Unlocking Health: The Power of Proper Breathing
Welcome to the Counter Culture Health podcast. I'm doctor Jen McWaters. And I'm coach Kaitlin Reed. We're here to help high achieving women overcome mental blocks, find freedom from anxiety, create an abundant life, and build the body and life that they deserve and desire. In this weekly podcast, we'll uncover the raw truth about mental health, nutrition, fitness, and beyond. Let's get to it.
Jen:Hey, guys. Welcome back to Counter Culture Health. Today, we have a wonderful guest with us, Allison Schmidt. Allison is a speech language pathologist in Eagle, Idaho specializing in myofunctional therapy for children and adults. Her work focuses on identifying and treating orofacial myofunctional disorders that contribute to issues such as mouth breathing, tongue ties, snoring, sleep disordered breathing, swallowing difficulties, jaw pain, headaches, and persistent speech errors.
Jen:These challenges can impact sleep health and overall well-being. So Allison's business, her company is called Modern Speech and Myofunctional Therapy, and she takes a holistic collaborative approach. She works alongside functional medicine providers, dentists, ENTs, and other specialists to ensure comprehensive care. And by addressing the root cause of OMDs rather than just the symptoms, Allison's goal is to help clients achieve long term improvements in breathing, speech, and whole body health. So, Allison, welcome to our podcast.
Allison:Thank you. I'm so excited to be here today.
Jen:We are so excited to have you. Allison is a friend of mine and also will soon be actually treating my son as well. She's so expert in her field and what she does and really passionate about this topic. So we're so excited to have her on today. So to get us started, Allison, question the first question we have for you is what is it about your approach that you think makes you countercultural?
Jen:Kind of tying in with our theme here with the podcast. We just like knowing, you know, how do you feel like you think differently and practice differently than what the mainstream Western medicine approach is out there to these topics and concerns?
Allison:Yeah. Really, I think myofunctional therapy, just that alone is counterculture because we're really focusing on root causes versus, you know, the typical medications, short term fixes. Myofunctional therapy takes a preventative and holistic approach, So we don't really subscribe more to, like, the pharma side of things. I'm not encouraging my clients to take a pill for like, pop an Advil for their headache. Like, we wanna know why is that happening.
Allison:So we really address dysfunction before disease. So we're proactive, train muscles to work correctly. And sometimes when you get it early enough, you can just prevent those kind of complications that OMDs, orofacial myofunctional disorders, you know, symptoms of that. But if you already have an OMD and then you're experiencing those symptoms rather than those quick fixes or those traditional the traditional way of, like, fixing things like headaches or poor sleep. Like, we're not we're not gonna be doing NyQuil or anything like that.
Allison:We need to figure out why is this happening and then start retraining the muscles and, you know, create new neuromuscular patterns for long term correction.
Jen:Wow. So interesting.
Kaitlin:I know. I'm super excited for this conversation because it's something that I don't know a lot about. So I'm just gonna sit here and soak it in too with all the listeners.
Jen:This will be helpful, Caitlin, actually, because Caitlin is well, can you share what's
Kaitlin:Well, sure. Yeah. I am expecting. So, yeah, good things to just, like, look out for and be mindful of and pay attention to no signs, symptoms, all of those things. So this will be good.
Jen:It definitely was not on my radar until I had my son. And then in this whole world of opened up to me, it's fascinating. I think, Miles, maybe you can speak to this. I feel like most moms don't know about this until they have a child who has a tongue tie or speech issues or reading difficulties. That's kind of my whole way of dipping into this world.
Jen:So it's kind of more up and coming. Right? Like, just this whole area and, like, awareness of it.
Allison:Yeah. I would say the awareness of this has exploded. I always say and I used to say ten years. Now I think five years. In five years, no one's not going to know about the impact of myofunctional therapy.
Allison:And for listeners who don't know, like, really what we're looking for when we talk about symptoms of myofunctional therapy, a big one is just mouth breathing. So low tongue posture, your tongue being low. Just so the rest of this podcast makes sense, like the material that we're going over, your correct oral rest posture should be tongue tip up, suctioned on your hard palate, and teeth closed or like hovering the mothers the molars hovering over each other and lips closed. So that leaves your nose to be working. You should be nasal breathing.
Allison:So if you can't do that for a plethora of reasons that we can get to, if you can't nasal breathe, then naturally your tongue posture is low because you're breathing through your mouth, and that just wreaks havoc on our bodies. So when we talk about like normal breathing, the culture says normal breathing could be through your mouth, but it's really not. That's not functional breathing. So we need to be breathing through our nose. And when we're not, we go down this spiral of why are we not doing this.
Allison:Is this structure based? Do we have, like, a tongue tie, or is this habit based? Have we just always breathe through our mouth? And, usually, it's not just habit based. We create the habit because there's something deeper going on.
Allison:Root cause. Right?
Kaitlin:Always. Yes. So fascinating. So how did you even get into this field in practice? Like, what what steered you in this direction, and why are you so passionate about it?
Allison:Well, this is sort of a loaded answer. When I was a kid, I always loved all things medical. You know, you know, like, a lot of little kids wanna be a doctor when you grow up. Mhmm. I don't think I love the amount of school it's going to take to be a doctor.
Allison:So I kinda landed on being a paramedic firefighter. I was really passionate about that because I have a little at the time, maybe, I'm, you know, a mother of two now, but at the time, I've had a wild bone in my body and was into just the adrenaline of what our wonderful firefighters do, but also the medical side of it. Like, the paramedic side of it was just so fascinating. So I became an EMT. EMTs are, like, the people that respond in the ambulances and are usually alongside the fire department first on scene.
Allison:So I responded to a lot of 911 calls. And as you can imagine, you see, like, heart attacks and stroke and traumatic injuries and everything in between. And one of my patients I responded to was well, he had a pretty severe stroke, and so he wasn't able to respond to my partner and I or the firefighters that came after. And so, you know, you take him to the hospital and to the ER and transfer care to the ER nurses. And so fast forward months later, I'm doing an interfacility transfer that just means we're dropping one patient off from one medical facility to another.
Allison:So in that transfer, I see that patient that we had responded to that had that stroke. And he was in a session with a woman, and I was kinda like, what what are they doing? And I found out later that she was a speech language pathologist, and she was helping him regain his communication. And I was thinking, oh my gosh. That is so cool.
Allison:That is really, really cool to be able to help someone talk after that kind of injury. And I knew it had to do with the brain. Like, that's pretty common sense. Right? Like, we have to work with the brain to reconnect those synapses and try to, you know, get as much communication as we can.
Allison:So I went home, talked to my parents. I still lived at home at the time, and they were like, you should go for it. My mom encouraged me a lot and sort of planted the seed of this could be something you'd be really good at. So I quit my job as an EMT and went full force on academia, really, in getting my bachelor's in speech language pathology. And then as soon as I graduated with that, went straight into my master's program.
Allison:So when you are going through that program, you have to have supervised clinical hours. And it was my last clinical rotation. This is all during COVID era. It was really difficult to get the clinical rotations that you need for your hours. So I cold called so many clinics just begging them to take me on as a student so that they I could get my hours.
Allison:And this one woman in Orange County, that's where I had grown up, took me on, and she said, I specialize in orofacial myofunctional therapy. This isn't gonna be your typical placement. And I said, sign me up. Like, that doesn't matter. I just need the hours.
Allison:But it was such a blessing because I just fell in love with it. She was a wealth of information, introduction, and I knew I was moving to Boise. We were building a house here to move. And so I looked into clinics here that specialize in myofunctional therapy, and that just took off. So yeah, I'm in love with this specialty.
Allison:It's all I really want to be doing in the realm of speech language pathology just because it's so rewarding. You see people's lives change in a matter of several months, granted that there's the compliance and they're committed and there's the buy in. It's just amazing because you have adults who have suffered through chronic illness and are uncomfortable. A lot of the times they're in pain. And then you have children who are angry and have behavioral problems and are sleepy and maybe even have what people think picky eating is, but really their body just their tongue knows that food's unsafe, so it rejects it.
Allison:So, anyway, you can just remediate all of those things. I'm sure I hope I'm painting the picture of how impactful this is. It spreads so wide in what orofacial myofunctional therapy can treat. So, yeah, as soon as I just saw my clients thriving, I said, this is it. I've gotta really pour my whole self into this.
Kaitlin:That's so neat. Were you were you, like, very holistic before or not until you went to work with that woman and kinda saw the other side of you know, because EMT, you know, that's more western. You're right. Yeah. And then kind of going into the more, like, functional holistic side of things.
Allison:I've definitely refined my preference to be integrative and holistic and functional medicine more since really diving into speech language pathology, but I will say I'm kind of the black sheep in the SLP world, and I'm not that shy about it because I feel pretty passionate about the things that I do stand for, and that existed before I entered my, you know, bachelor's program and master's program. So, no, I I think I have always had a pretty healthy balance of western and, well, you call it eastern medicine. So or, like, really holistic. I've I think I've been more holistic minded, but I definitely didn't know as much as I know now. It just sort of adds fuel to that fire to keep that going.
Jen:And you hinted at this a little bit, Allison. We talked a little bit about how the awareness has gone up, and it's exploding as a field. So tell us more about why is airway health so important and how it impacts our whole body system? Because it could be you know, I've heard run into adults like, oh, I just mouth breathe. It's just like they accept it.
Jen:Right? And they might have mouth breathe for two, three decades, and they're like, oh, it just is what it is. And I think that in the past, that was probably the case too. It's like, oh, my kid, it's cute that they snore. They mouth breathe or do this.
Jen:So why is it so important, and how does it impact our whole body system always?
Allison:Yeah. Well, it's important because you hit on airway. Right? We need to have a healthy airway system to have filtered oxygen to our brains, and we do that through breathing through our nose. And when you're breathing through your mouth, there's a lot of structural changes that occur in the face.
Allison:So narrow palates, crowded teeth, poor facial growth. We should be growing out and forward. Our face is growing out, like, wide and forward in front of us. Right? But many times when we have, for structural or habit reasons, a tongue like mouth breathing, our tongue is low, and so our faces grow long and narrow.
Allison:And that's really not typical. You don't see our ancestors with that kind of face structure, and a lot of that has to do with I think we'll get into this, but a lot of it has to do with the modern changes in our air quality and our food. So mouth breathing, that in itself is it alters your jaw development and your teeth. So when, as I said in the beginning, our tongues are supposed to be up on the top of the roof of our mouth, like our hard palate. Right?
Allison:So that acts as a natural retainer and widens our palate to have this nice broad dome shaped hard palate. But if our tongue is down, we just wind up having that growth be narrow, narrow, higher, higher. So really the floor of our nose is the I always mix this up. The the roof of the hard palate of our mouth, our upper palate, is the floor of our nasal cavity. So you're encroaching on the square footage in your nasal passages when your jaw is upper jaw, when your upper jaw is not growing in a wide and forward growth pattern.
Allison:If it's just growing up higher and higher, you're encroaching on that space, and then it causes reason like, causes the inability to breathe through your nose, which then, you know, you breathe through your mouth. So structural changes to like, in summary, just to answer that structural changes are big when we have OMDs, and that leads to sleep disordered breathing patterns. So sleep apnea, obstructive sleep apnea is huge in my field. A lot of adults come to me with that hoping for hoping we can do something to relieve that, and we can. I was just reading an article that says something like fifth you can receive up to fifty percent reduction in severity of obstructive sleep apnea when you undergo myofunctional therapy, which is huge, and that was, like, a legitimate study.
Allison:And then untreated airway can also result in cognitive and behavioral problems. So touched on this earlier too. When you're a kid and you're just exhausted, I guess adults too, right? I'm I'm a little crabby when I'm exhausted. But if you're just chronically tired, especially as a child, you're gonna exhibit difficulty focusing, and that gets caught up into, like, ADHD type diagnosis, but it's not legitimate.
Allison:It's really more of a sleep disordered breathing problem. So I think that answered
Jen:Yeah.
Allison:That oh, and how do you do you treat it? That was the other part of it. Right? Okay. So what is it?
Allison:Why is it important? Then how do you treat it? Well, you treat it by retraining the muscles of the tongue, lips, and face, and then that optimizes your breathing and oral function.
Jen:It's so fascinating you mentioned the ADHD because of that is, I feel like in my field, so misunderstood. Like, we don't really quite get what it is and all the things that go into it, and it probably there's probably even, like, subtypes for all I know. Even in my, you know, area of field, I feel people will debate it. Like, what is it really? Is it more anxiety?
Jen:Is it more this? And to your point, there's also this physiological piece I think we really miss with kids because often the first step is go to school counselor, and then they go to a psychologist and or psychiatrist, and they get medicated. But no one's assessing airway. No one's assessing their diet, their nutritional deficiencies. And interesting to you, you mentioned how the issues with the airway and palate could impact even the food they eat.
Jen:So it's like you have to do all of it. You have to look at it from that lens because I, you know, I also obviously lean holistic and towards, you know, less medicine as possible. And to do that, we have to have that full picture. And I think there's a lot of people that are probably medicated and kids, especially that don't need to be if we are able to optimize these other areas of their health. But it's just there's the knowledge is still so limited, and we're trained in silos.
Jen:We struggle with that. Right? Even me, it's like every time I, like, talk to a guest or read, I'm like, wow. I know so little about this. I'm like, okay.
Jen:Expanding my knowledge more. But we really do need to have somehow hold all that to be able to effectively treat a client. Right? Because we don't fully know what's walking into our door. And they might show up first to Allison's office, but they actually might need x y z.
Jen:They might need nutrition. And then and they might show up at the nutritionist's office or psychiatrist's office, but need Allison. And so, anyway, just a sidebar thought there, but I think it's so fascinating how it plays into the mental health category as well for people.
Allison:Yeah. I really love that sidebar because it just relates so much to really everyday life in my office with my clients. I it's not just me that's working with these clients. When they come in, I can't I can't help them in to the best of my abilities until I rope in other providers. And, you know, here in our area, we are just so lucky to have so many integrative providers and functional medicine providers, and those are my go to.
Allison:Like the referral out to them helped me immensely because it's oftentimes so like, say, so much of my goal is nasal breathing. Right? But if you have nasal obstruction, I can't help you with that. I really can't. So I have to put a referral out to could be an allergist.
Allison:Do you have dietary sensitivities that are causing inflammation in the body? Do you have structural issues? Do you a deviated septum? Do we I mean, that's gonna be a little bit harder to fix there. But, you know, can you do other things like a nasal rinse hygiene type regimen to combat some of that inflammation in the nose.
Allison:Turbinates are these little little balls in your nose. That's what I call them or, you know, explain to clients. You can see them inside of your nose. And if they're large and inflamed, that needs to go down because it's blocking your nasal passage. So that falls into, like, ear, nose, throat category, and that's very much not my scope, but I utilize these providers that are just incredible to all really achieve the same goal, get our clients to the best health that we can.
Jen:Yeah. And then just as a to the moms out there, I just wanna say, like, I I know the frustration that can come with that because on one side, you know, as on the professional side, I'm like, I can't know everything. I have to refer out. Like, I have to rely on other people. I just can't go and get five doctorates, you know, and know everything.
Jen:I wish I could. On the mom's side, it's frustrating because you it's so much work, and it's exhausting to go to, like, five different people to treat seemingly one issue with your child. And so I totally also wanna just validate the frustration with that that you can't really find a one stop shop most of the time for these struggles. Just wanna encourage moms just to be patient and just, like, keep going and don't give up. But finding working with someone who's already holistic helps because they have that network of holistic providers to reach out to.
Jen:And, again, it just it might take different approaches to really help your child in in order to help you.
Allison:Yeah. I like the oh, go ahead.
Kaitlin:No. Go ahead.
Allison:I like that you can empathize with the frustration of parents too because it is exhausting. You have one referral, and then you go to another referral, and then you may need to go to another. But the benefit of going to, say, someone like me is I already have those connections with the community. So I know exactly where to send you, and it's not going to be a general provider that'll say, oh, no. Let me send you over to a specialist.
Allison:Like, this already is the specialist, so you will get the answers there. And, you know, I really take my client's health quite seriously. So these providers have been vetted and, you know, as as much as I like to just sort I I guess I'm assuming that my clients trust me, but, really, if you go to me, I'm going to send you to what I consider the best of the best.
Kaitlin:Yeah. I was just gonna ask Jen if she could share her story or, like, what led you down the path to seek this out and treatment for your son? Like, what the struggles were that you went through or signs and symptoms and things that you were noticing that led you down this path?
Jen:Yeah. So real I'll try to keep him brief. So my son had a tongue tie that was diagnosed at, like, two weeks of birth, so we had to go through a tongue tie revision. And, unfortunately, we did not go to the best person. And so we didn't have myofunctional therapy before and after, which I learned later was what would was needed.
Jen:We did do some baby chiropractic care, some other things. So he had some support, but not as much as he needed. And then as he got a little bit older, it was apparent that he was struggling with mouth breathing and then also some snoring. So we went through more recently, like, a whole probably six months to actually just get his tonsils back to normal size, which was, like, true miracle and the work of lots of different things and prayer and herbs and supplements and air filters and humidifiers and everything kinda threw at it and, like, so thankful that he's through that piece of it. And now we're working we're gonna work with Allison.
Jen:We're working with someone else before, but we have, like, a night appliance that we're using to help with that. And then Allison's gonna help with the myofunctional therapy piece to really get his, you know, muscles trained. And so it's been like a process of me learning along the way and trial and error, but really it was like the sleep. And then most parents, I think that's where it starts. It's like something's up with my kid's sleep.
Jen:Either they're not able to sleep for long stretches of time. Maybe it's the feeding issues. My son didn't have that, but more and nor thankfully, no speech issues. But the open mouth breathing, the snoring, all of that was, like, the red flag for me. And then also we had a good holistic dentist when we were back in California who was looking at who also knew about the airway and so was able to tell me, hey.
Jen:He's gonna need palate expansion. Like, his palate is narrow. So I kinda had different good providers kind of plant those seeds for me and kinda know, okay. This is what it looks like to work on treating this with, of course, the goal, and Al Alison can speak to this, of trying to avoid or at least minimize the use of braces down the road and those kinds of things so he has enough space in his mouth for that. And, of course, number one for me is just sleep quality because of the impact on physical mental health for that.
Jen:But my guess is, Allison, a lot of, you know, think thinking about to our generation, everyone had braces. No one really had stuff before. Right? No one had really stuff before that, and that's probably because they had these issues that we shouldn't know were issues back then. Right?
Jen:We just, like, let them have kinda be, and then it was a regular dentist who's like, oh, your teeth are crooked. Know, we have braces. But it actually that speaks to the palate and the the structure. Right? And that that wasn't supported way back when.
Jen:Is that fair to say?
Allison:Oh, absolutely. And, you know, to add to that, it's still happening now. I I mean, so many of my clients have had braces, and then they come to me saying, my teeth have, you know, shifted. It's called orthodontic relapse. And well, why have your teeth shifted?
Allison:Like, what's going on there? That's not I mean, you had an orthodontia, you should have the ability to maintain the teeth into alignment, right? But it's because of the tongue. The tongue is not it's not behaving functionally. It's not behaving as it should.
Allison:It's typically pushing against the teeth or going in between the teeth, and it just wreaks havoc on your oral system. And you'll never receive the kind of results if you're going for aesthetic reasons that you want until you rehab the tongue and break those habits.
Kaitlin:So fascinating. Is there any situations where, like, braces or pulling teeth or expansion are necessary. Because this is where I was first introduced to this idea because I had a client that was struggling with fatigue and sleep and snort, you know, all the things. But she went to, like, a holistic showed the holistic route to a dentist, but what they did was put an expander in, pulled teeth, and had braces to fix this airway issue. And that was like I've never heard of that before.
Kaitlin:I was like, wow. This is so fascinating. But that's kind of like the route that she had to go first maybe.
Allison:Yeah. So I'll be careful with how much I talk on the dental side of things, but I will say when my clients come in and they talk about, oh, say this is like a 40 year old woman, and she says, yep. When I was a teenager, they pulled, I don't know, four teeth. I make a little mental note of, oh, no. Oh, no.
Allison:Oh, no. Oh, no. We have made a small space even smaller by pulling those teeth. That is not a in my in my realm, that's not a happy thing. I don't get, like, a little happy dance going on when I hear that because I worry, like, okay.
Allison:We have reduced a small space even more. So I but then there's also I will say there's a like, this is so based on the individual. If there are teeth that have fused to each other, like a baby tooth that can't or can't come out and, like, the adult tooth has fused to another adult tooth, there are things that has that have to happen, and that's where it's more individual. But just in general, I don't love the idea of pulling teeth for the reasons that I've said. It just makes the space smaller.
Allison:But the palatal expansion, I love that. I love that so much. I want everyone to have the palatal expansion if we're, you know, beyond the point of expanding it naturally. That does nothing but improve our health and open up those airways. I was gonna say something.
Allison:I was gonna speak on something about palatal expansion. I think I lost it. I lost it. I'll bring it up if I remember.
Jen:Can I ask you with that, Allison? Can you just briefly speak to how it looks different for kids versus adults? You know, like, expansion for kids who are still growing versus adults who have, you know, like, everything's kind of fixed. So what is how does treatment look different to group?
Allison:Yep. So if you get your child in for let well, I guess, first, let's talk about traditional palate expansion versus this more, like, integrative idea of integrative integrative dentistry options. So the RPE rapid palate expander, that's what's typically used for children around I think they say the golden time for expansion is seven to eight years old. So you can great get great expansion results from the RPE rapid palate expander. There's different there's so many different appliances, so I can't touch on all of them, but that one is widely used.
Allison:That's like what I had as a kid likely did you guys go through palate expansion? No? A lot of people had that that are, I guess, in my age range. And even now, that's happening.
Kaitlin:Sister did, and all that I can remember is my parents having to, like, turn the key every night.
Allison:Yeah. So there's, like, great Terrible. Yeah. I remember it. Yeah.
Allison:It it you know, it's nice because it's a much more affordable option than some of these integrative ways of expanding the palate. But to then talk about the integrative ways, there's something called the ALF, ALF, ALF treatment, and that's a wire that's behind the front or the upper and lower teeth. And it's, like, in a class of its own as far as expansion, and adults can benefit from it. So I guess hold on. Let me collect my thoughts here.
Allison:When we're talking about the kid pool, the time for the most benefit of expansion is gonna be, like, seven to eight years old. So when you are a kid, you can get those results with expansion through different appliances, whether it's the ALF or the RPE. Now with adults, your bones have already grown, and there's not going to be a whole lot more of bone growth to expand that upper palate. So the ALF, e. F, treatment is a great option as it tips the teeth outward and creates more space for your tongue.
Allison:Now there's more invasive techniques like surgery that you can, you know, break the jaw in half and create more more space that way, but I would say ninety nine percent of people I work with will not be considering that. So we have to think about other alternative message alternative ways. Now we can also, you know, tone the tongue and make a lot of people say my tongue my tongue is just too big for my mouth. That's very rare, the macro glossier side of things. That doesn't really happen that frequently.
Allison:So more likely, your tongue just isn't toned. It doesn't have a whole lot of muscle tone to it. And so once you start myofunctional therapy, you get it nice and in shape, and then it goes up to your top palate and fits nicely unless you truly need expansion. If you truly need expansion, then we need to do that first before you see long term results with myofunctional therapy because the tongue, it has to go somewhere. If it's not able to fit up in the hard palate, it's gonna stay low.
Kaitlin:That sparked like a well, something I'm super curious about of, like, a unfit or untoned tongue have to do with people's diet and nutrition.
Allison:Yeah. Absolutely. That's actually Yeah. You know, when we talk about why airway issues are more prevalent now versus before, well, it's absolutely because of our modern day diet along with allergens that are out there and, you know, poor air quality and such, but a huge one is diet and jaw development. So bone grows through, you know, bone on bone pressure.
Allison:So, like, when you eat something really fibrous and hard and chewy, you are activating the bones to grow. And if you don't do that in childhood with all of these pureed pouches and meltable smoothie snacks and things like that that our our kids are eating. And I'd say most of, you know, mainstream kids have those have access to that. It's just not doing any favors for the jaw. It's not challenging the jaw to grow.
Allison:So we need things
Kaitlin:I was thinking, of course, like meat and protein.
Jen:But Always. Yep. Well, like, back then, they didn't have baby food and stuff as much. Right? They would actually I think I read that, like, early on nineteenth century, I mean, maybe up to the thirties or forties, they would, like, just give kids small pieces of meat and etcetera.
Jen:Right? Or like, so and then but can you speak to those? So let's say, like, I'm thinking about even my experience and journey. We did expose our child to all those things, kind of following the more baby led weaning route and giving them giving them, you know, whole foods to really munching on. However, he had the tongue tie in utero.
Jen:So can you speak to that? How does that where that seems to be more prevalent, I would guess, or is it more more diagnosed? And if it's more prevalent, why is it happening in utero? I know that's a bigger question. Do you have a sense of why we have more tongue tied babies, it seems?
Allison:You know, I had listened to a seminar that had to do with researching the MTHFR gene. Have you heard of that? Yes. I may have butchered that. But, yeah, that maybe we'll write it in the show notes or something.
Allison:But I have read that people who or in that seminar, I was talking about people who have that are more prone to have tongue tie in utero, and there's something you could do relating to collagen intake while pregnant to avoid that if you're going to be prone to it. That's worth looking up and reading up on more, but I thought that was really interesting. So all of that to say, I think there may be a dietary component to some of these tongue tie situations. And then we also know tongue ties are genetic. So there's just a genetic factor, and it's passed down from generation to generation until, you know, you release it, but that still doesn't change your genes.
Allison:So, you know, having the knowledge that, well, this runs in my line, you know, can help your kids and their kids just be aware of it and then correct it in infancy. It's a lot easier to correct in infancy than it is when, you know, your kid's three, four, five, 40, 50.
Jen:And I'll add to you, I think one of the biggest red flags, correct me if I'm wrong, Allison, is having breastfeeding issues. That's how it happened for me. And you have to have, like, a really good person to assess that because my kid kind of flew under the radar for two weeks until someone's like, you usually get them assessed. And I was like, oh, yeah. But it's crazy.
Jen:I had, like, more people look at them and not actually see it even though it was obviously there and we were struggling with breastfeeding. And a lot of moms are just like, well, it just it didn't take, so just do the bottle. Right? And then we don't see that issue, then I think it treated for longer because I think breastfeeding moms catch it sooner because they're breastfeeding and it's you know, it uses the mouth a little differently than a bottle. I'm not an expert in that area.
Jen:But would you agree, Allison? That's, like, usually the one the first thing that mom sees, like, feeding issues with breastfeeding. I I guess maybe bottle as well.
Allison:Yeah. It's huge. That's a great sign to of, like, this is your first red flag of their your baby could be tied breastfeeding issues. I what I hear a lot from moms is I just had really low supply. I couldn't breastfeed.
Allison:Baby latched. I didn't have a whole lot of pain. It was uncomfortable, but I think there's this idea that breastfeeding is always supposed to be uncomfortable, so they don't think it's abnormal to have discomfort. But, really, it's the low supply part that I'm sure other things can contribute to this, but milk production is really based on supply and demand. Right?
Allison:So like if your baby is unable to extract a whole lot of milk from the breast, well, your body's going to start reducing that volume. And then moms in turn say, I'm just a low producer, so we had to supplement with formula or we had to get donor milk or whatever their path is. But really, was because baby was unable to extract adequate levels because there's a structural problem, tongue tie. Now a lot of people will say, oh, I looked at baby's mouth. There's no tongue tie.
Allison:You cannot diagnose a tongue tie on looks alone. You have to think about function. So if mom is telling me my child has all of these symptoms and they're checking the boxes of what I'm looking for, even if that tongue doesn't present as that typical heart shaped tongue, that is something I think a lot of us have seen. If you haven't seen it, just Google heart shaped tip tongue, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. You do not have to have that kind of anatomy, like visual anatomy to have a tongue tie.
Allison:It really relies on function.
Jen:Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. And then thinking about we talked about a bit more signs and symptoms. So maybe you can go over that again.
Jen:Just what are, like, the key things for people who might be like, oh, I wonder if that's happening for my kid and for adults. So what would be, like, signs and symptoms that suggest there'd be a problem that they need to seek out some help for kids and for the adult population?
Allison:Yeah. There's so many. So mouth breathing is a huge one. Day or night, you should be breathing through your nose day and night. Just because you are lips closed during the day does not mean that you get a free pass at night.
Allison:That's still problematic. Snoring or noisy breathing during sleep. And I see this a lot with children where mom and dad will say, well, he he is let's say the the kid is a he. He breathes but just sort of noisy. He's not snoring.
Allison:And they really brush that off. That's still a problem because noisy breathing goes into snoring, snoring goes into sleep apnea, and then an adult with sleep apnea. Right? You can still have kids with sleep apnea, but noisy breathing is still cause for concern. Frequent congestion or low tongue posture too.
Allison:That's just visually, look, where is my my tongue if you're an adult? Where is my child's tongue? If you have a kid, if it's low and pressing against the lower teeth or the front the upper front teeth, that too. But if it's low, that's a problem. Tongue and swallowing dysfunction, tongue thrust, tongue pushing against the teeth, messy or difficult eating, difficulty eating, like, trouble managing food.
Allison:You shouldn't be gagging on food. You shouldn't feel the need to drink water at mealtimes to push food down your throat. That's all very disordered. The picky eating, like I said in the beginning, it's usually not just picky eating because my kid's a toddler and they they don't like food. It could be rooted in safety, in airway safety, and how your tongue can handle and manipulate food, speech and communication challenges.
Allison:So if you've been in speech therapy and you are not seeing results, that's not normal. You should be able to fix speech articulation, speech sound errors through speech therapy and not long term. If your kid is just not progressing, think about the structure. That's another big thing. High and narrow palate.
Allison:Take a peek at your kid's palate, upper palate. Is it wide, or does it look like it's really vaulting and high and narrow? Neck tension, if you suffer from headaches, that's a big one. When we're tongue tied, our tie you know, our tongue is like, okay. So the base of our tongue, for listeners that you're not gonna see this demonstration, but, you know, at your your tongue, it goes from the your lower jaws, like it attaches there, and then it goes all the way to in one connected sheet of tissue all the way to your tiptoes.
Allison:So if there's tension starting at your tongue, it's going to be pulling your body into an unnatural position, and you're gonna have postural changes that put a lot of tension on your neck and your shoulders, and that results in headaches. That's a big one
Jen:for my Can we just go wait. Tell me. Wait. What? Connect what?
Jen:I know that in physiology class. Wait. Say again. Say that. Tip goes from here to your tip toe?
Jen:Well If the tissue is connected to there's like a piece that connects.
Allison:Yeah. So the fascial connection. So it's one connected sheet of fascia that starts quite literally at your tongue. That's what the tongue tie release is. It's cutting that fascia to release that tension and give more range of motion to your tongue.
Allison:It's amazing. I have a picture of this on my Instagram, and I explain it. So you guys can check that out and look at it and see that it's truly one connected sheet of fascia, connective tissue that starts there and goes all the way to your toes. So it's fascinating when you have that tongue tie release as adults. I have people who are, like, big into yoga, and they'll come back and say, Allison, you're never gonna guess this.
Allison:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can sleep better. I can, you know, breathe better.
Allison:I can I don't have the headaches, but I've never been so flexible in my life? Or people that have chronic injuries in their hips, pelvic floor is huge for women when they have that the results of myofunctional therapy paired with the release of the tongue tie if that is necessary, their pelvic floor health also improves in a big way. So it's all connected with that sheet of fascia. That's wild. Yeah.
Allison:Yeah. It's really, really cool to see. And, you know, a lot of this, I have to put into perspective to someone who isn't in my field. These sounds like really big claims. Right?
Allison:But you have to think about the body working as a whole. It's not just like, oh, my tongue is low, and so if I lift it up high, I'm I'm gonna change my life. It's more than that. It's like you have to work at all the little parts based on your chief complaint or, like, your biggest ailment, and then, you know, it slowly comes together with some work. And then oral habits for kids, these ones are huge.
Allison:If you see your kid always biting their nails or sticking things in their mouth and chewing on them, whether it's their hair, their hoodie strings, if they're just very oral, like oral fixations, we call them noxious oral habits. If that sounds like your kid, okay, there's something going on, like, it it would be worthwhile to check out why they need that oral stimulation. It's because it's lacking. Your tongue is not doing what it should being up on the top palate and causing that relaxed parasympathetic response because there's receptors up there that keep you calm. It's why babies like, you know, to have a pacifier because it's up there stimulating those nerve those sensors.
Allison:It's yeah. So when that's also stuffing food in your face, like those toddlers that just stuff stuff stuff. They're trying to activate, I think, that parasympathetic response and calm themselves.
Kaitlin:That's that's very fascinating too. I was just thinking I was a thumb sucker and a nail biter as a kid.
Allison:Yeah. You'll have to you know, when all the spotlight isn't on you, you'll have to you know, do a couple of different movements I can show you and think, like, does that feel weird? Does is my tongue high? Is it low?
Kaitlin:Super fascinating. Yeah. So I think that leads us into, you know, the next question of approaches and treatments available for people in the goal of treatment.
Allison:Yeah. So the goal, establish nasal breathing. I'll say it a million times. We have to breathe through our nose. And then correct that tongue posture.
Allison:The benefits are huge. You know, it keeps the tongue out of the airway, so when we sleep, our tongue has a home. It's suctioned up on the top palate, not falling into our airway, which causes that snoring sound, that that's really your tongue going back. Right? And it's not going to drop back into your airway when it's suctioned on the hard palate.
Allison:So correct the nasal like, get the nasal breathing going. Correct that tongue posture. That takes coordination, and it takes strength. You can't just will your way into keeping that tongue up. You need to slowly work out basically to get that kind of tone that is needed.
Allison:And then improve swallowing patterns. If you are pushing on your teeth, constantly thrusting that tongue forward, it goes against everything that we're trying to get that we're trying to eliminate. That's like a that's a telltale sign of an OND or a facial malfunctional disorder. So another goal is the speech sounds. If you have that lisp pattern, it goes back to tone and range of motion.
Allison:Your tongue is not in the correct placement to direct airflow to get that crisp sound, and instead, like, air is just being forced out the sides, and it makes it really difficult to achieve proper speech sounds when you don't have the tone or the structure to support it. That's why speech therapy doesn't work for kids that have this kind of condition.
Jen:Right.
Allison:And then maintain orthodontic alignment like we said. That's another big one. And usually, those people come to me for aesthetic reasons or jaw pain issues. That's another huge reason adults come to me for their TMJ, TMD. They will say like it's just unbelievable how much pain I'm in all the time, and I'm grinding at night.
Allison:Grinding is another big sign of airway dysfunction. And so am I answering your question, what is the goal of the treatment? Those are the main goals. And treatment available, you retrain the muscles and improve function through myofunctional therapy and collaboration with any medical provider that needs to be involved with this.
Jen:And it sounds like the secondary outcomes of that, I know the primary goal is working on the function, would be then you're sleeping better, right, probably less fatigue, behavioral problems should decrease in kids, right, focus, concentration.
Allison:In adults. Anxiety is huge in adults. So the benefit of the proper breathing is it overflows to our adult patients too. Their anxiety is a lot
Jen:less. Interesting. Is that because of the oxygen component to that, you think?
Allison:I think it's because, yeah, you get oxygen that's filtered through the nose, and you're getting, you know, higher saturation oxygen saturation levels, but I also think it's because of where your tongue is placed in your mouth. I think you have the ability to self regulate more when our tongue is up because we're activating those sensors. That's my that's what I think. So I I think it can be a combination of a lot of things.
Jen:So fascinating.
Kaitlin:So I assume there's, like, exercises that people should be doing to help, Or could you, like, give us some
Allison:Yeah. Like,
Kaitlin:exercises people are doing to help fix or correct these things? Or, like, what actually does the therapy look like to correct that?
Allison:Yeah. So therapy, it starts with a comprehensive evaluation. I need to know that myofunctional therapy is going to help you, that you do have all of the components of an OMD that you can benefit from orofacial myofunctional therapy. Once that's established, then we have thirty minute treatment sessions, and it's basically a set of exercises that I give you, and I say go home, do these perfectly. Form really matters.
Allison:This is not something that you kind of go half in on. It really needs to be perfect, and I'm a stickler for that. My clients know that. And, yeah, when it's done and then you come back the next week, I say, show me what you got and how have you been practicing. And when you show me the exercises that we practice together and you've done them multiple times a day, every day for seven days, and then you see me the following week, there's progress.
Allison:This is what's so fun about this specialty. You see the progress. It is happening right before you, and it's it will last for the rest of your life if you can dedicate a short amount of time, say, you know, a span of several months to the actual therapy component of it. And then once they pass those exercises, I say, okay. You're ready for the next one.
Allison:It's like a building block. You can't go on to the next until you really have the correct muscle tone and placement of your tongue, and then you go into the next one. And then you just build on that until after several months. I usually get my clients through, my older kids and adults through anywhere from four to six months. So once you are at that stage, say, like ending the four or ending the six month treatment plan, it should be habit in the way that I've integrated this week over week.
Allison:And then you don't have to think about it anymore. I will say myofunctional therapy, it's a mental load. It's a commitment. You really think about it a lot, and it's something that once you get toward the end, it's a lot less of a mental load because it's been integrated and generalized as habit.
Kaitlin:Are those exercises that people have to continue doing, like, for the rest of their life, or it's once you, like, create that habit or that practice, then it just sticks in your
Allison:Yeah. So once you've created it, it sticks. You don't have to do Mayo ever again in your life. That's why it's so important not to dismiss people from the myofunctional therapy protocol that they're on until it truly has been integrated as habit. Once you have the tone to close your lips, a big thing is you have weak lips, so your lips pop open.
Allison:You have to have lip strength to keep them closed. Once you have that strength and now you keep them closed, you maintain that strength. So you never have to do lip exercises again. Same goes for the tongue.
Jen:If only weight training was like that for the rest of the body. I was gonna say. I wish. That's I'm so glad you asked. Like, Kaelin, because I was I just never got around to asking anyone that encountered provider wise about that because I'm like, how does it stay?
Jen:But that's so cool that the body integrates that and then it's you're good, which is so rare in, like, the muscle space. Right?
Allison:Yeah. And you know what's so fun about the exercises that, you know, you do week over week over week toward the end of treatment, my clients will be like, I think I know what we're doing this week. My tongue has been wanting to do this. And I'm like, yep. That's it.
Allison:I don't even have to teach you how to drink out of a straw because you know exactly where your tongue wants to be when you go to do it because it's a lot of this is intuitive. Your body wants to do this. It wants to be in this position. So once you get toward the end, you know, I'm there to keep a very close eye on what your tongue is doing, but the clients really know, like, okay. I get it.
Allison:This is the concept. It doesn't change that much. You know, when you're swallowing liquid versus soft food versus hard food versus saliva, like, it's all really the same. And you always know your tongue should be up in the correct oral rest posture unless you're talking, eating, or drinking.
Jen:So you mentioned with appliances, it can be it varies. Like, I've learned too. Like, my kiddos on, like, a removable soft appliance. You can start those younger. So he's only four.
Jen:So can you speak to how early can kids start treatment, particularly myofunctional therapy? Sounds like appliances might vary depending on their maturity and what they're doing, but how about for the mild the mild part of it?
Allison:Yeah. So this one is loaded. My answer is it depends. I have a personal ethical issue with the little little kids starting myofunctional therapy. So my approach to this is, okay.
Allison:There's a place for myo when we're talking about newborns. Right? But but really, that's parent education. Parent is the one that is going to be doing these stretches to make sure that that tongue tie, once it's been released, does not reattach. So that's one piece in the newborn realm that myo is relevant.
Allison:But then let's talk about kids that are one, two, three. I have trouble treating children in that age range because I very strongly believe just with the principles of myo, you need to have that cognitive motor connection, and those babies don't have them. The toddlers don't have it. So a lot of parents will call me and say, I wanna do myo. And I say, okay.
Allison:How old is your kid? If they say my child is five, six, seven, I say, let's do this. I am pumped. We're gonna get great results. But when the child is, like, three, four, I am really honest in the fact that Myo can help your child.
Allison:This is a great thing to do, but it's about planting the seed of proper oral rest posture and the principles of oral function, and we have to adjust those expectations where we're not expecting perfection from those kids, from that population. These children are not coordinated. They're not coordinated when they run. They're not coordinated when they tie their shoes. Like, they're just you have to kinda meet the kid where they're at in that age range.
Allison:So I know there's a lot of programs that will advertise myofunctional therapy for, like, really little kids, and I personally just my role there is really to plant the seed, teach the parents about correct oral function, and support them however far we can get with that child and their personality. I have a three and a half year old right now. Well, he's four now. I started when he was three and a half. Amazing progress.
Allison:This kid is swallowing without a thrust, and he used to be, you know, open mouth, tongue low, couldn't do a suction, all of, you know, the things that he now can do and that so I mean, all that to say, like, it's possible you could start and get good results, but where you really see the most improvement is that school age population, five years starting as young as, like, five. So three and a half, let's do it, but a lot of this falls on the parents. Like, just remind your kid to try to close their lips and remind your kiddo to keep that tongue up. But we're not doing very, very specific exercises and keeping a very close eye on the tongue coming forward if it's just not reasonable for that child's personality and coordination. Does that answer your question?
Jen:Yeah. And I think it's you're right. It's very bio individual, I think. And, yeah, like, my son surprised me. Like, he we you know, the other provider was like, oh, no.
Jen:And then he actually, like, started to really like it, you know, with enough motivation and a little bit of bribery. You know? He actually was into it, and, like, now he actually just does it automatically as part of his, like, brushing your teeth routine and stuff, and you build it in. And like you said, it's definitely not perfect at this age, but it's great to start that and just get him used to that and just get used to the whole idea of that being important and people examining his mouth and and all of that. So I've seen tremendous progress too, and it's it's cool to see an op.
Jen:Sometimes kids do surprise us. Mhmm. But think it's about knowing your kid too and where they're at and their willingness to play along, you know, and give it a try.
Allison:Yeah. And I think it says a lot about the support system around that child too. You know, if mom is really involved, we're always going to get a better prognosis when you have parent buy in. So, you know, it's a lot of dedication on the parent's part. So your child is thriving, but because you've given him the tools and you had someone teach you the tools.
Jen:Yep. Yeah.
Kaitlin:Yeah. Now I need to know all the exercises so I can help my partner with snoring.
Jen:Think he just needs to go see someone.
Allison:Yeah. You know, there's some exercises. I'm hesitant to talk about the exercises because hey. They're out there. Like, you can Google them.
Allison:They are out there, but it really takes a trained eye to make sure you're doing these exercise exercises correctly because, you know, my girl I do little Zoom nights with my girlfriends, and we talk about work. We talk about life. But when we go to the work side of things, it's always like a just a circus of all of us doing tongue movements like, hey. Can you do this? Can you
Jen:do that?
Allison:And I'll tell them, go into the suction or open and put your tip as on the spot. Can you reach? The form is awful. It's terrible. So you have to like, on their part.
Allison:So you have to be able to really submit to having someone watch you and be comfortable with that. That's another thing. It's so funny having my adults. It's not the kids. It's the adults that are just cringing when I ask them, okay.
Allison:Now open wide and do this with your tongue, and they're looking at me like I'm a nut. But, really, it's because there's some sort of discomfort with someone looking into your mouth.
Jen:Yeah.
Kaitlin:Yeah. It's very personal. Can tell. Yeah.
Jen:Well, I think it speaks to to the importance of finding a qualified provider, but also someone that you connect with. Right? Like, that for my son, that was a big part of it. It's just finding someone you connected with because he's way more willing to try new things and be a little bit uncomfortable if he's really bought into the relationship with a person. And my guess is the same for adults.
Jen:Right? Like, finding someone that you click with will help you get that discomfort because that's gonna be just part of it. Like, when it's more it feels more, like, invasive of a therapy. Right? Like, just, like, really close with someone.
Allison:Yep. Mhmm. And also, I've found that I've just been blessed with the best clients. Like, they are my kind of people. I just adore them.
Allison:And I've found that these clients, people, once they are, you know, done with my protocol and, you know, our our treatment together, they have potential for lifelong friendships because it is such a close working relationship. And, you know, you wind up opening up a lot just, you know, as parents or as women or in ways that you can relate to each other through this treatment also, which is just another perk of why it's so rewarding for me.
Kaitlin:This is so cool. I'm definitely interested in in diving deeper into this and just doing more research on my own too. I'm sure our listeners are are as well. So where can we, find you, your work that we do that you do, and get people connected?
Allison:Yeah. So I have my website, www.modernspeechandmyo. All of that is I'll finish that. Www.modernspeechandmyo.com. All of that is spelled out, the and.
Allison:And myo, you'll you hear the term myo a lot, m y o. That's short for myofunctional. So a lot of my social media handles are it's the same. I offer Instagram at modern speech and myo. It's funny to say it out loud.
Allison:And then Facebook too. Same thing. Facebook.com/modernspeechandmyo. And then, you know, I have a text line that's HIPAA compliant that I use for my clients, but I find it's really convenient for people to ask general questions, or if they're interested in booking, you know, we can jump on the phone for a free consult, and that number is (208) 918-1404. So, you know, my my website and my socials will have all of the information on how to reach me, but I just like to put out that number too.
Allison:I'm always open to texts and, you know, communicating that way because in this day and age, it's just a little bit more convenient for those busy parents and just people in general.
Jen:That's awesome.
Kaitlin:Is all of your work in person, or can you do virtual appointments and, like, assess?
Allison:Yeah. So I'm licensed in California and in Idaho. So I can do teletherapy with both of those states. But I will say that evaluation, I like to do in person. And depending on my client, I will give them the option for teletherapy if I think it's going to be impactful.
Allison:If they're the type that, you know, really needs to be in person and have that, well, in person experience, then that's I'm just really honest about that and transparent and say, don't know if this is a good modality for you doing the teletherapy. Now with teletherapy, it's not all teletherapy. It's a hybrid approach. So, you know, for the the families in McCall, every once in a while, you know, we will see ourselves in person, like, maybe, you know, once a month in person, but the other appointments can be tele if, again, it's a good personality match for teletherapy.
Jen:That's wonderful. We are so grateful to have you. It's so I mean, I could have talked another hour. I'm so curious. I'm I'm blessed because I I know you personally, so I'm gonna pick your brain later.
Jen:We so appreciate you sharing your knowledge and expertise with us. It's obvious how much you love this topic and how knowledgeable you are. So we really encourage our listeners to find out more information, right, to help yourself, help your child, help your partner maybe, and then check out Allison's information and get yourself educated on that. And then, hopefully, you can find an amazing provider. If you can't work with Allison because of your location, then we hope you can find someone elsewhere.
Jen:I know there's other resources that can do that as well. Think there's some directories, Allison, right, that people can maybe Yeah. Can you speak to that really quick?
Allison:I can, actually. Yeah. So there's a few different directories, but I also I I encourage people to reach out even if I'm not, like, your provider. Reach out to me, and I can connect you with someone that is reputable that I can recommend in other states because I have access to I wouldn't be able to name what the directory is right now, but I know the IAOM, that's the direct the main directory for certified orofacial myology, that has a list of providers that have gone through some formal training and and have the COM certification. So that's somewhere you could look if you're going to self help, but there's also a broad amount of providers that I can access through my groups that I'm very much a part of and active in, and then I can give you I can try to hook you up with someone who is good.
Jen:Thank you. It's really generous of you to to help people out that way.
Allison:Thank you for having me. This has been so fun. I could talk about this for, you know, another hour or so.
Kaitlin:Love it. Such a fascinating topic. Thanks again for joining us today, sharing your knowledge and passion. I took away a lot and your listeners did as well. So thank you and we will see you next time for another episode of Counter Culture Culture Health.
Kaitlin:Thanks
Jen:for joining us on the Counter Culture Health podcast. To support this show, please rate, review, and share with your friends and family. If you wanna be reminded of new episodes, click the subscribe button on your preferred podcast player. You can find me, Jen, at awaken.holistic.health and at awakeningholistichealth.com.
Intro:And me, Kaitlin, at Kaitlin Reed Wellness and KaitlinReedWellness.com. The content of the show is for educational and informational purposes only. As always, talk to your doctor and health team. See you next time.
