I just discovered this therapy/healing modality after reading this Mercola article -

Baby-Led Weaning Promotes Good Oral and Physical Health

[articles.mercola.com]

"This natural process actually trains the child’s tongue to position itself upward and forward, and to lateralize toward the sides of the jaws. When your tongue pushes upwards and forward, it expands the palate in the middle, which allows your palate and jaw to settle into the anatomically correct positions.

As a result of this ancestral-type of feeding, which allows the oral cavity to develop naturally and properly, our ancestors were not plagued with crooked teeth and poorly aligned jaws. The anthropological evidence shows that such problems really didn’t arise until about 350 years ago. At present, an estimated 92 percent or more of all Westernized people have some degree of malocclusion, such as crowding of the teeth, narrowing of the jaws, or both. (This is where Joy Moeller’s oral myofunctional training comes in—her protocol helps correct the oral defects and misalignments created by modern feeding.)

This has ramifications for breathing and sleeping, which in turn can lead to what we’ve now dubbed “attention deficit disorder.”

“We now know that snoring children and children that don’t get a good-quality –good REM sleep – are far more susceptible to having behavioral and brain dysfunction like ADD,” Dr. Boyd says. “Giving a stimulant to a child for ADD is not the right thing to do for a child who needs better sleep. Sometimes just changing the architecture of their jaws early in life (I’m not saying that’s the only thing), getting them myofunctional training, and getting them to chew harder, fresher, more nutritious foods can preclude all kinds of problems that we’re throwing drugs at right now.”

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(I baby-led weened my three girls)

My dentist had told me a while ago that he could tell by the shape of my tongue (roundish instead of flat) that I was not breast-fed (which is one of my big health regrets) and that it had messed up my teeth, mouth, muscles, etc. I have an overbite. I had crooked teeth growing up and when I went to college, I got braces.

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So then I've been looking up Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy for a couple days now and I'm really into it and have found a holistic dentist in my town who does it, so I'm going there soon I hope, after I get ahold of them to get an appointment.

Also interesting is that this therapy could help with sleep problems.

So here are some links to the Orofacial Myofunctinal Therapy - sometimes called Orofacial Myology:

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Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy is Gaining Popularity

[articles.mercola.com]

Myofunctional Therapy

[www.myofunctional-therapy.com]

What Is Myofunctional Therapy

[www.myofunctional-therapy.com]

Orofacial myofunctional therapy - Registered Dental Hygienist (This site has good photos of before and after)

[www.rdhmag.com]

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I have loads more information/links - if anyone is interested, let me know.

My teeth are incredibly straight, mom breast fed me for 14 months. My kids had better have the best teeth imaginable after 3.5 and 2.5 years of nursing them! Both would happily have gone on longer though, they didn't wean on their own that's for sure!