Effect of Food Stuff on Facial Development and Malocclusion by Dr Mike Mew

0:03 foods and malaclusion. It has often been said that you are what you eat. Mal in acclusion seems to have progressed over the last 10,000 years. It was almost unheard of before the agricultural revolution uh when people started farming and the um hunter gatherer way of life gently came to a close and there seems to be a close relationship between what we were eating and malaclusion teeth becoming crooked.

0:51 Now there are many ideas on the relationship of nutrition and facial development and mal acclusion. Of course, there's the work of Western Price that suggests that it's a lack of the fats soluble vitamins and particular vitamins A, D, and K, and that if you don't have enough of these vitamins prior to a baby being conceived, then you have what's called a prenatal injury that can lead to problems with cranioacial development that then leads

1:37 to mal acclusion in many situations. This is an interesting idea. It's unfortunately exceptionally difficult to test such an idea. This concept of being a prenatal injury makes it very difficult to test this theory. And I'm had many discussions with um advocates of Price's work specifically on this. And there is a lack of evidence in this area. However, one thing that is very obvious is the difference of wear between paleolithic, medieval, and modern humans. That seems to relate very closely to the change in

2:23 malaclusion. We forget how much these individuals wore their teeth down. the Paleolithic man would wear his teeth down so that when he reached 45, and interestingly paleithic people were more likely to reach 45 than medieval people were, we have this um dip as we left the Garden of Eden in um life expectancy and probably in quality of life as well. Um so if paleithic man reached the age of 45 it was not uncommon for them to have worn their tooth number six the first permanent mer down to the gum.

3:10 That was fairly consistently normal. So consistently normal that that's the method of aging skulls in that period. And this didn't change that much till the medieval period. Although mal acclusion increased significantly over that period and from the medieval period to the present period we've seen a complete change in the level of wear of teeth. It's rare now for you to wear through just the tips of the cusps of the teeth by the time you die. And we're living now to 70, 80 years old. And it's

3:56 twice the age levels that our ancestors were living to, if not 90 years old. And even at these ages, we won't have worn through the cusps of the teeth, let alone wearing through the enamel in the crevices, let alone getting halfway down through the enamel of the tooth substance, let alone getting right the way down to the base of the tooth. So, we're talking a huge change in the level of of effort, the level of wear. And part of this, of course, is attributed to the fact that a paleithic man and to some degree even medieval man was using their teeth not only for eating. There was a lot of what we call non-nutritive wear. So where

4:42 that was gained not through nutrition, that was gained through using your teeth as a tool. In the Paleolithic era, if you wanted a nice leather top, you had some chewing on your on your hands. You had to chew the leather until it was soft and malleable. You couldn't go down to a tannery. There weren't any tanneries. There's a phrase um about goods made by hands of others. Roughly till the 1880s, most of the goods you had you made yourself or were made by people you knew. Back in the Paleithic era, nearly everything you had, you made yourself.

5:31 And this period of time is really marked by a change from a very tough, very hard, fibrous, difficult to eat food um um substances that also had very low calories. Now, I'm not talking about the nutritional value because I think they probably grazed and they had a very high nutritional value, but calorifically it left a lot to be desired. Of course, it tended to be very carb free and anyone who's gone on carb free diet would be very aware of how effective that is, how carbs are easy to gain

6:17 calories. And of course, you didn't have much wheat. that wasn't found um um until the beginning of farming, the advent of the agricultural revolution approximately 10 to 8,000 years ago in Turkey. Of course, you didn't have rice, you didn't have potatoes, um that were relatively recent into the European diet. Uh you didn't have sugar, which was as recent into the European diet. And you didn't, at least in the Paleithic era, have really um calories from milk. And again a relatively easy carbohydrates. Um and this has moved through through the medieval period where we were doing

7:02 subsistance farming plus they were subsistence farming but also there was a a reasonable amount of cash crop. people with farms would sell um a percentage of what they grew through to the modern environment where well we've moved from what 90% of the population working on farms in the medieval period to 2% of the population working on farms now. So really is farming is cash crops. That's what farming is about. It's making a profit. It's um getting a buck for your acre or your hectare. And now we know how to make carbs. We know how to make these the wheats the um to make pasta to um to make the rice and

7:52 um sugar. But what's not what is sugar not in particularly in processed foods today? the ease of gaining calories is it was too easy. I mean you look at the obesity rates, the obesity epide epidemic that's occurring now and we've gone from hard to eat low calorie diet to a phenomenally um calorier rich phenomenally soft diet. I mean, just the terminology we use, we say steaks are good if they're tender. We don't say that was a tough steak, it was excellent or a fibrous steak, it was excellent. We talk about a soft, you know, tender steak, that's particularly

8:38 good steak. Um, and it's probably not just um the the absolute hardness of the food. Um there's um fibrous uh um elements to diets and of course there's also sort of um size um recently um I've been experimenting with different foods and if you have very small little um grainy um substances or particles particular small particular food it takes a lot of grinding with your teeth a lot of heavy mastication. Um, that of course was represented by the wear on these teeth these individuals had.

9:25 But I estimate that modern humans are wearing their teeth or using their masticatory system about two maybe 3% of what our paleolithic ancestors were doing. Now we'll be aware that our sceal our general sceal structure has changed from the level of where we were doing the level of sorry effort we were making with our physical sceal structure to about 30% of what we were doing previously as a rough estimation. And that has come with a

10:13 moving of the shoulders, a whole change in the um stance of people where there's that reduction of muscle tone has occurred. Well, if that's happened with a 60% reduction down to 30%. the 97 to 98% reduction in effort. It's it's huge, you know, it's it's it's you know, it dwarfs the reduction in sceal um usage of the general body usage and I think it's having a profound effect on the facial system. Take some time to look around individuals that have good square jaws

10:59 and strong musculature. They are noticeably different from individuals who have weak muscles and don't use their masticatory system as much and that is affecting the growth pattern of faces. people with strong muscles, their faces are wider. In fact, I would go more than that. It's it's well seen. I mean, Kilarus did some interesting research and he's shown that the interpupilary distance is wider on people with strong muscle tone. It's, you know, the whole face is wider just from chewing hard things. And as I said,

11:46 probably even chewing fibrous things, you know, a tough fibrous diet. It's going to be lower in calories from the amount of fiber that's in it. And it's going to require more effort to using your tongue, using your cheeks, but also using your masticatory system, using your um chewing, you know, chewing more. Um and I think this has had a profound effect on the cranioacial growth and it's lowered or lengthened the whole cranioacial structure and of course the longer thinner cranioacial structure has less cross-sectional area and this is a space for the teeth. Of course if you have less space for the teeth they're more likely to be crowded. And interestingly, this

12:33 epidemic in crooked teeth is evident over exactly this time period. Um, accelerating over the last few hundred years, accelerating over the last 50, 30 years. You know, most people's grandparents can remember a time when few people had orthodontics or even needed orthodontics. was a time now where in in many schools 50% of the population are having orthodontics and it's not just because it's available and they have the money to have it. Many of them really need it and we need to wonder what's happened

13:20 and why that's happened. Particularly when we see the levels of relapse that we have today or almost universal relapse. If you don't wear your retainers after orthodontic therapy almost always the result of relapse. Now why why are the teeth crooked in the first place? The evidence doesn't suggest it's the genes. The evidence stacks up in favor of factors such as a change in masticatory effort, the masticatory usage. Now, what can we do about that now that

14:06 we all live in a modern environment? What are we going to do in a modern environment? Um, I think an attempt to choose tougher foods. Um, in my purely anecdotal evidence of looking around, I'm finding some pretty tough breakfast cereals, um, dried fruit, particularly dried mangoes, um, a lot of crunchy salads, but this has to be a large chunk of your food stuff. Um, I've had some mothers tell me, "Oh, little Johnny is eating raw carrots." And I go, "Wonderful." I said, "How many raw carrots does he eat

14:52 a week?" "Oh, about three or four." I don't think that's going to be enough to make a significant difference. We need to if we're only eating or only make exerting a masticatory effort of two to 3% what our ancestors did, you need to do more than a few carrots. It's really got to be a large chunk of your diet has got to be tougher. Now, it's not easy. People are lazy. People don't like changing. But at the end of the day, and what seems to be a recurring theme in life, how you are

15:39 is down to you. And this is no exception.