Dr Theodore Belfor: Epigenetic Cranial & Facial Development Introduction

Well, we look at people’s faces all the time, and we make judgements about their appearance, their demeanour are they happy, and they are friendly and angry, and they are sad. But today, we’re going to look and think about faces in a completely different way. And it’s a way that gives you a clue as to the potential health problems they, or you, may have. And it’s from a totally unique perspective. My guest today is Dr Theodore Belfor,

Ted Belfor. He’s based in New York in private practice with over 40 years of experience. Ted specialises in the treatment of the cranium and the face. It’s why today’s episode is relevant to us all. For over 20 years, Ted has dedicated has been dedicated to maximising craniofacial function, the function of your head and your face by improving wellness through the face and airway development to improve breathing, jaw function and sutural homeostasis. 

Now, many people, including most health practitioners, are not familiar with that term. So here are some basics. The skull, also known as the cranium, consists of 22 bones, which can be subdivided into eight cranial bones that’s the top of our skull and 14 facial bones. And the main function of the skull, along with the surrounding meninges, is to provide protection and structure. And then, of course, there is the jawbone.

Now, there are some loose bones in the middle ear, very important for our health. We will do a programme about that another time. But we are referring to the 22 bones that make up the skull, and where they join are called sutures. And it turns out keeping them in balance, and healthy is important. And that is sutural homeostasis. Now, Dr ted Belfor has been lecturing on this special and this speciality worldwide, teaching and training dentists with an appliance that he has designed. It’s a rather unique appliance. 

It’s called the Homeoblock and his unique diagnostic protocol, which he’s been using for almost 20 years. His work is devoted to understanding the causes of sleep and breathing disorders, something we all engage with. And if you’re a regular listener to this podcast, you will know that sleep and breathe are foundational pillars, not just for our wellness programme or our health programme, but for our lives. And he assesses facial and cranial structures.

Well, you’ll never look at faces the same way. Now, Ted, as you will hear, is passionate, but more importantly, he’s extremely knowledgeable at tying the head, the face, the jaw, the airway posture and much, much more together. Remember, that’s just how the body works as a whole system. So you need to be tying these all together. 

Ted is currently treating patients and training doctors, and researching the efficacy of his appliance therapy for healthier sleep, the airway and improved autonomic nervous system function. Now it’s that part of our nervous system which regulates our very being in sickness and in health.

Now, in the first part of this episode, Ted outlines some of the theories and practise of his approach, which, as I said, is relevant to any everyone. I’ve known of Ted Balfor’s work for some time, and I’ve had the pleasure of studying with him. I’ve also been so impressed by his knowledge, and I wanted to share that with you. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Ted Belfor.

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 and pay my respects to their Elders – past, present and emerging.

Well, we look at people’s faces all the time, and we make judgements about their appearance, their demeanour are they happy, and they are friendly and angry, and they are sad. But today, we’re going to look and think about faces in a completely different way. And it’s a way that gives you a clue as to the potential health problems they, or you, may have. And it’s from a totally unique perspective. 

My guest today is Dr Theodore Belfor, Ted Belfor. He’s based in New York in private practice with over 40 years of experience. Ted specialises in the treatment of the cranium and the face. It’s why today’s episode is relevant to us all. For over 20 years, Ted has dedicated has been dedicated to maximising craniofacial function, the function of your head and your face by improving wellness through the face and airway development to improve breathing, jaw function and sutural homeostasis. 

Now, many people, including most health practitioners, are not familiar with that term. So here are some basics. The skull, also known as the cranium, consists of 22 bones, which can be subdivided into eight cranial bones that’s the top of our skull and 14 facial bones. And the main function of the skull, along with the surrounding meninges, is to provide protection and structure. And then, of course, there is the jawbone. 

Now, there are some loose bones in the middle ear, very important for our health. We will do a programme about that another time. But we are referring to the 22 bones that make up the skull, and where they join are called sutures. And it turns out keeping them in balance, and healthy is important. And that is sutural homeostasis. Now, Dr Ted Belfor has been lecturing on this special and this speciality worldwide, teaching and training dentists with an appliance that he has designed. It’s a rather unique appliance. 

It’s called the Homeoblock and his unique diagnostic protocol, which he’s been using for almost 20 years. His work is devoted to understanding the causes of sleep and breathing disorders, something we all engage with. And if you’re a regular listener to this podcast, you will know that sleep and breathe are foundational pillars, not just for our wellness programme or our health programme, but for our lives. And he assesses facial and cranial structures. 

Well, you’ll never look at faces the same way. Now, Ted, as you will hear, is passionate, but more importantly, he’s extremely knowledgeable at tying the head, the face, the jaw, the airway posture and much, much more together. Remember, that’s just how the body works as a whole system. So you need to be tying these all together. 

Ted is currently treating patients and training doctors, and researching the efficacy of his appliance therapy for healthier sleep, the airway and improved autonomic nervous system function. Now it’s that part of our nervous system which regulates our very being in sickness and in health. 

Now, in the first part of this episode, Ted outlines some of the theories and practise of his approach, which, as I said, is relevant to any everyone. I’ve known of Ted Balfor’s work for some time, and I’ve had the pleasure of studying with him. I’ve also been so impressed by his knowledge, and I wanted to share that with you. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Ted Belfor. Welcome to the show, Ted. 

Ted, I know I’ve been following your work for many years, and I’m actually working with you now. Studying with you. I wondered if you might just share with us your journey and what you’ve been working on.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:04:30] Well, thank you for the invitation. I’m Ted Belfor. I’m a senior certified instructor for the International Association for Orthodontics. You might say that 20 years ago I stumbled on something that today can be considered or spoken of as epigenetic orthodontics. Most of us know a bit about epigenetics today. I’ll fill you in. But 20 years ago, not so much. Very simply, we understand that the genes we all inherit, construct and operate the human body. 

What we’ve learnt is that the environment has a big effect on who we are. That’s called epigenetics. In other words, what happens in our environment switches on genes. And that’s the story because no gene ever switched itself on. One gene can switch on another gene, but we need an environmental cue to switch on genes. So when we look at our face in the mirror, that’s not necessarily the same face that’s in our DNA. Did we reach our full potential? 

In the 21st century, not one of us reaches our full potential. So what you’re going to what we’re going to talk about basically is how I stumbled on to this, how our faces can change. And then I’m going to introduce you. Thanks to the author, James Nestor, who I treated, who’s given me full permission to use his information, which I can share with you to give you an idea of what I’m speaking about. 

So 20 years ago, more than 20 years ago, I had a practice on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and I treated a lot of performing artists. And more than once, many times, I would hear these folks say to me, Doc, I got this one crooked tooth. I’m getting new headshots. Can you straighten it for me? Well, I had no idea. I never had one orthodontic course. Furthermore, I was totally lazy. I did not want to spend three years studying orthodontics. And in New York, you can find whatever you want. 

So what I did, was I looked around and what I found was an orthodontist who had been straightening teeth without wires and brackets for more than 60 years. Six oh, six years. He was retired. His name was Bob. Bob Fisher may rest in peace. Well, I asked Bob to come into the office because I had these patients to treat, and I asked him to come in. 

And the only thing I wanted from him was for him to show me, to teach me what he knew. Well, we started treating some of these performing artists that can’t wear wires and brackets. If they’re a singer or an actor, they cannot wear wires in brackets. So Bob had removable appliances to straighten their teeth. 

Well, one particular appliance, when the patients came back, very often the actors would say, my makeup artist, is telling me my face is changing. The singers would say, Doc, I’m reaching higher notes since I’m wearing your appliance. So I went to Bob. I said, What’s this? He said, I hear that all the time, but I’m only interested in growing bone. So I picked up the ball from that point. 

And way back then, I kept records of the facial changes I was generating. I literally brought them to NYU College of Dentistry. The dean at that time, Dr Alfano, invited me to present at the Post Graduate Ortho Department, and when I showed them what I showed them, they started whispering Photoshop. Nobody could believe that. You can change an adult face. 

Well, over these years, I’ve proven them wrong. And what you need to understand is when your face grows and develops, which is what we achieve, your airway changes. In the womb, when we develop, the face develops around the airway. Dr Donald Endlow with his famous book, Essentials for Facial Growth. He points out that the airway is the keystone of the face. 

So for all I know, I’m changing the airway and breathing first, and then the face is changing. So these things work for hand in glove. So initially, to make it simple for you, I’m going to introduce you. If I can share the screen, I’m going to introduce you to what I did for James Nestor, who wrote the wonderful book Breathe. And I recommend it so highly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:09:18] And I must say, Ted, he was he’s been a guest on our podcast as well. So this bookends those that will read we reissue that episode so people can hear from the dentist that treated him. I think now don’t forget where a lot of this is audio. So we’re going to show this as well, as this is why people should go on our YouTube. But for those people that are listening to it on audio, you’re going to have to try and be as descriptive as you can.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:09:44] So I met James in 2017. Actually, he contacted me. James Nestor had written a book called Deep, and it was about these deep divers that could hold their breath for more than 10 minutes. They actually dove under the sea without any kind of oxygen tank and held their breath for more than 10 minutes. Someone told him that I could explain that, which I did. So we met on the phone. 

He lives in California I live in New York. And he said to me, I think we need to get together. I’d like to speak to you more about this. And we did. So we met in Paris, of course. Where else? So even his wife and my wife, we met in Paris in 2017, and we literally went to the catacombs under the city looking at skulls. 

And James picked up on the idea. He had already had a book deal with Penguin, and now he was interested more than ever in the fact that our faces are not fully developed. So what James talks about is the lack of full development that we have today because of our processed food, and because our jaws are smaller, we have crooked teeth, and we don’t breathe as well. 

So that makes sense. That’s really, really good sense. And he presented brilliantly in his book, and it’s worth reading. In any case, this was James when I met him. And we looked at his face, and his face was asymmetrical. What you’re going to find when you look in the mirror is that your face is asymmetrical. 

All of us have a certain amount of cranial strain. It has to do with the third trimester of pregnancy, our trip through birth canal and even our first year on the planet when our skull is kind of soft. So looking at James, we see his left eye is higher, his left eyebrow, and he has more cheekbones on the left side. Furthermore, I have fancy software from the Mayo Clinic. I look down his airway, and his airway matches his face. 

In other words, what we see, his right side face is less developed and it’s narrower, and the right side of his airway is also less developed, narrower and more collapsible. And that was in 2017, using dicon data from a cone beam scan, which is a three-dimensional scan. This is a face change in one year. So in one year, he had very little cheekbone. But after one year, particularly on the right side, we showed a significant amount of change in the cheekbone. 

So several years later, he sent me these photos. This is him before, and this is him after treatment. Notice that his lower right eye is now level where he didn’t have cheekbones on the right side. He’s now perfectly symmetrical. And what’s really important to me is that initially, his jaw, his lower jaw, was misaligned. Now it’s lined up perfectly. You can look at the symmetry in his mouth. Well, I was. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:12:58] How old? How old was James, Ted?

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:13:01] How old?

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:13:02] Yep.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:13:03] Well, I’m afraid it’s not my liberty to say this is confidential. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:13:09] He’s got a grey beard there, so I’m guessing he’s definitely in his forties at least, and maybe forties there. But anyway, he’s an adult. That’s this is, you know, with a grey beard. So that’s impressive.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:13:20] This is a so-called non-growing adult. You’re not supposed to grow new bone, so I at that time, I had a wonderful I still do, but at that time was we were able to send data to analyse directly from the Mayo Clinic, send the data before and after data, and they would do an evaluation for me. 

Well, I asked them about the cheekbone changes. This is what they sent me. This is their data from direct. So they showed an increase in bone volume of 1658 cubic mm. This, there’s this huge bone here but also the upper jaw actually there’s a number of bones involved in this change, and we’ll get into that. 

So we change. We grew new bone, and we reposition bone. Not only do we grow bone, but we reposition bone in this colour, yellow. Yellow is bone growth within the upper jaw itself. This is part all part of the upper jaw, including this region, the maxillary process, which affects our breathing in the orthomoid region. So there was tremendous changes. They actually segmented out the bone to show actually what changes to the bones.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:14:40] And Ted. And Ted. Ted, let me just say for our listener that going back to that photo of the one before that, what we’re looking at, there is actually significant growth in the right cheek. And which is, as you pointed out the maxillary bone. So this is on an adult who’s apparently, as you said, stopped growing. But there is very definitely grows there and changes. Go on. Sorry. Sorry to interrupt.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:15:05] Yeah, that’s okay. So this is James. He talks about the fact that we’re underdeveloped and our jaws don’t develop fully. He knows that. He’s an example of that. We looked at him, and we you know, we basically use this fancy software from the Mayo Clinic we can look at his airway. We look at his cervical spine, and we look at his jaw. 

We can see his profile. So this is the software which allows you to see the face, the bone and the airway all at the same time. And what we discovered one year later was that we all the red that’s in here is actually increased airway volume. So not only did his face change, but the region behind his tongue, which is so important for breathing that increased in size when we actually compared the before and after airway. 

This is only 12 months. We see as well as the right side of the face improving and developing. The right side airway has become more toned and opened up. On the left, it’s more collapsible, and on the right, better tone for breathing. Furthermore, this is original data before and after data, the original data, and we take a closer look. 

We see that initially, James had pus and granulation tissue in his sinus. This is the sinuses, and he had pus and granulation tissue in the sinus. One year later, it was all gone that improved breathing. All that chronic rhinosinusitis was gone. So also turbinates, which swell swelling and shrink in the post-op. He was breathing better in the post-op. 

So now let’s talk about really what it’s all about. The first piece of information that’s not common knowledge that’s taken me all these years to learn is that the way we… Well, the initial part of it is common knowledge. How we grow and develop is based on how we breathe, how we swallow and how we chew. 

So the first thing that I discovered so many years ago with that dental appliance was the dental appliance that changed the faces and allowed the singers to reach higher notes had a unilateral bite block. In other words, when they bit down, when the patient bit down, they hit this block on one side. Now, the dental profession frowns on the idea of a unilateral contact. 

However, just think about it. There is nobody on this planet that chews on both sides at the same time. We all chew on one side and then the other side. We chew unilaterally. This is the information the body understands. So initially, by placing that unilateral block, I was sending epigenetic, environmental signals to the DNA. 

And in other words, I was replacing the missing hard food in our diet, which didn’t allow the full expression of our DNA. In other words, what I was saying before, we have a different face in our DNA than the one we’re walking around with. What determines our phenotype? The face that we walk around with is the expression of the DNA. 

We can change the expression of the DNA. That’s what epigenetics is. If we change breathing, swallowing and chewing, we can change the face. The body has that ability. We are constantly expressing our DNA every minute, every second, every hour of the day we are expressing our DNA, which constructs and operates our body. Now, how did James develop this face in the first place? Initially, we said his left eye was higher, and his left eyebrow is higher, and he has more cheekbone on the left side. 

The reason he developed like that is because he breathed into his left side. That’s most of us. Most of us, as we’re growing and developing, we breathe more logically and more likely into the left side. Now, let me go. Let me I want you to understand, sitting here, wherever you are listening to this, you are subject to gravity and atmospheric pressure. 

These spaces in your face are hollow. These are your sinuses. The hollow spaces. That atmospheric pressure, that gravity sits on us, and it’s 15 pounds per square inch. The average person is maybe 3000 square inches. That’s 20 tons of pressure sitting on us. Which means that when we breathe inside our face, when we take that breath into our nose, and the air goes into the sinuses, that’s the only thing that resists the force of gravity and atmospheric pressure. 

So initially, James breathes more into his left side, and his left side grew out, and rounder and all that pressure on the right side made his right face narrower. It did not develop this same way. This is not common knowledge out there. I dare anybody to dispute this. So looking internally, we prove it. 

This is just one slice through James, and what we’re looking at, if you understand what we look, this is called a coronal slice. In other words, this slice shows the sinuses. This is the left sinus and the right sinus. This is the nose. This is where you breathe through. But look at the collapse of his right sinus.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:20:58] That x-ray it’s a slice through the face, which shows the face in cross-section. And there’s a very big difference between the left sinus and the right sinus. So you can see the collapse very clearly. That’s a great slide there, Ted.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:21:12] Yes. As it turns out, James is a wonderful example to show exactly what we’re capable of doing. Now, you folks maybe, you know, you know what a palate is, the roof of your mouth. But there’s a terrible misconception about the palate. The palate is not one bone. The roof of your mouth is not one bone. It’s two bones separated by a suture. A suture is a space between the two bones. 

So when James breathed into the left side of his, into the left side, and developed correctly in this side of this on the left side, that affects how his teeth come together. So actually, what we see here is proper development, and we see how the teeth fit together beautifully. What we’re seeing here is the upper tooth is more towards the cheek, more buckerly, the lower tooth where the point, the cusp of the lower tooth fits right into the depression, the faster opening up a tooth. 

This is beautiful development, and that’s why the bite is perfect. On the opposite side, he is collapsed inward. And because of that, when we look at the bite relationship, the teeth are pretty much edge to edge with an incorrect bite. All that force also, if you look at the palate of bones, the force of that has rotated. This is called internal rotation of the maxilla. It’s rotated the palatal bone downward and inward. 

So, in other words, how you breathe is affecting how you chew. By the way, the key element here is the position of the mandible, the lower jaw, the position of the lower jaw determines how your head sits on your cervical spine, which determines the position of your head, affects your jaw joint. It affects how your teeth come together, and it affects this bone. What is call your, you call it an Adam’s apple, the thyroid bone, which controls the tongue and therefore how we breathe. 

So all of this development literally is related to how James breathes. So when we look at his face now, afterwards, we see that he corrected, in other words here, which is known as left torsion, where the left side is very developed, and the right side is not. This is called left torsion, but after treatment, it was perfectly neutral. Everything is lined up. He has the before and after photos. 

So initially, this is what he looked like. Now understand this. If your left thigh is higher, your jaw is rotated upward on the left side. It’s rotated higher on the left side. This is natural development up and out on the left, down and in on the right that affects the position of the jaw. But after treatment with my appliance called the Homeoblock, he now rotated the jaw upward more on the right side. 

He developed on the right side and look at the way the teeth fit together. Now the teeth fit together on the right side exactly the same way they do on the left side. This is correct. This is a correct bite relationship. Now with this software from the Mayo Clinic, we can evaluate exactly what happened. 

So in relation to the movement of the jaw, we explained to you what happened. Well, we grew a bone that did not grow on the right side. The teeth moved out in this region on the right side, and the jaw lined up correctly. Initially, it was to the left. Then it moved to the right. How did it move to the right? It moved to the right because this bone, the temple bone, the temple bone, which is above your ears, is what happens is when that rotates outward, it brings your jaw back. 

So in effect, we grew bone in the maxilla, we moved teeth. The temple bone actually rotated outward, bringing the jaw backward. But also we raised his eyes, didn’t we? So the right eye was lower than the left eye. Well, look at all the bone change around the right eye, all the bone change around the eye. In fact, we affected all these bones, the maxilla, the zygoma, the steinoid and the temporal bone all affected by this treatment. 

When we look down into the orbit, we can see that the maxilla lifted, and everything lifted, and we created new bone at the lower border of the orbit. And that explains why the eye itself is now level. So here is this. This breaks it down for you. You’re maxilla. You’re up a jaw, literally is the floor of the orbit. We change the maxilla. Zygoma, your cheekbone, also represents the floor of the orbit. 

Since we showed you early on the amount of change, we literally generated. It makes clear sense as to why the eyes are now level. We reposition the bone. Not only do we reposition the bone, we generated new bone, but how did we do that? Did I do it? Did my appliance do it? The answer is my appliance might have created the proper epigenetic environment. 

But what actually did it? Excuse me? What actually did it? Is your own body self-correcting? Let me make this statement perfectly clear. Any orthodontic treatment that uses the body’s own self-corrective mechanism is going to be successful. Any orthodontic treatment that uses the body’s own self-correcting mechanism will be successful. That’s the point that I want to make to you today. 

Now, I think Ron has some additional questions for me, but this is a basis this gives you the baseline to understand how we change, how we change, how we’re capable of actually reaching our potential by stimulating the body to self-correct. That’s called epigenetic orthodontics. So for Ron, I’m going to stop.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:27:51] Well, Ted, yet none of the ten. That was just extraordinary. And I’m glad you did that because, you know, and it kind of highlights why people should actually sometimes come on to our YouTube channel and see the visuals. But I think you gave enough of a description there, and you’ve said so much. I think one of the things that people don’t realise is the complexity of the skull. 

You know, like the lower jaw is one bone, but the head, the skull is many bones. Tell us, you know, just give us some basics there because, you know, people think, oh, well, once I’ve stopped growing, that’s it. You know, sutures have closed. No more growth. That’s the traditional view.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:28:30] I went to school. It’s funny you say that because when I went to school, they taught me that the cranial sutures all fused in late adulthood. If that was the case, we would all have dementia because the cranial bones all move. They have to move because they move cerebrospinal fluid. And the cerebrospinal fluid is what cleans the amyloid plaque. So the amyloid plaque is when it builds up, it gives you Alzheimer’s. So without the cranial bones moving, we’d have Alzheimer’s, we’d have dementia. 

So literally, every single time we take a breath, our cranial bones move. When we breathe in, inhale. The back of the skull gets shorter and wider. When we exhale, the back of the skull becomes taller and narrower. It’s a pump. So this is what critically is ignored. How these bones move are critical to our overall health. 

The concept of straightening teeth just to give us a pretty smile. I believe that’s 100 years out of date. We have to understand what’s really more important is the functioning of all the cranial bones. Hmm. So let’s talk about breathing. Let’s talk about inhaling and exhaling. Doesn’t nature want the best for us? 

Well, nature wants the best for us. So when it comes to breathing, nature gets a D-minus. A D-minus. Why? If you close your eyes, close your eyes, relax and consciously breathe in and breathe out. What you are going to see is that on your exhale, you’re breathing out. You literally breathe more rapidly than you do when you breathe in. And guess what? That’s why nature gets a D-minus, because which is more important? This the inhale is stress. Exhale is relaxation. 

So literally, if you want to relax, if you want the autonomic system that runs your body to run on a run correctly and not to be, and for you not to be in stress, you need to work with your exhale. You need to increase the exhale. Now, we’re not saying you do this all day long, but 15 minutes a day wouldn’t hurt you. You increase your exhale by providing resistance breathing simply breath in through your nose, purse, your lips. 

And when you breathe out, control your exhale. When you control your exhale, you can go five times, maybe even ten times longer than your inhale. Now, let me explain what you’re doing by that. I have a video, but I’m not going to play it because you really can’t see it that well. So what I’m going to show you is with my hands, basically the two key bones. 

Actually, I actually have them here. This is the back of the skull. This is much better. This is the back of the skull. And the bone that sits in front of it is literally the back of your orbit. That’s where your eyes are. So this is the occipital, and this is the steinoid. When we breathe these two bones, they flex, and they extend. 

So, upon the inhale, the back of the skull flexes become shorter and wider. And upon the exhale, the back of the skull comes upward and becomes taller and narrower. Now, why is this exhale so important? Because the exhale is what creates the environments for a proper inhale. Can you follow this, please? When you exhale, and this ball rotates up and back on the exhale, how it sits on the cervical spine means that it comes back. 

That frees your head that frees you posturally to come up and back where you belong to give you the proper posture for your inhale. If you don’t exhale correctly, if you’re like this all the time, I’m a dentist for 50 years. I have a forward head posture. I can only.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:33:09] Join the club. Join the club, Ted Well, we’re both members of the same club.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:33:13] Exactly. So if I want to sit up straight, I bring my shoulders back and my head back. This is as far as I can go. However, if I control my exhale, watch what happens. I can come all the way back to here now. Now I’m lined up for my proper breathing where I can, literally using my abdominal breathing, fill my lungs. 

And in order to fill your lungs, you need your abdomen. You do it when you breathe with your shoulders. That’s stress. That’s fight or flight. If you’re running, that’s rapid. That’s not deep breathing. Deep breathing is when you breathe with your abdomen. You breathe in with your belly. Nothing happens up here when you breathe with your abdomen. 

And I suggest you do this tonight before you go to sleep. You’re taking a pelvic diaphragm. You’re dropping your pelvic diaphragm, which works in sync with the thoracic diaphragm. Now, the two diaphragms are working together, which allows you to fill your lower lung. If you’re not posturally correct, if you’re under stress, if you’re breathing too rapidly, you’re only using you’re upper lung. 

The upper lung is basically innovated by the stress hormones. Only the lower lung is subject to acetylcholine. The parasympathetic to relax and digest. So calm down. Breathe with your abdomen. Get your head and your shoulders back. And fill your complete lungs. Breathing in and out through your nose. In and out. Through your nose. Not your mouth. And feel good. Feel good because that’s what will happen if you breathe correct.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:35:14] I mean, you’ve said so much there, Ted, that that is huge. And I think it bears repeating because you said the inhale was the sympathetic fight or flight. And if we control the exhaled breath and extend it, we have the potential to switch on the parasympathetic rest and digest. And while we don’t go through the whole day doing that, 15 minutes a day is a good time to do it. 

And I would suggest that just before you’re about to eat and certainly just before you’re about to go to bed are excellent times to switch on the parasympathetic rest and digest system. The other thing that is so powerful that you’ve said, and I think it also bears repeating, is if we’ve got a set of lungs, why not use the whole lot of them? 

And the lower half of the lungs are so important in switching on the parasympathetic nervous system, and it’s where most of the gaseous exchange occurs. So if we’re breathing just from our shoulder, we’re only using a fraction, a third, perhaps, or half of our lungs. 

And the last thing and the other thing you’ve said here, which I think is beautiful, is the importance and the power of these diaphragms, the pelvic, the thoracic diaphragm and the pelvic diaphragm. And as we get older, engaging that pelvic floor becomes really important, particularly if you’ve had a child or as we get older as adults, you know, as men or women, you know, that pelvic floor tone is really important. Boy, Ted, there was so much in that in that little pearl of a gem of a statement that you’ve made that’s covered the breathing. 

Tell us a little, because you know what I love when I when I’ve met you, Ted, and what you’ve done is we look at faces, and we make judgements about them all the time. He’s nice. He’s happy, sad, he’s good, he’s this or that. But you look at faces, and your assessment of them is very different, and it goes right to the heart of how will a person breathe, how they might be swallowing and what their posture is. And that’s what you see when you look at a face. Talk to us about swallowing.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:37:21] Yeah, well, that’s totally correct. So let’s understand how this all works. First of all, who controls us? It’s our brain. Our brain is in control. So let’s look at what the brain does. The first thing the brain does it stabilises us. So if we stand up, we have a position that the brain has adjusted us to stabilise us. How we breathe is part of that. 

So actually, when we look at somebody standing, if their head is tilted to one side, there’s a very good chance that their head position is designed to allow them to breathe more through one side than the other. So when I look at posture, I look at the head position and how it sits, and furthermore, I look at the shoulders. 

What happens over time is when we use one on one side of us for support, the other side for breathing. This is very common. What do I mean by that? All right. So now we get into the intricacies of how the body works because we’re built a certain way. So our whole society actually is engaged based on how we are built. But nobody even tells you this. This is how it works. Our heart is on the upper left side. A liver is on the lower right side. Remember, the body wants to stabilise us.

So early on, I said to you that generally, most of us start out breathing into the left side of our face. When that side develops, the jaw is slightly to the left side. Our heart is the higher and weightier part, which means that if the brain wants to stabilise us, we need to be back on our right foot. When we’re back on our right foot, the body is centred correctly, the heart is brought back to the centre and basically we’re in balance. Our whole society is created over that; why? It’s a right-handed society. 

Now when we rotate to open the door with our right hand, we’re in a perfect sync with the alignment of our body. Unfortunately, many of us, sometimes, due to orthodontic treatment, the jaw becomes shifted to the right side, and then the brain makes an adjustment, and we start using our left side for support. We’re not functioning at our best. We need the jaw lined up. We need to understand that the brain actually needs all multiple points of information for us to breathe correctly. There’s a triangle, a key triangle. 

Actually, it’s a little bit more. But the key triangle is the vision, the inner ear, and, by the way, the trigeminal nerve. Let me explain. If we want to be posturally correct, the brain needs information, so the brain gets information from our vision. So the first thing the brain wants to do is level our eyes. The brain does that by levelling the first cervical vertebrae known as Atlas. So the brain will level the first cervical vertebrae. So our eyes are level. We look in the mirror, our eyes a level the brain did that. The next thing is the vestibular for our balance. 

And by the way, what’s really key that dentist should know, but not everybody does. When we bring our teeth together, they’re on nerves in the periodontal ligament, little nerve fibres, which it has been shown that signal, when we bring our teeth together, goes directly passes through the measurements of how the nucleus of the tribe general nerve without a synaps. 

It goes to the motor nucleus, and then it goes to the medulla, where it hooks up with information from that vestibular. In other words, when we bring our teeth together, we’re telling the brain where our head is. So if your jaw is out of line, you’re not giving your brain the proper information. When your jaw is out of line, your head is out of line. 

And when your head is out of line, your entire body is out of line, and this affects how you breathe. So our goal should be starting with the cranial system to balance the cranial system the way I showed you for James Nestor. And then, after you’ve got that cranial system balanced, if you want a gorgeous smile, then you go for a beautiful smile. But first, get your body function together. Get your breathing together. It’s the primary necessity for life.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:42:24] Now, the other thing that you mentioned, the channel, and it wasn’t just when you. Well, when we went to Uni, and there was a few years between us, we did hear about sutures being closed. So this skull is made up of lots of bones, and the sutures are closed up. That was what we were taught. But in fact, it’s within those sutures and within you mentioned also the ligaments around every tooth, the periodontal ligament where the epigenetic potential resides. Can you talk to us about that?

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:42:58] Sure. So the fact is that within that so so, the periodontal ligament is amazing. It’s so amazing that Donald Enlow, who wrote the book Essentials For Facial Growth, indicated that you might have gotten religion over the periodontal ligament. The point is, is that, first of all, let’s think about when we’re a child, that ligament surrounds the tooth buds. 

And because there’s a direct communication between our DNA and that periodontal ligament, those tooth buds travel in our jaw. And guess what? They line up perfectly. So when the teeth come out and erupt, we have this beautiful smile, beautiful child smile. And that’s because when everything works correctly, there is mechanical receptors in that periodontal ligament which receives information, a direct red phone information from the DNA to the periodontal ligament. That’s how important the periodontal ligament is. 

But kind of receptors in the periodontal ligament speak to our DNA. So I designed an appliance that has little flap springs. So when you swallow, you send the same signal to the periodontal ligament as you do when you’re growing up as a child. When you grow up, and you swallow your tongue, sends a cyclical, extremely light force last less than a kilogram signal to the periodontal ligament, and that’s talking directly to the DNA. And that’s part of the reason why this appliance works without those signalling mechanism, without the cyclical signalling.

This is what the body understands. Let me make it perfectly clear. Any dental appliance should function within the physiologic limits of the body. What is the body understand? Well, chewing is cyclical alternating pressure. Breathing is reciprocal cyclical alternating pressure. We breathe through one side, then the other. 

And swallowing is a pressure, a cyclical pressure of volume change. The body only understands cyclical forces. Continual forces of pressure is not something the body understands. I want to make that perfectly clear. That has to be recognised within the orthodontic community. 

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:45:22] Hmm. That’s big. That’s. That is big. And you mentioned at the beginning that breathing, swallowing and chewing change faces.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:45:29] Exactly right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:45:30] You said that. Yeah. And both. And all of those, all three of those, as you’ve outlined, are cyclical forces. And I and you’re your appliance. You are right. And I have used many, many, many appliances in my 40-plus years in dentistry and bilateral even support on both sides is almost it’s like an unwritten law.

 It’s a written law, actually, a written law that that’s the case. But in your appliance, which is called the Homeoblock, that is unique. That is unique, that that unilateral, that one-sided contact, how do you determine which side to put the contact, all that and when you change?

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:46:13] That’s a wonderful, wonderful question. So the key bone, the central bone of our skull, this is called the sphenoid. It’s actually the very centre of our skull. This sphenoid, for example, houses the pituitary gland. It sits at the centre of the skull. So how we determine which side the block goes on is very simple. If the sphenoid is misaligned, if these are your eyes at the back of the orbit. 

So for example, if your left eye is higher, your sphenoid looks like this. So, where would you put the block? On the right side. You want this to be level? If you’re right, eye is higher. You put the block on the left side. Unfortunately, sometimes orthodontic treatment confuses the issue. However, we know what’s necessary for the to understand take the full training like Ron has. He understands this. 

And basically, we evaluate each patient individually because sometimes, with intervention, with different, you know, the body can be complex. So deciding which side the block goes on, we have four different ways to actually decide which side the block goes on. One of the ways we do it is we understand which side of the face is less developed. 

So simply enough, I developed a programme of a programme called the Camera System where we take a facial photo, and that photo is uploaded into the system. It divides the face in half. In other words, we create a face from left side, one face, and then we create a face on the right side. 

We then look and see which face has aged more, which face is better developed. And we put the block on the side of the face where we have age more rapidly, where we’re less developed. That’s another way of looking at this. Now, there’s one more way, and that’s for dentists. When a dentist takes a dental impression, they’ve got the dental arch. They look into the impression they can see the teeth. They can see the power. 

So when they look at the symmetry of that power. So on one side, you’re going to show better development. Where the palate, I like to say, is a blue ski slope. Let’s say this is the right side. So the right side develop better on that palate. On the left side, you’ve got a double diamond. The palate slopes down like this before it hits the teeth. We know then that the block goes on the left side. Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. 

So we can see there that on basically looking at this to my left, we’ve got that blue slope and to the right, look how steep it is. So, Ron, actually, you’re going to need your Homeoblock on the right side. So I might have varied initially, but seeing that we go home, we might go one on the right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:49:16] But but, you know, Ted, what I love about this, and I really, you know, I’ve called myself a holistic dentist for many years, but I think you’ve taken this to a whole other level, because when we have when we’re assessing people, we’re looking you’re getting us to look at 3-D X-ray from head to neck. 

As far down, I think down we got down to about the fourth or fifth cervical vertebrae. And boy, some of the things that we uncovered in that process was not you know, it was really important to understand because there’s so much more to what is potential, what is possible in the mouth than just getting teeth straight. 

And I think the other thing that is worth reminding our listener of is that 30 to 40% of the body’s sensory and motor nerves occur in the lower half of the face. So it’s an incredibly sensitive and important part of the body. Tell me you mentioned you mean you actually said this, but I think it bears repeating. How common is this problem of imbalance, of lack of?

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:50:27] Dialogue with.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:50:28] Not fulfilling?

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:50:29] It’s an easy answer to that. And the simple answer is, if you develop correctly and you have balanced equilibrium, they’re paying you millions of dollars to be an athlete. Those are the folks that have balanced equilibrium. So actually, Einstein actually said that the best. Einstein’s first law of the physics of the universe is stated that everything in the universe moves towards balanced equal equilibrium for conservation of energy. 

In other words, if you’re out of balance and you try to do something with gravity, the body has to readjust. And it takes a tremendous amount of energy. But if you have balanced equilibrium like an athlete does. They could move with grace and precision and retain all the force, for example, in the tennis swing, no matter what position therein, because their body is in balanced equilibrium. There’s your answer. If you’re a world-class athlete, you don’t have to worry about using a homeoblock.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:51:37] But the other. But the other observation that I think we all make, all dentists, all people make, too, is the number of people that come into my office and yours that have all 32 of their teeth through and in perfect alignment would be less than. Well, not even one in a hundred. Maybe. Maybe two, maybe one or two and 100.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:52:01] Exactly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:52:02] Less than 1%. And that’s an extraordinary statistic because if we didn’t have enough room for all five fingers on our hands, you know, we wouldn’t be as blasé about it. I doubt whether we would say, Oh, Ted, you had your fourth finger removed when you were 18, didn’t you? I did. Everyone does. And yes, of course, I had my fourth finger removed. You know, we wouldn’t accept it. We wouldn’t accept it. We have.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:52:29] And the reason actually boils down to it is a lot of research to support this. James talks about it in his book. Basically, the modern diet has affected us. There’s tons of research, and that’s what it’s why the homeoblock was successful from day one. The modern diet of processed food. 

According to the US Department of Agriculture, for example, in the States, currently 63% of our current diet is processed food with added fats, oils and sugars. So this is not the proper diet to stimulate our DNA, to give us our full development. The fact is, I look at parents and children in three dimensions all the time, and it’s astounding that one generation that each generation, the amount of lack of craniofacial development is horrendous. 

Each generation getting worse. We’re getting weaker and weaker and weaker. And I see it all the time. I take measurements on it. It’s astounding. In one generation, what we suffer from today, it’s a pandemic. The pandemic is not COVID. The pandemic is craniofacial dystrophy. A lack of full craniofacial development.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:53:53] Hmm. Now that Ted, interestingly, too, I’m reading this book called Human Evolution. And he makes the point that modern humans pre-agricultural revolution we had a cranial size of around 1400 cc’s just to put a figure on it. And we now have smaller brains, more smaller heads than we did before the agricultural revolution. We now have 1200 cc’s, 1250. So it’s happening here as well as it’s happening in our heads, and that’s having an effect. Tell me, how is it? Do we get too old? At what point can we, if you know?

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:54:37] The bone, the bone responds, no matter how old you are. The oldest patient that I’ve treated was 79. And at 80, she looked, you know, 20 years. So 20 years younger. So basically, it depends on your DNA, what we’re doing with this appliance. And that doesn’t mean that every patient is going to get the same response that she did. She was amazing. But if you have that face in your DNA, if you have the potential in your DNA, you reach your potential. So if you haven’t developed and we signal the body, and the body begins to respond, the results are based on what you have in your DNA.

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:55:23] Ted, I have so enjoyed meeting you and talking with you and learning with you. And we will, of course, have links to your website where people can get more information about this. But thank you so much for joining us today, sharing your knowledge and wisdom.

Dr Theodore Belfor: [00:55:37] It’s been a true pleasure, Ron, and I hope we see each other soon.

Conclusion

Dr Ron Ehrlich: [00:55:44] Well, there it is. The connection between epigenetics your genes expressing their full potential, and that is influenced by environmental factors, specifically the way you breathe. Are you a mouth breather? Are you a nasal breather? That’s a subject we’ve covered many times on this podcast. How do you swallow? 

Now we swallow 7 to 900 times a day, and the force that the tongue exerts when it does its proper swallow has a profound impact on sutural homeostasis, the balance of the cranial and facial bones. So swallowing something we give very little thought to is something that is critically important. Similarly, with mouth breathing, people don’t often think, are they breathing through their mouth or their nose? But that’s important. 

And, of course, chewing is important. And what makes Ted’s appliances and this really is unique, whether we’re talking about his Night-Time appliance, which is called the Homeoblock or whether he’s talk we’re talking about his daytime appliance called “The Pod” preventable oral device.. P.O.D. Which is worn for 2 hours a day. 

The thing that’s unique about it is he’s placing a platform of contact on just one side, which is quite a unique idea. And the idea there is that that, in turn, stimulates the sutures to there are cells within the sutures which can be converted into bone-producing cells and produce bony changes or growth. Well, after you have stopped growing, that means that includes me in my sixties. 

And as Ted pointed out, the oldest patient he treated was 79 years old. I thought it was also really interesting that he reminded us of the fact that the breath has such power potential to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system and the exhaled breath particularly. And we’ve talked about this before. 

A slow inhale, a slower exhale, and even a slight breath hold is a great way within a few short breaths of switching on the parasympathetic or the rest and digest part of the nervous system. When you are over breathing, hyperventilating, you are in sympathetic fight or flight mode all the more. 

And interestingly, the Ted Belfour is the dentist who has been who has treated James Nestor, who we did a great episode with because of his book Breathe: New Science of a Lost Art. 

Anyway, we’ll replay that episode this week to remind you of that. James has really well. His books been translated into over 30 languages, and he travels the world talking about breathe. And it was actually Ted Belfour that helped develop his craniofacial structures and improve his sutural homeostasis. 

You’ll never look at a face again the same way. I hope you enjoyed that episode. It’s worth going back and having another listen to it. And if you didn’t look at it on YouTube, you really should because Ted showed some really impressive and important, important images on that. I hope this finds you well. Until next time. This Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

 

 

This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The 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.