Dr. Mike Mew: Why Preventing Crooked Teeth (And All the Problems They Can Bring) Is Essential for Your Health Introduction

Dr. Mike Mew is a lecturer and a lead clinician at the London School of Facial Orthotropics. Mike is causing a revolution in health care and is pushing for a debate on what is causing crooked teeth in not just the orthodontic profession but the health profession as well.

Mike uses the Orthotropic System to address the underlying conditions that lead to crooked teeth and affect sleep apnea, snoring, and jaw problems. He’s researching to improve these systems using modern technology and innovative applications. His vision is a fully integrated bio-feedback system that assists children and adults in improving their health. In addition, Mike aims to change a section of modern medicine by making it evidence-based.

Podcast Transcript

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, to pay my respects to their Elders – past, present, and emerging.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:00:20] Now, today we explore how your face develops, or like the vast majority of us in our modern world, is underdeveloped. The fact that over 90% of the population doesn’t fulfill their epigenetic potential of facial and jaw growth. We’ve explored this in previous episodes, but 95% of us don’t have enough room for all the teeth we’ve evolved to have. 

And that underdevelopment of the upper and lower jaws has implications on how well you breathe, how well you sleep, your posture, whether you suffer from chronic tension, headaches, neck aches, and jaw aches, and much, much more.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:01:05] My guest today is Dr. Mike Mew. Now, Mike is a lecturer, a lead clinician at the London School of Facial Orthotropics. Mike lectures and teaches extensively around the world. His personal interest is in the growth and development of the face, identifying the effects of changes in posture, function, and muscle tone and it’s relationship to orthodontic problems. 

Mike uses the orthotropics system essentially a postural approach to reverse the underlying conditions that lead to crooked teeth, also that affects sleep apnea, snoring, temporomandibular jaw problems. That is the jaw joint among a range of other symptoms. He’s undertaking research to investigate how to improve these systems using modern technology and an innovative applications. 

His vision is a fully integrated bio feedback system that assists both children and also adults to improve their health. Now, as you will hear, Mike is passionate and following on from his father, Professor John Mew. He is causing a revolution in health care and is pushing for a debate on what is actually causing crooked teeth with not just the orthodontic profession, but the health profession as well. 

Because pretty all in this scene if you think breathing and sleeping is important, you need to know why we have underdeveloped faces and jaws, the importance of environmental factors clearly being ignored and could greatly assist not just orthodontic therapy, which any regular listen to this podcast will know is part of a bigger issue about how well you breathe and how well you sleep. 

And so in also your general health. Mike aims to change a section of modern medicine by making it evidence-based. What a wonderful idea that is and what a challenge? and focussed on the long-term health of patients, something we are all aspiring to. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Mike Mew.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:03:17] Welcome to the show, Mike.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:03:19] Thank you very much indeed, Ron. A pleasure to be here.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:03:21] Mike, people take for granted certain things. Five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot. We actually have also evolved to have 32 teeth in our mouth. I’m just wondering, in your experience in the UK, You know you travel internationally. What percentage of people have enough room for all of the teeth that we’ve evolved to have? And why does that even matter?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:03:47] Well, I think we need to find some groups here. The kids brought up in the U.K. today? very few of them. You know, I do see people with 32 teeth. Usually, they were brought up in less soft, comfortable environments than we live here today. Particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. I mean, I see people, you know, I get to see fantastic dental arrangements, so okay with that facial structures. But in the U.K. today, I see very few kids who have space for 32 teeth and remember that our ancestors, I mean, all our ancestors from all groups, everywhere, always. 

And we’re talking for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years. So basically everyone till this blink of an eye. Modern environment not only had space for all of that, but they had quite a lot of additional space as well. My father spent some time in Africa. I accompany him about ten years ago, about a decade ago, and he did this little bit of research where he took a mold behind the wisdom teeth in people and he said that, when he was out in the villages, in the countryside, he said everyone had 32 teeth and space behind the wisdom teeth and that is exactly what we see with our ancestors, Thus, of course, I couldn’t tell you if our ancestors had type two diabetes. 

I couldn’t tell you if they had sleep apnea. We didn’t think they did, but I can tell you exactly where that teeth were or in effects still are because we’ve got the skulls , so we’ve got these skulls we can have a look and they were almost like a different species than modern urban humans and that I mean, no one seems to be talking about this. You know, you can get an ancestral skull, you can get a modern urban human skull and they don’t look the same. 

I remember talking to a dental nurse, I remember talking to a dental nurse who did forensic dentistry at weekends and she said that the forensic dentist she was working with was saying exactly this, that did the skulls of the modern individual. I mean, he gets to see a few unfortunate people who died for some strange circumstances. He has to look in places where most people wouldn’t look.

 And he’s saying these skulls look nothing like modern people anymore. Well, the skulls that he did his basic training on. So as if we’ve had this massive sea change in the way our teeth are and. Well, in really reality, you’ve got a sea change in the bone structure, the sea change in the whole of this structure and we’re getting these you know, we’re getting orthodontic seems to be going on a rate of knots. 

You know, the need instance for orthodontics. You know you can’t open a magazine without everyone do orthodontics and advertising orthodontics. And no one stopped to say, well, hang around that the incidence is going up and why? Then something like sleep apnea wasn’t in my syllabus when I qualified as a dentist in 1993. Sleep apnea is now by some people estimated to be killing 20% of the population ten years early. 

So you’ve got, you know, this rapid rise of sleep apnea, then we get deviated nasal septum. So you’ve got glue ear, you’ve got forward head postures, jaw job pumps, all of these problems associated with this complex, they’re all rising up at an exponential rate and no one seems to be paying any attention to this. and it’s, I guess, staggering, really that no one seems to be interested in the change that’s going on in often this is. Basically, it’s in our faces, isn’t it? Right there in front of us.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:08:07] It’s actually not. I’ve been reading Robin Dunbar’s work on human evolution, and it’s actually not just the lower half of our face and our space for our jaw. It’s actually our cranial space as well. Anatomically.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:08:26] Ron this isn’t evolution.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:08:28] No, no, I know it’s not, but as we moved from chimpanzees to Australopithecus to Homo Erectus to, you know, Algroover, our brain skull, our skulls increased, our brain sizes increased and we got to a point where I think we were about 1450 CC’s putting a figure on it and I think now we’re down to about 1200CC, so we’ve actually gone backward.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:08:54] But yes, but Ron you’re discussing is evolution and this is something that happens over hundreds and thousands of years, millions of years and this is what I’m seeing.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:09:07] Yes.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:09:07] I’m identifying because it’s actually all that. Just open your eyes it’s obvious is a very, very different process for evolution.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:09:17] Yes, I agree.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:09:19] It happens far too quickly. I mean, for huge swayed of the modern population, we’ve gone from subsistence farming to a modern environment in three generations and that, you know, the evolution is near part. Doesn’t happen at all in that type of scale. Even for the countries where you go back to ancient Sumerian population, I mean, that was a first to become civilized, to be in cities and city dwelling and well, that’s all less than 10,000 years there’s nothing before 10,000 years.

That’s an evolutionary blink of the eye, now genetic change happens. Well, possibly. We’ve got a little bit of lactose tolerance and maybe some alcohol dehydrogenase. But those are the sorts of minor chemical, biomechanical tweaks that have gone on. Nothing like an extra tooth or whatever to last.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:10:19] But I agree, I totally agree with you. I think, though, what explains it is an epigenetic change for a gene to either express itself or not.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:10:32] Oh, these the one no, no, no, no, no. These are pure environmental changes. Sorry. If you get unfit, no one shouting epigenetics, you’re unfit because you sat in your arse.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:10:46] Right. Okay.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:10:47] All right. So that’s the limit, is because you look, if you want a strong jaw. Use it. you know, I’ve got a strong jaw. I’ve got stronger muscles, that’s it. Simple. You don’t have to go to epigenetics. You don’t have to think of anything complex. Use it or lose it. We’re eating soft food. Food so soft, we don’t use our muscles because we don’t use our muscles. We don’t build a strong jaw, simple and or we get rock noses. 

If you’ve got both those you have to become a bath breaker you have to drop your tongue. That’s supposed to be glued to the root of your mouth, Yes holding the top section of your face up. If your tongue’s hanging open and your lips were parts, your face is gonna lengthen. These are you know, simple reactions that are occurring because we’re just not living the lifestyle that we’ve evolved to live. 

This is a genetic mismatch between how we evolved to live and how we are living. And we’re living in this incredibly soft, modern environment where, you know, you don’t have to walk. You become unfit, it’s not you don’t need to search for answers. This is really simple and obvious and of course, we’ve got these weak muscles. We’re hanging miles on upon it, the effect is a bit like the whole of modern humanity has had a mild bilateral stroke and our whole faces have dropped down. 

And as the faces lengthen, they’ve got narrower, they’ve come shallower. That’s a reduced cross-sectional area. This level, you know, like a samurai sword and would look like this. I look down at that level. What you’re going to see is less space for the tongue, less space for the airway, and less space for the teeth. Now okay, I’m an orthodontist, so I came into this looking at teeth and my father even came into this looking at teeth, but I think will agree your airway is more important than your teeth.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:12:48] I agree and that’s you know, that’s what’s gaining more attention in this area. But it’s only one area, you know, I’m very very impressed with the book. “Breath was a brave boy” James Nestor. I mean, read a good book you know, got me in it and it’s talking about the subject, but it’s coming very much from the breathing side of it. 

You know, not going on to talk about forward head postures, we’ve not gone on to talk about it over ENT( Ear, Nose, Throat) problems or jaw job problems, all these other problems, all of which are going up at this exponential rate and I worry my profession, Orthodontic profession is too busy making money to really get concerned about the good causes you know, prevention treating causes doesn’t is not profitable.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:13:44] Well, Mike I love the passion and I know that you and well, your father has developed a whole approach to this, which is called Orthotropics. And I’m sure you have–.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:13:58] You know, it’s called the approach is called Bioblock

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:14:02] Bioblock, okay.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:14:04] Any, Orthotribe is generic term, Ortho Tribe is means trying to improve growth.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:14:09] Okay

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:14:11] Orthodontics is trying to improve the alignment of the teeth or so orthos, which means correct or straight. So all thoughts, correct or straight teeth is orthodontics, which is trying to make the teeth straight, although also correct or straight growth, is trying to improve your growth patterns. So any technique that implies some pretty good growth patterns such as stand up straight and shut the mouth. 

Great technique you know, if you do this your face is likely to grow downwards if you do this, your face is likely to grow more forward. The more forwards it grows, the more cross-sectional area you have, the more space for your teeth, your tongue, and your airway. It’s not complex but what I’m saying directly conflicts with when you’s to hard really thinking about it, it’s directly conflicting with a large chunk of modern medicine and the large chunk of how we fail. 

Sometimes, you know, when you open that Pandora’s box, you don’t realize how much is in there to come out and it also directly confronts with most people’s thinking. Most people like to think that the way their face grew was predetermined in a way, you know it is you when what part of your ID called the people look at to confirm it’s you? Well, it’s the photograph, they often I see people, all companies asking for photo I.D. So you’re being recognised through your photograph for me to tell you that photograph of you is distorted, your face is distorted is an uncomfortable thing. wrong your face is distorted. I love that.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:16:07] I know that, I don’t take that personally. Yes. No, no.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:16:12] You know, and I could say that to more or less everyone I see and I walk down the street, and I’m just, I’m amazed what I see in everyone. And then it comes on to that incredibly emotive subject to all beauty you know, put simply, people whose faces grew well look good because they have good structure and what I tried. 

So my objective with this treatment called biobloc orthotropics is not to make people’s teeth straight. Well, we know people whose faces grew well. As a general rule, people with good facial growth but good-looking for this crazy, you know, whatever term. They tend to have straighter teeth. People whose faces didn’t grow as well tend to have crooked teeth. I’m saying the crooked teeth is one of many different symptoms. 

A face that grows well is healthier than a face that doesn’t grow as well. It looks better because we tend to be hard-wired to be attracted to healthy people. But my objective is to improve the facial form. I’m not really, I mean. Yes, I’ll try and make teeth straight. Yeah, I’ll try and make I wanted to give people six straight upfront teeth. Right, that will be my objective. 

But my main objective is to improve facial form and what the general premise? Just go general premise. If you’ve got a better facial form, the teeth will tend to stay straight. I think you know all of these idea of permanent retention. It worries me a little bit there but anyway, sorry.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:18:04] No, no, no. Well, I was going to ask, how do you define good structure? I mean, you’ve talked about and for our listener, because this is both audio, sometimes only and video and audio and YouTube, that’s a commercial for our YouTube channel. 

When you were opening your mouth and having your mouth open as a breather, you were describing a long face and when you closed your mouth, you describe you were implying that was better structure and that is true, I agree with that. But let’s just spell it out for our listener so they know what you would do. What you would describe as good structure?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:18:39] Okay. So if you imagine some guy walking off the African Serengeti, Amazon rainforest, or the Australian outback, you know, any of these indigenous groups remembering, of course, that as soon as you have a knife, you know, a steel blade, even a ceramic or flint blade, you significantly change your environment and what we see is traditional peoples today a rarely that traditional you know, I see most of them have got a few manufactured garments and they have knives. 

And I have a few things that have already had a major impact on their lifestyle. But as a general rule, these guys have got good bone structure. You know, they stand up straight, they’ve got great bone structure. They have, you know, you see the cheekbones, you see the strong jaw lines. These this was just almost normal in these ancient hunter gatherer populations. And that progressively changes the face of modern humanity progressively lengthens and as I refer to downswings, it sort of swings back and down with the mid face dropping down, you losing cheekbones, the nose looks relatively bigger, the cheekbones look flatter and then underneath the sole, the jaw which is hinged at the jaw joint hinges open back and down, carrying the tongue back into the airway. 

Now, the thing is, as this occurs in the if everyone’s face, if someone’s face grows while it grows forwards and upwards with good cheekbones, good square, a variation of that sort of Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt typeface. I mean, you know, for argument’s sake, there’s a variation around that, well grown facial form. Clearly, individual groups would have been different, but not that different. You know, you go back to ancient populations and they are surprisingly similar, but for surface features, they are very, very similar. 

Then we moved into this sort of, I would say, subsistence farming area and it almost as if each different group morphed into something that was more different, more variable. So groups tended then to look more different in that phase. And it’s almost as if the way that we’ve gone wrong is very dependent on our genetics and our gene background and maybe our society, maybe our habits. 

So it’s interesting play between genetics, the environment. The cause of this problem is clearly the environment. But the way that we have gone wrong seems to be under strong genetic have a strong genetic influence, let’s say, I think, you know, language how we set, you know, whether you squat or whether you sit properly, I won’t be able to as as I’m, you know, Anglo-Saxon norm, a modern, modern, normal, a chair and table or whether you. I’m. I have certain vowels in your language. What types of foods you eat? habits and patterns I think all play their role. But faces on growing right and it’s clear and obvious. 

This comes from all of the evidence. I mean, the speed at which these changes occurred. It’s impossible that it would be a revolution, the way it’s patterned across Europe. You see the rapid rise of crooked teeth and changes in bone structure. In some places you see Inca tribes and then reversing, you see it in some of the Roman tribes in Rome and then sort of going back slightly after Rome fell and you see this epigenetic, you know, epigenetics became a big issue during COVID. 

We’ll drop by epigenetics so what was the epigenetics symptoms of what we refer to the overlying problem we call craniofacial dystrophy? So faces not growing correctly is called craniofacial dystrophy. That’s the disease that most people have. Oh, we’ve never heard about it and crooked teeth is but one symptom. Sleep apnoea is almost certainly another symptom. Forward head posture is another. I mean, clearly, mobile phones and tablets aren’t helping this forward head posture epidemic, but most people tried to stand up straight and fully chin talk their head under the. 

So it’s balanced squarely on their spine, their chins, and their airway. So you can’t maintain that position. So one of the reasons people have got a forward head posture is to open the right way out. Take their tongue out their airway and as much as you try and remind yourself to have a good body posture. If your tongue is in your airway, you’re never going to do that. You know, you can’t override the desire to breathe properly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:24:07] Yeah. And when we say a fair percentage, I mean, in Australia, Mike, my estimation would be 95% of the people I see in my practice would fall into this category that you’re talking about to one degree or another.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:24:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, I mean. I remember reading some research done by Zacchaeus and Plato and Scanlavia, and this is back in the nineties and I’m sure things were different in the nineties and they found that less than 5% of the population had what they referred to as ideal occlusion. So that means that all the teeth present and they were all perfectly fitting together and I didn’t even see them mentioned in wisdom teeth. You know, I mean, when I’m. And so you’re talking a very small percentage of the population. 

What really interests me when we look at orthodontics is, you know, just the huge amount of the there’s so many tell-tale signs when you start lifting the hood of orthodontics, for example, we’ve made all these. Carefully metric norms. So we’ve taken these ideas of how heads grow. So, you know, orthodontics take this X-ray called a lateral cast and they start drawing all these lines on it. 

Well, the groups selected to be the normals generally were people with only 2018. I don’t think of any group I know of that had 32 teeth. They were selected in the mid 1900s and they were selected when we got this equipment. There’s no suggestion from a Anthropological perspective. There’s no suggestion that these normal groups are ideal. And if you put your foundation stone in the wrong place, it’s really going to mess with your thinking.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:26:13] Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:26:14] And then we’ve got this concept of permanent retention. Now, people say to me, Oh, well, you know, just in the same way, you need your hair redone. You nothings change. You get wrinkles and people suggesting it’s the same for the context. And I’m thinking, So what madness are you talking about? I mean, I see people with wear facets. 

They’ve had these wear facets for 30 years and yet, you know, the relapse, the change I see boast Orthodontics bears no resemblance to what I see in people who, you know, I see lots of people what I worked in general dentistry who maintained perfectly straight people throughout their lives.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:26:50] Now, let me just let me just explain to our listeners here what you mean by permanent retention, because a lot of people have had orthodontic treatment, but most of those people have had some, if not a lot of movement of their teeth after the braces came off. And so permanent retention is about keeping either a wire attached on the inside of the mouth or plate to be worn permanently at night.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:27:18] Like Invisalign.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:27:19] Like Invisalign. So this is what permanent retention is all about. And the question is, why do teeth move? Well, why do they move in the first place? Why aren’t they in the right position in the first place?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:27:31] Well, because there’s an imbalance. We notice the teeth sittin up in balance between the lips and the tongue. Clearly, there’s some form of imbalance. Yeah. You know, you’ve got this whole school called of my folks or therapy attempting to retrain people to have their teeth in the bed, you know, trying to change these balance patterns. 

And yet we seem to be put in braces or fixed appliances or Invisalign on thousands and thousands of kids. Not attempting to retrain this balance zone and then putting retainers on them afterwards and a general, you know, Orthodontics drop teeth go back to where they came from. If you hadn’t corrected the problem.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:28:15] Yes

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:28:15] The underlying cause, then they’re going to go back to where they came from. And that’s exactly what we see.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:28:20] So Mike, I mean, you’ve made a very compelling description of the problem

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:28:25] Ron, my concern is where this attempt to whole teeth out from where they want to go is almost certainly holding them out of this balance. So you can hold the teeth, you can’t hold the underlying bone. And with that, I spy problems coming on the horizon.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:28:45] No doubt. But I want you to look at now the concept of orthotropics, and we don’t need to go into detail.

Dr Mike Mew: [00:28:53] A bioblock.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:28:55] The bio block, is we don’t need to go into detail, you know, description. But what is the basic principle that’s different about the approach of the bio block in the treatment of this problem?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:29:08] Okay. I don’t try to make straight. I knew I heard them in approximately a position, but it’s again with two halves and a half of the time is gaining change. So. What I’m saying is that people walking into my office are going to struggle to swallow correctly. They’re going to struggle to keep their mouth closed. They’re going to struggle to do all of these things because they now have a structure. 

The impedes that so the cause that hung them out because we’ve got weak jaw muscles, their faces lengthened, the reduced cross-sectional area, they’re now going to struggle to exhibit the correct function and posture because it’s now uncomfortable to do so. Now, in theory, we’re going to plug into the back of their cerebellum like they did in the film The Matrix. And I would hardwire good posture in theory that would gently correct in the same way as well. 

I could cut the nerves if I cut your trigeminal nerve that powers the chewing muscles, not the facial nerve that does facial expression, which is the normal one. Effective stroke? No. The really big power on your face would drop like a stone. There’s no one would question that. 

That’s an absolute fact. So if your face was to drop one side of it like a stone after cutting those muscles, why can’t we improve the function of those muscles and change it in the opposite direction? Hmm. You know, that’s the premise. And if I could plug in your cerebellum and hold why that? And just like that, ipso facto is going to happen, then that’s all I would need to do. But if life was so easy, I could upload some Latin. I can upload some.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:31:05] There may come a time I don’t think we may not be.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:31:08] They may come a time.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:31:09] I never realized how prescient the Matrix actually was. I feel like I’m living in it sometimes myself. But this applies —.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:31:18] Okay, so just to continue because I’m on that thread.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:31:22] Okay.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:31:23] So I’m saying that if I could for like a hard was someone to do it, that’s all they would need to do. But the structure they now have, like the structure you have, has been informed by your posture and function all your life. So you’ve created that structure with your posture and function. So it’s going to be very hard to go to a new posture and function since your current posture and function is the most comfortable. 

And we are creatures of comfort, you’re probably sitting comfortably at the moment. So the first thing I want to do is change the dimensional space, form, and function this interplay. So what I do is I expand greatly, improve the nasal capacity so people can breathe more comfortably through the airway, widen the top jaw massively. 

I’m not widening this to fit the teeth then I want to go way over the top so that I can get a real change in form and function people’s posture. Posture, function over time that’s what I get, to get the change in. Then having gained this massive change so people could improve, possibly not affect, but certainly improve and change that posture and function. I then put in a device and I’ve got example of that device here. 

You see, you don’t see much on the outside, but on the inside, you see these two things and they’re simple these two things. They fit in underneath here and underneath here. If you drop your jaw down, it’s going to hurt. Now, that’s going to change you a little bit. You know, I says a bit like I lend you a big belt buckle with a spike that comes up just a hair in front of your chest, not going to drop down that’s gonna hurt. Now you’re going to change your posture. Now, I don’t know is your waist and then you wear that blinds all of the time. So you’ve got to do this really before you’re ten.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:33:14] Right, right, right.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:33:16] So that’s what you get growth going.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:33:18] Even when you’re eating? even when you’re eating, you don’t eat?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:33:22] No, no, you don’t take it out. Yeah. You’re going to wear it all the time. But eating. Yeah, this is, you know, this treatment can’t be for everyone. I’m not trying to propose, postpone or promote this treatment. Actually, it’s got to be prevention. That’s what we’ve got to look at. Yeah, because I’m seeing all these cool kids sitting there. Yeah. If someone was to tell them to stand up straight and shut their mouth, that would go a long, long way to reducing these problems. 

And as much as we’ve tried with this treatment, it’s not gonna be for everyone. It’s very labour intensive. So read labour intensive to doesn’t make money. And that’s why no one wants to take this treatment on. It is incredibly hard. What do you need to change a child’s posture that’s changing them as in changing their habits and changing their behaviour and it is hard work to change behaviour. It takes many hours over a long period of time and read into that low profitability.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:34:27] I was going to ask you, but you may have already answered that. How this has been accepted by your peers?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:34:36] My peers? Not, Because what I’m doing is I’m gaining. I way we gain improvements in dental arrangement. I get six hour breaks from teeth. But, you know, when you look in the mouth of one of my finished cases, you’ll often see slightly rotated teeth if you’ve got little problems. And you know, the sort of thing that any orthodontist in the first, second, or third year of university could fix. Hmm. You know, the crazy thing. You know, this is the classic issue. 

You know, a dentist is seeing his patients coming in. A patient comes in. They’ve seen us and we’ve worked on them for like, say, four or five years because they tell you you need to follow a long period of time because growth doesn’t happen quickly. This girl has great facial portions. And, you know, nobody thought that straight, you know, opposites, front teeth. Great. But there’s a gap. 

There’s a twist to the dentist looks at this and goes, Those guys have been working for five years and they can’t even fix those little problems like this cutter. They must be useless. So, you know, any orthodontic fool could get a better result. You know you put a late night, high wire fix, braces like night. You’d have a better job in, literally, in two months. 

So they don’t realize that girl used to look like the backside of a bus. And she is now beautiful. I mean, literally, the change that we’ve achieved in that girl is beyond normal. But because the dentist doesn’t have any photographs, he’s not work with one because he intrinsically believes, like everyone else does, that your facial forms given. That’s it and anyway, the next patient comes in. 

The next patient, perfectly straight teeth. The girl still has to wear a retainer every night to maintain that alignment. But that’s what he expects and he goes now there’s a good orthodontic result. He doesn’t realise he now looks like the backside of a bus was quite pretty beforehand. But, you know, he hasn’t got photographs either.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:36:40] Because ultimately.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:36:41] I’m not saying orthodontics always damages facial. I’m saying that that’s an area I’m worried about.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:36:52] Because.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:36:52] That means orthodontics could be making cranial facial dystrophy worse. The underlying problem while treating the symptoms that always worries

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:37:02] I mean, I often say in my practice that the main reason for doing anything intervention was is to create more space for your airway and with your tongue and your airway. Would you agree with that?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:37:18] The main reason well, this is because we’ve gotten this airway kink, haven’t we?

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:37:23] We have. Well, breathing’s pretty important. breathing well?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:37:26] Yeah, yeah, but wrong. That’s true. But you’re not saying you’re doing that to improve a head posture.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:37:33] Well, it will, hopefully, it will in the process.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:37:36] Well, you’re saying those saying to open their used station tubes. You’re not saying, you know, to improve the parasympathetic sympathetic balance, you know? Yeah. I think it’s doing all of these things with got hijacked, I mean its airways, it’s you know, it’s important

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:37:52] Always a big improvement. You’d have to say, Mike, it’s a big improvement on where we were 30 or 40 years ago. Putting your father’s work aside.

Dr Mike Mew: [00:38:00] Yeah. I mean Dad, you know, Dad was trying to do sleep apnoea in the eighties and you know, everyone’s now he got bored because they wouldn’t people wouldn’t change and you know it just it they say that if you’re a step ahead of the crowd, you’re a genius. If you’re two steps ahead, you’re an idiot and you’re five steps ahead. I just — I, you know.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:38:24] Now now, let me ask you a personal question here, Mike, because you grew up in this environment, and I would imagine that what I’m looking at now, as I’m seeing you on the screen and I don’t want to get too personal here, but but you know, you know, you have grown up with with a father who has been very aware of this and and able to make structural changes. What do you, what’s your assessment of your facial structure?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:38:54] I’ve got this facial structure that my father. But remember. No one has the power to do it for you. They only have the power to help you to do it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:39:09] Yeah.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:39:09] And only then did I have the treatment. But I learnt the lesson and I had the knowledge that you know again stand up straight shut your mouth. You know, these aren’t new concepts. You know, if I’m going to make a plug here for anything, can I make a plug for the prevent crooked teeth? If people could go and sign up on the website, I I’d love the link there on the view tab

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:39:33] Yes, of course, I will.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:39:35] You know, we’re talking treatment. We’re talking about the dead, but we’ve got to do prevention. None of this is new. All of these prevention strategies are as old as the hills. Mm-hmm. You know, we’ve got this great. You know, we talk about my therapy. 

I say that half of my thoughts on therapy could be gleaned from simply closing your lips while you’re eating or getting your children to do this from young age. That’s 50% of my often practice down the line. It’s not complex because you sit opposite your child saying, shut your mouth. That’s what it often takes. Literally sitting there, engaging with the other person. No, it’s engaging with your child. Spending some time doing this.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:40:22] Yes.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:40:22] You know, we talk about the fact that if you have you know, if you do a brisk ten-minute walk every day, it will reduce your chance of getting a heart attack by a lot. Really makes a big difference. So if I could get a young, growing child to do 30 to 40 minutes of, you know, preordained exercise, that would be phenomenally profound. I mean, you know, mind-blowingly profound. Well, okay. So we’re using this complex when we’re eating. 

So let’s have the mealtime exercise. So super secret. Don’t tell anyone wrong. The mealtime exercise. It is set up straight. Elbows off the table. Eat with your mouth shut. Chew your food properly. Don’t speak when you’re eating food to you not eat your food and chin tuck when you’ve got to swallow. So pulls chin, tuck, swallow. 

Now, actually, I’ll let you a bigger secret. That’s not a secret. It’s that is probably the least secret exercise on this planet. You know, Confucius was saying that 3000 B.C.. Or was it anyway a long time ago as one of the Victorians, as interestingly, the parents of every single family from whatever culture those ever come in for consultation with me, recognise that exercise from their cultural history. 

Now when I put it like that, you’re going to think, Whoa, all cultures separated before we had tables and chairs. So either that’s magic or there’s a really important reason all our ancestors was doing that. And back then, if someone’s face didn’t grow well, it was more all because you know, that annoyed or face, that village idiot, the one that hangs, you know, close your mouth or the wind will change in your face will set like that. Yes. 

Remember all that so and that is, you know, and when we talk about Village Idiot, well, we know that if you’re a very downswing, extreme downswing people, you’ve got the abnormal face type pattern. You’ve probably got almost certainly you’ve got sleep apnoea. Well, sleep apnoea massively affects cognition. I mean something crazy like ten IQ points and then you’ve got the village idiot. You know. 

We know from cranial loss how the bones would tend to move, revalidate, craniasympatia or cranial psyco therapy. But they get some idea as to how the bones would move and the temporal bone would move in that scenario to make the is out. Oh, that we’ve got the village idea. You know it all pieces together and lots of people are catching up. You know, you’ve got James Nestor’s book, you’ve got Jaws, you’ve got these these literally. I mean jaws was lifted from my father’s work.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:43:30] Yeah. Know, this is not incidentally, Jaws, the movie. Steven Spielbergeds

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:43:35] No, no.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:43:36] No, no hang on. Paul Erlich has a book and I interviewed him and his co-authors, Sandra to find out. I couldn’t resist talking to Professor Erlich. You know, it was too compelling an opportunity.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:43:51] No, no I like Paul’s really nice chapter page, actually. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:43:54] Yeah, no, he’s very nice.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:43:56] But again.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:43:57] But preventing. Preventing crooked teeth. Well, you’ve just given me the name of this podcast, but if you had to give up this episode, rather. But if you had to give people but you’ve mentioned it, keep your mouth closed and chew your food, what other things could or should people be doing to prevent crooked teeth?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:44:16] Well, lip taping kids and chewing gum. Two things that most parents would go, Oh– taped that is my job they’ll those suffocate they’ll die, not even, I remember taping up one of my kids, and I thought, that’s a really good lip taping I walked to go to the bedroom. And they went, Oh, Daddy, I’ve thirsty. I mean, how did you speak of your taped lips up, they lick up. They’re not, you know, crazy suicide individuals, you know, humanity, that they’re good at surviving. They’ve done a really good job.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:44:53] And remind and remind us, Mike, why that, why the taping of the mouth at night presumably is such a great idea?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:45:01] It forces nasal breathing and it forces you to keep your lips closed. You know, it’s a simple thing that you can do, you know, use it or lose it. Use your nose or it will stop working. I mean, remember Kimono, Christian Kimono going on about just, you know, the importance of just continual nasal breathing. And it really works like breathing does what is vitally important. If you’re going to do nasal breathing, take some sort of microbial tape already for the Night-Time, but start with a tape like this one. This is my favorite tape here.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:45:34] What am I looking at?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:45:36] You used would there we got that tape now.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:45:38] My proposed silicone? Yes.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:45:40] Now use that during the daytime first. So if you allow your kids to do any screen time. Use that tape during the daytime first and the beauty of that tape is you can pull it off the mouth. You can stick it on to a window and put it back on the mouth again later. It will do about three, 2 to 3 attempts. But it means you’ve got a couple of bits of tape on the window. You can pay them off very quickly and put them on his lips. I think that you know–

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:46:10] I love that idea because it’s. I mean, we recommended for night-time use, but I will adopt that for a day time screen time wonderful idea

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:46:20] Screen time use.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:46:21] Yep.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:46:21] So what we do with, before you tape at night, make sure you’ve got quite a lot of lip taping in during the daytime. The kids are happy with that and what you do you use screen time as the your test bed so you get them screen time. And another thing is, do you see your child sitting here, you know, watching their screen and they’ve got their lips open? you just go. You know, they put their lips together. They stand up straight because they have to because you they want to see the screen. Yeah. 

There’s no point using close your lips because they’re so engaged in the screen, they won’t hear you. By the time you’ve said it three or four times, you’re getting annoyed, then you’re annoyed when you’re talking to them, then you have this aggressive annoyed, a raised tension and engagement with them, you know, and then you get annoyed where you simply put your hands in their eyes. They know what to do, you know, they, you know, they know what you– anyway let’s gather this together and you– and now you’re building up a pattern of behaviour.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:47:27] Yep.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:47:27] So I’m. Start with that, start with that ga that lip tape, then go on to my report night. And then we had a little thing that they were allowed to get up early, go downstairs, and watch the device until we got up to do breakfast. As long as they still had that lip tape on.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:47:44] All right.

[00:47:45] If I got downstairs and found the lip tape wasn’t on, then I’d just confiscate the device. Then they had a need to have that device on. And you can’t do that, let sit weekend morning. Then we, then chewing, just chewing. Go and get some medium or tough chewing gum. There’s lots of different ones with different, you know, without a spotane or this or that and chew gum from when they come home in the evening till they go to bedtime. 

And I recommend you can try and stop most of that from around for maybe 4 to 5 years old. You know, I don’t really push people at an age below that. But around three, 4 to 5 years old, you can start lip taping of chewing and sort of. And then from the start, start, go, I would recommend baby-led weaning and avoiding any form of soft food. You need to put food in a spoon and you shouldn’t be giving it to your child. But if you continue with breastfeeding for as long as humanly possible and then and that’s exclusive breastfeeding. 

So nothing else? Not for everyone. But if you want to follow, you want your child’s facial growth to be really good. Breastfeed exclusively with no dummy, no bottle, no soft baby food that needs to go in a spoon, and you then just introduce hard food so you start implementing hard foods, and that’s it. And then you gently swing across to normal feeding. Breast is really good for making the child breathe out at nose

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:49:19] Mm hmm.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:49:20] And I start my second child. You did use a dummy of a pacifier, as they call it. And I actually feel that we pulled that away too early because when she had the pacifier in the mouth, she kept her mouth closed and breathed through the nose and it’s interesting I don’t–. there’s no rule book of life.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:49:41] What about some sucking? What about thumb sucking?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:49:44] Well, there’s two ways of thumb sucking. You either have this act of thumbs up to where kids are really pushing up and forward. And I’ve seen kids who really develop lovely maxilla, fantastic cheekbones from thumb sucking, you know, really done a good job. Right. 

And the hard effects the dental position at all. Then I see kids doing this a is passive very low tone is done talking and that I’ve seen destroy faces. And that’s where you get the asymmetries, you know. But I hear of American indigenous American tribes where Thumbsucker was enforced. The entire tribe.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:50:22] Wow.

Dr Mike Mew: [00:50:23] And no problems.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:50:24] Wow.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:50:25] No, I don’t have hard scientific evidence of that, but I–it’s one of those hearsay things and, you know, I guess I shouldn’t parrot hearsay because it’s very unscientific of me, but it seems to ring some truths that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:50:43] Interesting, Interesting

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:50:44] We’ll I’ve got the heat off me. So I’ve got overheat on me at the moment. But when the heat’s off me, this is my mission. You know, my mission is to bring the spotlight of modern medical science to bear on these problems.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:50:58] Yup.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:50:58] And– that’s what we need

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:51:00] So good to get in and prevent them from happening because it’s quite a complex issue to correct them.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:51:06] It’s not just prevention because, you know Ron, we’ve got to think about that cohort, that avoided prevention. You know, then think of those young kids who were forced to have orthodontics by their parents, their parents didn’t understand the consequences and implications and risks of the orthodontic treatment.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:51:27] Yes

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:51:28] Those kids are now being forced to wear retainers. They never really went to the orthodontics. They certainly never realized they were being signed up to lifelong retention. Some of them may have been damaged by this process.They may have gained a further downswing from the mechanics.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:51:48] Well, if they–

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:51:50] Responded to the mechanics.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [00:51:50] Well, if they ended up with straight teeth and smaller jaws, they definitely, you know, were sold short there because they were set up with it–

Dr Mike Mew: [00:52:01] You know, Ron where do you place this? You know, this was this controversial topic, my father said on dispatches in 1998 that orthodontics can damage faces. You know, and I don’t think the orthodontic community has ever forgiven him.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:52:20] No. You know, it’s very confronting. The another word that I know is, can you using mewing tell me about mewing, or have you already told me about that?

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:52:29] I’m not really told you about mewing so. What I’ve done is I’ve put my thoughts and ideas up on the Internet. I had already put out quite a few videos of my exercises for my patients because it’s, you know, it’s massively time consuming to train people to do, you know, have right posture and function and, you know, try to encourage them to have correct body posture and function. It’s just a very time consuming thing to do and of course, it’s time consuming. Don’t make money that’s simple business concept. 

So I put this stuff online. I was then asked to give a lecture for something called The 21 Convention, which was it is a good lecture. You look up like me, 21 convention, you have some links, but it didn’t. But it is the sort of video I wouldn’t actually I’ve given you. I’ve I’d probably checked them out because half of the lectures were on something called pick up artists. You know, I’ve never even heard what pickup artists were. But, you know, these are guys that give clues and tricks to young kids on how to chat girls up.

Dr. Mike Mew: [00:53:37] Oh, right.

Dr Mike Mew: [00:53:37]. And another chunk of these lectures was on bodybuilding on how to look good, you know, personal grooming. You know, it was. You know, it was very male orientated. It was very, um. You know, I forget the sort of APEC words to describe it. I knew I wouldn’t have ever given this lecture. But anyway, they it was very convenient really. From the end, it was literally in Charing Cross. 

My girl, my girlfriend, now wife, was working in Covent Garden and it was literally next door to where she was working. And the timing was literally just as I would normally go into London to pick her up and maybe go out and do something. So it was just like there’s Wow, that is convenient timing. And they said they’d record it professionally and put it out. 

So I did this lecture and I laid down what I’m saying about craniofacial dystrophy, about how faces grow or they don’t grow correctly, and how that causes problems. And I have a treatment to correct that, and anyone with good or positive should be able to do that and I bit lecture it well off, it’s a lecture I’ve given before, but mainly to dentist the end of the lecture I was mobbed by the crowd and they were saying, How can we make ourselves look better? 

And I was well know it’s incredibly difficult to try and do this. You know, you’d be almost crazy to try because it’s so difficult to do this. And yet I guess you’re not doing anything else with your mouth. You’re not doing any else with the tongue. The potential rewards are enormous, so you might as well give it a go.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:55:14] Hmm.

Dr Mike Mew: [00:55:14]. And then I noticed a few. We had an alert out of my name, so I noticed a few people talking about me. In places. And we then engaged with them and gave them, you know, people asking questions amongst themselves. So I came in and I went through a list of questions and asked and gave responses to all of these questions. And these deftly were in some of the darker areas of the Internet. But and we thought about it and at the time, well, I had nothing to lose. You know, I wanted to get this message out there. 

So I engaged with these people in places where I’m sure some PR agent would now warn me never to tread. However, we tried there, we gave responses and I made some videos asking specific questions and I was just trying to raise any interest in this subject. To me, that is so clear and obvious, and no one in medicine seems to be interested. And, you know, I’m just saying, you know, I’ve been hounding my, you know, the powers that be in the UK for a decade to have a debate on why teeth are crooked. 

You know, a fairly simply, I started in, I wrote an editorial called A Black Swan, you know, playing on the concept of Karl Popper’s Black Swan more then came, the credit crunch came and people started talking about Black Swan events, which sort of changed the meaning of that phrase. But anyway, the Black Swan is one of those scientific things, is you cannot prove anything, you can only disprove something. 

So, you know, we all thought, you know, if you went around the Europe, you’d think all swans white. So you could say you could make a hypothesis that all swans are white. However you go to Perth and well we’ve got, we’ve got black swans. But so no amount of research in Europe could ever conclusively prove the black swans don’t exist because they’re the outside world. 

So and that’s the philosophy that Karl Popper came up with. If you followed Karl Popper’s logic of science, we wouldn’t be in the situation. That’s why I’m asking us to review the ancient rules of science, and you need to have debate. So I tried to push my profession into a debate on why teeth are crooked. I went to length an equation to say, look, we need to have a debate when you follow the scientific process. 

That’s all I’m asking for is science. You know any professor on this planet. Come engage with me, anyone. Please don’t be shy. This is science is about engaging, having debate. And you can’t just you know, the way people have of responding to me is to run away. To refuse to engage with me to prevent us from speaking, to prevent us from publishing. That’s the only response. I’m sorry I’m going of course here. 

So I’ve already been doing this. And I got invited to this lecture. I gave this lecture mewing. Just this the profession seemed to be so blind, so deaf, so unwilling to speak to me. The general public locked this up. And I mean, I had out. So I was advised just a little before I gave this lecture, I would advise to go on social media, and it was by a patient’s mom. 

I treated her second child for free and she helped get me going with social media and she sent me a message just recently and I’ll see if I can find that message because I really interested me what she was saying because it was, you know, she said she said, I hope this text finds you. While I was on TikTok tonight when I saw a mewing video randomly come up in my newsfeed, a hash had 875 million views. Wow. Now that’s just I don’t know how that hashtag is outside of Tik Tok or just in TikTok– I think it’s just on Tik Tok.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:59:25] Yeah

Dr Mike Mew: [00:59:26] That’s just English language speaking, Now, you know, when you stop to think about it, you know, we’ve been talking about within the non-mainstream orthodontic world and we’ve had you know, whenever I go to these meetings, everyone says, oh, we’ve got to get information out there how people don’t understand what we’re talking about. And I’ve often thought to myself, that’s great, you need to get information out. But what information? 

Because what I like about Orthotropics it’s got a Pathology, it’s got an Epidemiology, it’s got an Aetiology, it’s a proper science. It also because, you know, you answer the questions you can didactically test it and rationale with it. Modern orthodontics and many of the other no mainstream ideas don’t have that

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:00:16] Mmm, Yes.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:00:17] However, that alone. mewing and with that, of course, might mean she goes on to say that a hashtag with my name at 17 a half million views.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:00:32] This is my brush with fame, Mike.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:00:34] I mean, this is my brush with time. I mean, I wasn’t expecting this, but, you know, I went to Honolulu, Spain last week and I got chatting to a group of kids on the beach. They were playing by I was pushing my daughters on the slight swings and I got chatting next to the guy standing beside me and he just started mewing two weeks before and so it’s some of his mates. 

And they all came over. We had a chat and there were wow, we didn’t even know that. You know, we knew there was a might knew somewhere, but, you know, didn’t ever expect to meet him. I talked to the lifeguard who was a medical student and one of the other lifeguards. He said, Oh yeah, yeah. She recognised you when you came here. You know, we’re packing up the car, some vehicles, but hey, I might be. And this is in Spain. This isn’t even included in those hashtags because this is a Spanish language.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:01:25] Hmm.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:01:26] And when I go through my YouTube channel, you know, I saw this metric with thousands on it. And although I’ve never been into that segment of that rock n roll, and it was all copyright conflicts. And I couldn’t believe how many copyright infringement, copyright infringement, how many copyright infringement? I mean, literally, tens of thousands of people copied my videos and then put them up in all kind of languages with all kind of different subtitles and, you know, Russian text.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:01:57] And so how many videos, how many is it? Is it a video or is it a series of videos?

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:02:03] Most of them most of.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:02:07] And so coming back to the question and it’s an extraordinary story and I almost feel like at this point I should insert at least one of those videos for people to see. Is it one video or is it a series of videos? Is it exercise? That’s what it is basically, isn’t it? Mewing.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:02:25] Okay. So mewing is I’m about to release a video, a series of videos of you mewing are generated from the few videos that I have put up for my patients online.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:02:40] Right.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:02:40] On our little YouTube channel. Someone would also give me some advice to put up videos that were all different topics. Like, what is an object? What is an overbite? What is this? And that was roughly around the same time because this woman had got me going. So we were putting videos out on what to do with what’s overbite. And then I put one up on a technique of how to swallow, how to do that, and how to do that. 

So things were running in sort of parallel. On the YouTube channel, there was enough information for people to get going with me and me. And after that, the, you know, it’s gone with its own flowision. You know, it’s just — it’s gone crazy. Yeah, it’s. And it now has its own thing. I mean, I see lots and lots of people with videos always a year or so ago I checked, but there was at least ten videos giving explanation on mewing and how to do it that had been seen more than 10 million times.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:03:42] And that explanation comes from you or someone else has taken it upon?

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:03:46] I think people thinks that mewing works. Hmm. You know, just as you’ve you have a stroke. And again, these are just some of the facial muscles your face will downswing and lengthen. If you were especially a young under 25, you’ve really got to be unattended for five. But it if you are 17, 18 and you’re focused, you will get noticeable changes. It works. It does what it says on the tin. And so I’m not. I don’t want to be the fountain of all knowledge. I want to be a scientist. . You know, I’ve opened people’s eyes to this.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:04:25] Yeah.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:04:26] I want to find out the best ways of doing it. I will come out with all the methods and techniques. I mean, lots of other people are coming up with other techniques and methods and great that’s fantastic.— and that’s what it takes

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:04:40] And Mike, the basic principle of that is to get proper function of the tongue and the lips and the cheek and the swallowing pattern, which is what we do all the time?

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:04:51] I’d like to say better posture.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:04:54] Better posture okay

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:04:55] You know, when I go to these non-mainstream orthodontic groups that I go to the rebellion groups, they go on about function, function, function, function, function. We talk about functional parts and I’m going now is posture, you know, function to function is to do this. That’s not going to change my page or form. But if I did this all the time, then it is.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:05:17] Yeah.Yes

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:05:18] So but posture is a function over time.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:05:21] Yes. Okay. I like that. Posture is a function over time. I like that and uhmm–

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:05:27] Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:05:27] . Now, listen, you’ve cut you’ve opened up a whole can of worms here. Talking about science, because, my God, that’s a whole story about pandemics and how the pandemic being handled. Let’s not even go there –. should we, I don’t know.

Dr Mike Mew: [01:05:43] Yeah, yeah. No, I wouldn’t cover that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:05:46] No no, recent

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:05:47] I mean, that was a very good video I saw recently by a guy called John Campbell.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:05:53] Oh, John. John Campbell is a lecturer

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:05:56] It was called The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:06:00] Well, we’ve covered that. You’d be very pleased to know. I’ve covered that on my podcast. It’s a BMJ article in April of this year talking about key opinion leaders and product champions. You’ll have to go through the back catalogue, Mike, and look at some of my other podcasts because I cover this topic extensively. 

Listen, we’re coming to the end, and I have to say, I have so enjoyed talking to you. I met your father and I’m going to put a bit of that. We had only a very short discussion with your father, and it was lovely because I think he’s a legend. He literally is a living legend.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:06:33] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the guy, he’s not the easiest man.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:06:38] I’ve picked up on that and, you know, I can recognise a family passion there.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:06:47] There is a family perhaps. I mean, I clearly my personality had to evolve around his and, you know, I’m used to working with someone who is very, you know, he’s self-driven but also self-centered.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:06:59] Yes, I, I, I’ll let’s just leave that. And but I wanted to finish with one question, and I wanted you to take a step back from your role as well, an Orthotropic Orthodont? How would you describe yourself professionally?

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:07:15] I’m the dentist trying to find some answers.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:07:17] Okay. I want to tell you, I want to take a step back from your professional role because we are all on a health journey as individuals in this modern world. And I’m intrigued to know what you think the biggest challenges for us as individuals on that journey.

Dr. Mike Mew: [01:07:34] Okay. Right. So if I got run over by a double decker London bus outside here tomorrow, I’d want modern medicine on my side, antibiotics, anesthetics. Which is we mustn’t sort of pooh pooh. We mustn’t diminish our respect for that massive wonders that we’ve created with modern medicine. It is truly awesome. However, a predict medicine. It’s absolutely brilliant what we’ve done. 

However, if I got a chronic disease, so I’ve got a chronic condition, one could argue that modern medicine would could very fairly put up its hand and say, look, we welcome alternative viewpoints and concepts on this, and I think they fairly should do that. I wouldn’t say they’re fail, but we’re not. By the definition, it’s chronic that we’ve not fixed it. We’re not corrected these. And when you look at the actual cost of modern medicine, the cost is disproportionately skewed to trying to treat these chronic conditions. 

And apart from the diseases of aging, which I’m sorry, we’re all going to get old. Apart from those, most of the chronic conditions are related to the mismatch between how we evolved to live and how we are all living. In a way, it’s our lifestyle. And how we live our lives. And I think that we’re reaching that limit between how this modern medical approach can affect these chronic conditions and how we, by lifestyle modifications, could affect these problems. 

And I think what we need to do, redefine that balance and responsibilities and. Best methods, and I think we should look with fresh eyes on these chronic conditions because we’ve got to look at them differently. We’re not going to find the answers. They ain’t going to come in a pill packet.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [01:09:45] Hmm. Well, Mike, that’s a very important note to finish on, and I so enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr Mike Mew: [01:09:55] Okay, Ron. My pleasure.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich: [01:09:57] Well, I did say that Mike was passionate and so he should be, because the implications of something we’ve just come to take for granted as though what’s the big deal? I mean, you know, if we all didn’t have enough room for five fingers on our hands and everybody had the fourth finger removed at the age of 18, I doubt whether we’d be taking this as casually as we do. 

And yet the implications of this underdevelopment of the jaw are much more far reaching than if we didn’t have enough room for all five fingers on our hands. And yet that is the case in my own practice, in every author, in every practise, in dentistry. If I was to ask how many people for every hundred people that come into a dental practice, how many have all 32 of their teeth through and in perfect alignment? 

And as Mike pointed out, even space behind the wisdom teeth. Now, what’s the big deal there? This is much more than your ability to chew. You might say, Oh, well, when we were hunt together, we really needed all of those teeth to chew. Well, the fact is, the shape and size of your mouth determines the shape and size of your upper airway. 

And as another guest, Dr. Felix Liao, points out, we have a six foot tiger, a tongue in a three foot cage. And that means the tongue is potentially going to interfere with ideal breathing, and that means sleeping as well. And that means posture as well. And that has a whole lot of flow on effects. And of course, what a wonderful story about music. 

Now, I had the opportunity previously to talk to Professor John Mew, Mike’s father, who is a legend in the dental world. I mean, he put the cat amongst the pigeons in the late seventies and early eighties by suggesting that the way orthodontics was conducted was wrong, that what we needed to do was develop the lower half of the face, and that means everything below the eyes, and that would have flow-on effects to our general health. 

Now, Professor John Mew is now and he’s nice and I recorded a short video there. And I will also in this week’s episode of The Healthy Bite include a brief some of that interview and I’ll also include a video on mute. There’s so much in this episode preventing crooked teeth. I hope this finds you well. I will, of course, have links to Dr. Mike Mew’s website and you can learn all about mewing and much, much more. Until next time. This is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

 

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. This content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences, and conclusions.