly in children when the bones are soft and moldable and still growing.
So what does this mean? Take a look at these two images as they help explain this more.
In one image, where the tongue has rested up against the roof of the mouth, you can see that
the roof of the mouth or the palate has developed nice and wide and shallow as it should. When the
palate is nice and wide and shallow, then the arch can accommodate all of the teeth without crowding.
When the tongue rests against the floor of the mouth - where it's not supposed to be - it's
not putting pressure up against the roof of the mouth. It's not allowing it to grow nice and wide,
so instead what happens is that the roof of the mouth becomes arched and narrow - and when
it's arched and narrow and vaulted, what ends up happening is that the teeth also become crowded.
There's not enough room to accommodate them. Not only that, but the roof of the mouth is the floor
of the nose - so if the roof of the mouth/floor of the nose is arched or vaulted, what that does is
it puts pressure on the nasal septum causing it to deviate. When this happens, it's harder to breathe
through the nose than if the septum weren't deviated. When the tongue rests on the floor
of the mouth, it encourages mouth breathing over nasal breathing. If your tongue is in the proper
resting position - up, against the roof of the mouth - you literally cannot breathe through your
mouth so that means you are nose breathing, which is the correct way to breathe. Nasal breathing is
much better for us and this is because our noses have a very special filtration system that warms
the oxygen as it comes in, and also funnels it so it's used more effectively and more efficiently
in our bodies. If you breathe through your mouth, this filtration system is skipped
and so mouth breathers have to breathe much more oxygen that's then used much less efficiently.
Another thing that makes us breathe through our mouths is allergies. If we have allergies as
we're growing, what ends up happening is that our adenoids and our tonsils become enlarged, making
it almost impossible to breathe through our noses. Us humans are highly capable of adapting and so if
we can't breathe through our noses, we then adapt and develop a low tongue posture to allow us to
breathe through our mouths - if we already don't have that low tongue posture from a tongue tie.
Again this leads to the roof of the mouth becoming narrow and arched instead of wide and flat. When
the roof of the mouth - the maxilla -is too narrow and arched, what happens is that it doesn't allow
the mandible to move down and forward to its full genetic potential. So this forward growth that
we need cannot happen - either the upper arch or the lower arch. If the upper arch is too narrow,
when the mandible - this jaw here - is held too far back, when it doesn't grow forward
to its full genetic potential, the little disk of tissue within the Temporomandibular Joint
can then become more easily displaced. If the mandible -this whole jawbone - is too far back,
that lends itself to problems within the Temporomandibular Joint, within the TMJ itself.
This animation displays this pretty clearly. The disc is blue in this animation and you can
see when it's slightly displaced, it will lead to clicking and popping. So that's essentially
the condyle, the bony knob that our mandible terminates on, coming on and off that disc
is the click, pop, click, pop, click, pop. When the disc becomes totally displaced, it leads to
the jaw locking which is a condition that's very painful where you can barely open more than one
or two finger-widths. It's not a fun thing to go through. I have a video on the jaw being locked
closed as well, so if you guys want to check that out go ahead. Another video you may want to watch
is my "Jaw Joint Noises - Snap, Crackle, Pop!" as it goes more into detail about those noises,
how they happen, what they mean, etc. When the jaw is too far back and the disc in the
joint is displaced, this puts the muscles of our head and jaw and even the muscles of our neck
into a highly compensated position. So these muscles are not in their happy place - they're
compensating, they're trying to make up for what's wrong with the rest of the unit essentially.
And this can lead to a lot of different symptoms with number one being headache,
closely followed by ear related concerns - ear pain, stuffy ears, vertigo. It can
lead to jaw pain, neck pain, so many different things because these muscles already know that
something is wrong. Our bodies are wonderful at understanding that something's wrong, so it can
lead a lot of us to clench or grind our teeth to then bring the mandible into the proper position.
This clenching and grinding can lead to teeth fracturing, which can then lead to a whole host
of other symptoms - infections, tooth pain, etc. I know I went through a lot, but I'm hoping that the
information in this video is helpful to those that are struggling or just looking for more answers to
their own conditions. If you learned something or liked what you heard, click "Like" below. I'm
always available to answer questions so go ahead and question in the comment box below. Please
SUBSCRIBE to my channel if you haven't already and remember - you can never have TMI about TMJ!