Ed Harrold and Dr. Kevin Boyd discuss nasal breathing in preschool-age children and why the subject deserves informed, whole-person attention.
Ed Harrold with Dr. Kevin Boyd. Originally published on YouTube August 21, 2021. Watch the original conversation on YouTube.
Ed Harrold and Dr. Kevin Boyd discuss nasal breathing in preschool-age children and why the subject deserves informed, whole-person attention.
00:03.1 Welcome everyone to another great edition of our Life With Breath expert series. I'm your fearless leader, Ed Harold. Today we're joined by an amazing human being who has so much wisdom and knowledge to share with you. You're gonna get so much out of this. We have Dr. Kevin Boyd with us, so welcome him with an open heart, an open mind, and take in this information in, in regard to your health, wellness, performance, in regard to e- your life and every cell of your body. Hello again, friends. We have one of the all-time greats in our presence for the next space of time in our life.
00:56.9 So let's get focused and centered so we can really tap in to Kev's message today. So if we could just take a minute or two and just unplug from the external world. Take a few moments just to meditate in the inner landscape that is the foundation of who we are. So if we could just slow our breath down. Release and relax your eyes back into the sockets. Drop the low jaw off the upper jaw a fraction of an inch, and allow the top of the tongue to rest on the upper palate. And as you begin to slow down this process of inhale, let le- gently move the skull left to right, up and down,
01:44.8 and try to find the perfect spot where the skull can rest on top of the occipital ridge. And notice the perfection of this moment for yourself. If there's any tension in the shoulders, the chest, the upper back, see if you can release that with the next few breaths, and center your heart in the middle of your intellectual mind. I'm inviting you to breathe with your diaphragm, slowly, filling the lower lobes of the lungs first, and gently letting each breath rise to the collarbone. On the exhale, letting go and drawing the navel back to the spine. Allow the exhale to be longer than the inhale. And just for the next minute or so, when the inhale is complete,
02:50.8 hold the breath in for a two-count. And when the exhale is complete, hold the breath out for a two-count. Sense more breathing channels opening up in the mind and body. And then maybe inhaling 5% more than you normally do, exhaling 5% longer than you normally do, without straining, and just using that brief little two-count to still and silence the mind's eye and ear. Beautiful work, everyone. You can begin to deepen your breath. Let your eyes open. Reconnect yourself to this space. And we have the amazing Dr. Kevin Boyd. He is a pediatric den- dentist in Chicago. He is an attending instructor in the pediatric dentistry residency program at Lurie Children's Hospital, where he serves as a dental consultant to the sleep
04:27.1 medicine service. His clinical focus is centered on prevention of oral and systemic disease through promotion of healthy breathing and eating. His primary research interest is in the area of infant and early childhood feeding practices and how they impact the palatial facial development and nasio respiratory competence and neurocognitive development. Welcome, Kev, to today's program. Thank you. I'm, I'm honored to be here. Uh, how... 1995 you started this. 25 years ago. Yeah, we've been around a while. Yeah. That's pretty impressive. Um, and you were a professional athlete, you said? I was a professional marathon swimmer when I was a kid. Yeah. I would go out in the water for hours.
05:15.9 Oh, my gosh. No. Okay. Well, um, I don't know. Where do you wanna start, Ed? Uh, I, I wondered, tell, or tell me about your audience mainly. Um, what, what is the walks of life that most people who tune in to your, uh, platform, like, where do they come from? Age range, stuff like that. I- Yeah. What I think we wanna focus on today is bringing parents to the stage of maybe a new le- level of awareness of what pediatric dentistry, where it's been, where it is now, the potential of where it can go in regard to optimizing our child's neural activity, optimizing the body- Now I understand you, you also went back to school for anthropology?
06:09.9 Well, I'm still, still there. Rodney Dangerfield, back to school. Yeah. I, uh, at, in my mid-50s I started taking undergraduate courses in evolutionary biology and anthropology, um, at Northeastern Illinois University. Um, and I got halfway to a bachelor's degree. I didn't get any of this, uh, obviously neither did any of you usually. Uh, in medical or dental school it's, it's not part of the curriculum. It's not considered a legitimate basic science, uh, evolutionary biology isn't. Thus we don't really learn how to think about, um, evolutionary explanations for why disease happens, and why there's so much of it now that coincides with, uh, the effects of cultural industrialization that started about 200 years ago.
06:59.8 Um, but we also live longer now. We don't live better necessarily for longer, but we live longer and there's more of us. So it's sort of, uh, a two-edged, maybe three-edged sword, uh, of what's happened with industrialization. But I'm really concerned about mostly how did tooth decay and gum disease happen, and after I sort of figured that out with the input of anthropologists, 'cause they've known about it for decades, I started, uh, applying my curiosity towards the need for an orthodontist. How come there was never a need for an orthodontist till about 250 to 300 years ago, yet anatomically modern humans have been around for almost 300,000
07:46.0 years? Like, you know, what happened? Uh, that's, that's, that's what my curiosity stems from. And then I, based on my, um, undergraduate, you know, work in my 50s in, in anthropology, um, I was able to write a few abstracts with some of my professors, and it got me noticed, uh, by Dr. Mariana Evans who's, uh, on the orthodontic faculty at Penn, uh, University of Pennsylvania. And she was always wanting to explore the skulls at the Marden Skull Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, so she invited me to give a lecture in the orthodontic department, and arranged for us to both, uh, meet the curator of the museum, uh, skull collection,
08:35.7 Janet Monge, and she invited us both to be visiting scholars, and that was eight years ago. And we've been working there ever since. So if I, if I can, if I understand this correctly, here you are hanging out in Chicago, dentist, taking care of kids, and there appears to be s- patients that are coming to you with issues that triggered this curiosity of why is there a predomi- predominant structure in these children that are coming in that seems to be different, that's impeding health, and you trace it back to the skeletal framing members and history? Well, it, it's kinda... That, that's on the track, uh, of it, Ed.
09:21.8 But, uh, I remember a seminal moment in, uh, 2007 where I attended a symposium that was conducted by a epidemiologist periodontist, gum specialist, uh, named Philippe Roujol, uh, he's from Belgium. And he showed one slide of, uh, tooth decay of a prehistoric, you know, person. And he said, "You know, you can look at this and know without any radiometric dating or x-rays or anything, if there's decay on more than a few teeth, that means that skull is less than 10,000 years old." "Well, how do you know that?" And he goes, "That's when agriculture was discovered." And he was right. I, at first I thought, "That's BS.
10:07.5 There's no way I would've learned that in dental school if that's true." And that was before quick, you know, fact-checking on my phone. And when I got home and did... You know, I read Weston Price and, and I got turned on to all kinds of things. The anthropologists have known this connection for decades, yet I, a board-certified pediatric dentist, didn't have a clue about it. And at first I was angry, and then I turned that anger into more curiosity, and now here I am. Uh, and you know, I get to talk about it all the time to nice people like you that have great audiences, that are curious.
10:47.4 Um, so that's kinda how it started. Tooth decay became other things. It seems like a really deep rabbit hole, and it can, it can go as far down as we wanna take it. What, what are, what are the, some of the steps that you're taking today to make adjustments in the structure of the face and the airway, and, and how is that different than how you were treating patients when you came out of medical school? Dental school. Dental school. Um, yeah. Much more prestigious than medical school, by the way. Thank you. I'm sorry. It's like Michigan and Michigan State, right? Okay. So here's, here's what happened.
11:35.5 I, I trained at the University of Iowa in the mid-'80s because they had a very prestigious and advanced program in treating orthodontics early. Because it's been known for over 100 years that when you can pick up a jaw that's too narrow and there's no chin forward, you know, retrognathia, if you see that at age two, and perhaps even in utero, it will reliably persist into later childhood, adolescence. And if it's not corrected in early childhood, it can turn into something really nasty i- in terms of you might have to have teeth pulled and all that. So airway didn't even enter into the conversation. And, and I learned my cephometrics and growth and development, those are the sciences of, of measuring a kid's jaw growth, um, I learned it from Professor Samir
12:29.7 Bishara, who is a famous orthodontist who taught the orthodontic department. Well, I'm a pediatric dentist, but they really made it part of the pediatric dental curriculum, and we were one of the few in the country at the time, and that's why I wanted to go there, uh, to take classes with the orthodontic residents. So I left with the mandate that if you're gonna be treating orthodontics, you're gonna do it according to American Board of Orthodontics standards. Mm-hmm. So I, I always took it very seriously, but we really started treating these kids till maybe seven or eight years, because the American Board of Ortho- the American Association
13:05.6 of Orthodontists say you shouldn't see kids till seven. Well, now seven is a geriatric patient in my practice. All right? Wow. I'm seeing these kids at, uh, at birt- you know, sometimes at birth. I'm looking at mid-gestational ultrasounds of fetal profiles, and I'm at least starting to address expanding their jaws by 30 months of age, two and a half. That's when they have 20 teeth. And that's in medical and dental literature all the way past 100 years ago. Amazing. That physicians and dentists were working together to solve nasal respiratory issues by expanding the jaws, not to create straight teeth and cosmetics. It was, and it, unbelie- I can show you 100 papers, and, and I'm publishing book chapters now, and I'm quoting that old research, uh, that, that needs to be
13:53.8 paid attention to. Um, usually it's poo-pooed by the orthodontic profession. "Oh, those aren't random control prospective trials." Do you know when random control, uh, trials started? No. After World War II. After World War II. You know, how did cholera get discovered? E equals MC squared. Those weren't random control trials. Those were thought experiments. Those are observational studies. Mm-hmm. So that's, you know, one foundation that I really, that, that's really the foundation of the rest of what I probably will talk to you about. Wh- when you're speaking about expanding the jaw, you're talking about taking, uh, the upper jawbone east and west, and the low jaw forward?
14:33.4 Perfect. I like that. East and west. That's really good. Um, yeah, absolutely, is that the, if you lick your tongue on the roof of your mouth, you'll feel a line up there. That is the midpalatal suture. It's like the soft spots on a baby's head, the fontanel. Mm-hmm. It's a suture that can be stretched. There's no bone there. It's all cartilage in a little kid. Mm-hmm. And all the way up to, you know, adolescence and young adulthood, you can stretch that suture. So you can help make... And why would you do that? Well, not only to make room for the teeth that aren't in yet, the permanent teeth.
15:08.5 The, the, the position of the teeth is a proxy for how much room there is for a tongue, and if there's not room for a tongue, and, and again, in our pre-industrial ancestors, if a child did not have room for their tongue in the first four years of life, they died. They did not survive childhood. Now children can survive childhood with crooked j- you know, narrow jaws and crooked teeth, and retrognathic jaws that are too far back. That was a death sentence for children. That means they weren't nursed and weaned according to an ancestral pattern. And there's reasons for that. Famine was one of them.
15:45.4 And if a mother died in childbirth, sorry, the kid's gone, uh, because they can't nurse and wean. An ancestral pattern of nursing and weaning means on-demand breastfeeding for at least six to 10 months, followed by something called baby-led weaning, weaning onto firm and unprocessed wild foods that parents were eating, that the kid, if they weren't eating everything in the tribe, as hunter gatherers for the first quarter of a million years of our existence, they died, and they were left under a tree. They couldn't move on with the family unless they could eat everything that everyone else was eating. There was no Gerber baby food back then.
16:24.4 So that's, that's one fundamental that every dentist and every pediatrician needs to understand. And it took me a long time. That that rolls off my tongue as if I learned it yesterday, and I didn't. It took me a long time. That is just amazing, because, you know, j- this is not the general, you know, message that you, that you hear coming out. Uh, you know- Not yet ... when I was a kid in '69, '70, '71, I went to the orthodontist because my parents wanted my straight, my teeth to be straight, and I could have a great smile and go out and make a million dollars and make everybody happy.
17:01.4 And the orthodontist, I believe, was pulling my- ... jaw back- They're still doing it ... and to, to create the straight teeth. Now, and then, like you just said, if you're seven years old, you're, you're, you're geriatric to you in what you're doing now. So number one, I was, I was like 10, 11 years old then, and they were pulling my jaw back to straighten my teeth, and now what you're saying is genius in regard to getting at the issues earlier on and creating the type of, uh, structure that you want to see through the skeletal framing members of the face. Yeah, in, in fact, you know, thank you, but I, I didn't discover this, and neither did any of my contemporaries.
17:45.0 This is... I've uncovered literature, literally the first expansion was done by a man named, um, Eduard Augustus, uh, Bogue, B-O-G-U-E, M.D., D.D.S., practiced in London, Paris, Chicago, New York, and Boston, and limited his practice to kids under the age of six, and expanded the deciduous arch, he called it. Mm-hmm. Um, not to create irregularity, the, to fix irregularities of the teeth, but to improve nasal respiratory competence in children such that they would not suffer, uh, recurrent apnea after adenoidectomies, and to actually prevent a lot of tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies by just expanding the deciduous arch. Um, and I, again, I will share all these references. I've published on this, but it's a rediscovered protocol.
18:40.9 Physicians and dentists worked together incessantly prior to World War II, prior to wo- a- and, and really, uh, when all the white men, who were all the physicians and dentists, went off to war, came back, and coincidentally, it was all forgotten, and it was seen as more profitable to just invent more orthodontic appliances that you could put on permanent teeth and to take out tonsils and adenoids, but you didn't necessarily need to cooperate. Mm-hmm. So that, and that, that isn't my hypothesis. That comes from a, a, a very prominent, uh, uh, ENT, otolaryngologist, I believe in Connecticut, uh, whose name I won't mention until I get permission, because he expressed that opinion to me.
19:27.9 What the hell happened? And he said, "Here's what I think, Kev, follow the money." Uh, and he's, he's published a beautiful article. Uh, you know what, I'm gonna tell you who he is. Har- uh, Stupak. Howard Stupak, S-T-U-P-A-K, and just hit his name with gravitational forces. Uh, and, and you can read his hypothesis that is predicated on Christian Guilleminault, uh, pediatric, uh, pediatrician, and, uh, uh, I think he's a pulmonologist at Stanford, 1976, who discovered that children can get apnea. And, and that is like, "Oh, you mean dogs can get diabetes?" I mean, a mammal can get anything another mammal can get. Mm-hmm. And sleep apnea is, just because adults got it, but in '76 he published a seminal paper that children can absolutely get sleep apnea.
20:18.7 And, uh, Karen Bonuck, uh, at NY, at NYU, uh, uh, Einstein, Albert Einstein in the Bronx, discovered that if a kid snores, uh, prior to the age of, uh, three or four years old, they're gonna be at huge risk for ADD, ADHD. Go figure. Uh, and then the connection between the shape of the jaw and snoring, oh my gosh, make the connection. So, uh, anyway. Sorry, I'll talk... Do people have questions? Are you gonna monitor this, uh, Ed, or? Yeah. Yeah. I have a question now from Evelyn Wangs, and he heard, she heard what you just said, and says, "I wonder if that's why my son
21:02.7 snored his entire life, and now he uses a crap machine, and he's 54 years old." Yeah, she means, she means CP- that's a Freudian slip. Evelyn, I love it. I'm gonna use it. It's a CPAP machine. But I, I, I like the R instead of the P for, that follows AP. It's a, a C- a crap machine. I love it. Um, yes, probably, and really what I do is I like to empower female caregivers who bring their kids to me- Mm-hmm ... because when I often will start to re- you know, tell them what I see and think out loud, I hear, "I thought so," and I was made to feel foolish by my pediatri-
21:40.7 my kid's pediatrician. And you know what? The most powerful instinct on planet Earth is maternal instinct. They got something we don't have. Our Y chromosome gets in the way. That, that when a mother- Right ... feels there's something wrong, we better listen, and I, you know what, I didn't do this my whole career. It, it really happened about 10 years ago, when one woman in my practice said, "You know what, Kev?" You're a great dentist and all my friends come to you, but you suck at listening to me, and, and you need to manage my expectations better. And she scared the hell out of me.
22:13.8 She's like 4'10". Uh, so anyway, uh, yeah, listen to moms. That's what I advise all my pediatric healthcare colleagues. I think that's, that's sound science there, my friend. I, uh, I was jumping back on 'cause I was listening to some of this, and I wanted to show you, um, based on some of what you were talking about, this might look familiar to you. This is me. Right? You know, I, I think I've seen these. I emailed these to you. Oh my God, yeah. Like- Right? I know. Yeah 'Cause- Yeah, you d- ... 'cause guess what they did. They, they probably maybe took out your tonsils, then they pulled your teeth, and they put you in head gear.
22:58.6 Uh- So they, they... I had eight teeth pulled, I had braces put on- Yeah ... and then I had the procedure where they cut your jaw, slide it back, and had my mouth wired shut for eight weeks. Yeah. I was in ninth grade. Wow. Mandibular setback it's called. And, you know, hopefully in my lifetime that will become malpractice. Uh, you know, what we do now is the opposite. We advance your upper jaw- Yeah ... and leave your lower jaw alone, or actually advance both your jaws even though they told you your lower jaw was too far forward. You know, and MMA it's called, you know it, um, and Resma Overhead, Larry Wolford in Dallas, they're the two, uh, most famous
23:46.1 people, uh, we refer everybody to, so. I wanted to, to jump back in and show people that because, um- Yeah ... because, you know, if there's parents out there that, that, that are still hearing they need to do this, um, for their kids, you know, they, they need to get in touch with you. They need to do more education. Because while most of my life I was fine, I'm now 55, and you can probably see it, maybe the average person can't, but my upper jaw is collapsing in. Um, my jaw here, I'm having some issues on this side, and it's creating some headaches and stuff with my occiput.
24:28.6 So you know, this stuff is coming back now later, and thank God I have a breathing background because of my husband, but God knows what other things could be going on. So I've gotta- Well- ... deal with certain things now ... yeah. The other thing, not only, you know, and that was, they did their best, you know? It just- Yeah ... um, but in m- maxillomandibular advancement surgery, I do that for two, three, four, and five-year-olds, but it's non-surgical. I- it's called distraction, and distraction is just when you stretch bones. Yeah. And in little kids, I'd be, I just say please to the bones, and they just do what I want.
25:04.2 It's like, it, it's really amazing, and it, it... The other thing is compliance. Well, you know, orthodontists, we don't learn about how to manage, uh, anxiety in kids because we're, it's implied we're not gonna see them till they're 12. So why sh- should we have to learn that? So I, I say don't blame your orthodontist. It's their curriculum. Yeah. That's what's gotta change. And the other thing is that I've learned from the cultural anthropology aspect of my training is that children are hardwired w- you know, the wild type of behavior is to not only be obstinate, okay, but to be obedient to the adult caregivers, the elders of the tribe.
25:42.6 They want to please. So if a parent sees early dental-facial orthopedic distraction intervention is what I do, you know, gentle expansion, advancement, myofunctional therapy, eating hard foods, nursing and weaning like our ancestors. Those are all non-invasive interventions. And if a parent, especially a mom, sorry dads, that if you guys see this as a component of comprehensive wellness caring parenting, the kid is gonna do it. They're gonna wear the pandemic mask. They'll wear the glasses. They'll wear the expanders 'cause they wanna please you. So I really, if a kid won't open their mouth, the first thing I say to that child is, "You know what, honey?
26:26.0 You don't have to do anything you don't wanna do at Dr. Kev's office. I'm gonna leave the room, and Mom and Dad are gonna take another day off of work in a few weeks, and they're gonna bring you back." And usually when I come back, the kid is open wide open. And I don't care that kid's been bribed to go to Disney or, you know, whatever. More often than not, that kid can't wait to open his mouth, and it's just a little trick I learned as a pediatric dentist 30 years ago on how to kid, get a kid to open up for their first dental exam.
26:56.5 Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it works. Orthodontists don't learn this. I'm- but we're teaching them, and we're teaching dentists and, you know, general dentists, family dentists, orthodontists, pediatric dentists all over the country. So you know what? Put pressure on pediatric dentists and pediatricians that, "You know what? You gotta start paying attention to my kid's breathing." And the dentists, look for more than cavities. Look for sleep and breathing problems. Uh, and the ADA is fully supportive of it. So glad you brought that up. That is a great testimonial of what happened to you. Yeah. What they did to you, not for you. Right. Uh, shame on them, but it's not their fault.
27:34.1 It's their curriculum. Get mad at their curriculum. I know. And, and parents, my mother thought she was doing the right thing, right? She thought they were saying I was gonna have health issues down the road if she didn't do this. So she thought she was doing the right thing. So between parents- Yeah ... um, you know, there's no point in having guilt. It's, it's the awareness we had at the time. It's the level of consciousness- But- ... we had at the time. Yeah. Sometime I will tell parents, 'cause they'll say, "Oh, my parents couldn't afford orthodontics." Well, if they're still alive or if they're not, drop- ...
28:04.9 something on their grave, but call them and thank them for not being able to afford orthodontia. Yeah. Yeah, right? 'Cause, you know, I mean, you die with straight teeth, and you die and, you know, forget it. Yeah. You want to have the straightest teeth in the graveyard? Be my guest, you know. If I understood- Sorry. Oh my God, I'm gonna get in trouble for that if there's orthodontists here. That's all right. We're here to ruffle some feathers in a loving way. Yeah. Not, not, not, uh, comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the comfortable. Yeah. That, that's one thing I have- That's... There you go. There's growth.
28:37.6 Yeah. Yeah. You know, what are, what are we finding in regard to the structure of the face, the structure of the teeth? And, you know, how is this all tied into the brain? Well, it, it has to do with oxygenation. It really is. Oxygen utilization. When you get on an airplane, Mom or Dad, and you got a baby next to you, what does the flight attendant tell you to do? Put it on the kid first, right? Of course not. Put it on yourself first- Yeah ... so you can help that kid. Well, for all nutrient substrates, including oxygen, I, as... When I got my master's in nutrition and dietetics, I learned that H2O and O2 are nutrients.
29:21.4 Not just vitamins, minerals, and trace elements and phytochemicals. Mm-hmm. But, you know, it's a respiratory substrate, oxygen is. It's the only substrate that the mother has priority for. Baby gets the most water, and if you read about something called the Barker Hypothesis and prenatal programming during the hunger winter of 1944 at the end of World War II, that, that the Nazis starved out the Dutch Resistance because they were so savage at wiping out Nazism and ending the war. So the, the thing is, um, they found that women who were starved because of the blockade of the Nazis, who needed the ports to fuel their U-boats and everything, is that the kids that were born 40 and 50 years later after, that survived, you know, the famine and, and were born and grew to adulthood,
30:13.9 100% of them became obese- ... had cardiovascular disease, had schizophrenia, uh, all these things that... How come? Because in utero, according to Dr. Barker, he speculated that that child, because humans over 300,000 years had learned to adjust their metabolism in utero to anticipate the environment that they would be born- Mm ... and live into, because kids usually died before the age of 10. Mm. Everybody did. I mean, they... You know, the average age was 40, but that's infant mortality to the, you know, five, six-year-olds that lived. So it, it, it is that they were anticipating that there would be a 10-year famine. So you had to be stingy.
31:00.2 It was called the thrifty phenotype, is that you had to be stingy with calories and grab on and hold on to them. Well, these kids that were born in the Netherlands after the Dutch famine, the, the Canadian Royal Air Force dropped in lard and butter and all these starches and fats, and these kids ate like crazy. Well, over time, it led to something called metabolic syndrome- ... and all the disease that followed. Well, now we know that. Well, oxygen, if women don't breathe right during pregnancy, there's something called gestational apnea, and your audience will be the first to probably know about this. If a woman doesn't breathe right, and this is a hypothesis we're testing, uh, at various graduate programs in orthodontics throughout the country,
31:51.2 their, their jaws will be small. Not just their... They're, you know, small for gestational age and preterm birth are two consequences of a woman who might have sleep apnea during pregnancy. In addition to folic acid, that's important, nutrition, in addition to yoga and, and having healthy activity, sleep and breathing for, in pregnancy can impact that child, and that child, if a mom isn't breathing right, that kid might think they're being born on top of the Andes Mountains, where the air is thin. So they... You ever see mountain people? They're tiny, and they'll be born small. That, that is an experiment that was inadvertently done, uh, that, that people born on mountains are, are smaller than people...
32:36.2 You know, that same mom, if she gives birth at, at altitude, at, at sea level, that kid's gonna be bigger. Who knew that? Who would put that together? And it, you know, it wasn't me. I, I just, I... Some dentists who were criticized for, for over-speculating, uh, and aren't, aren't alive now, um, they're the ones who came, came up with that. I just developed it a little bit. But, uh- In- ... interesting connections that, that just need to be made These platforms like what you have, Ed and Wendy, this, this is gonna help this. I, I always get emails from people after these forums, and I get...
33:14.3 I learn so much from your audience and I'm gonna learn from people. Um, hopefully they'll get something from me too. Kev, in, in the research that you were just talking about, is there, um, you know, when you talk about pregnant women, 'cause they're- Yes ... they're also having a lot more progesterone in the body, which is a respiratory stimulant. So is there, are you looking at that too and how that plays into it or are any concerns? I will now, Wendy. I will now. No, no, I, but you just, I rest my case. I mean, this is something, you know what, and if you Google it, you can probably find something and, and, and I don't care if it's scientific or not, 'cause I can dig into the science.
33:55.5 I have access to the most comprehensive scientific database in the world by virtue of being a visiting scholar at Penn. I, I can, I can look up anything from any time. So please, you know, where you came up with that, you just connected something and, and I, I, I'd like to help you purs- pursue it. Uh, that, that's really amazing. Thank you for that. Yeah, 'cause they, you know, there's, there's several times for women when progesterone levels are higher, so, um, even menopause. You know, I, I often look at, like now I'm dealing with that too, so I look at that and so women's breath rates increase because of the progesterone.
34:33.9 So, and then I think, well, how is that feeding into women with heart disease? So I think, you know, those are hormonal. Yeah. I wanted to look at this with what's going on at the body at different stages too. So interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I was not, totally unaware of that. Um, you know, just the fact that I'm asking parents, you know, I'd like to see an ultrasound, "A what?" And then as soon as I show them some things and, you know, the way that we got this, uh, committee at, uh, one of the out east, uh, orthopedic residencies, uh, in the city of Boston, was showing in my
35:07.9 own practice of kids whose needed this non-surgical distraction, widening and advancement, and what they look like on the ultrasound. Um, it's, it's just, you know, it's a very small sample size. It's not scientific yet, and it may never be, but it, it's a, it's a hypothesis worth exploring and, and even what you just, you know, offered, uh, by the progesterone possible link, that, that could figure into what we're gonna look at later on. So, uh, I, I really appreciate that. Wow. You are simply an amazing- Cool stuff ... wealth of knowledge. When... I- is there a theme to the patients that you're seeing today and, and, and there is a, a practical application to, to what you're seeing walk through
35:59.9 your office doors on a regular basis, Kev? Well, it, it really, I don't get many, what I call free range or garden variety pediatric patients. I mean, somebody who just moved to the neighborhood and saw my sign or they went to their pediatrician and they got a list and I'm on the list, or one of their neighbors, you know, go to him. Very f- it's, I would say it's probably less than 10% of new patients that are coming to me, um, are because it's just random. They want their kids' gums and jaws and rule out tooth decay and gum disease and, um, which is important, okay?
36:41.1 And, and that's really the bulk of what I did for the first 15, 20 years of my career. Um, it just, most people know about me and that, you know, I asked the other day, my office manager, because I, I'd gone on vacation and then I just got back from UCLA, uh, where I spent three quality days with our mutual friend, James Nestor. Um, he actually attended the meeting as a registrant, um, because we'd never met in person. Mm-hmm. And he saw the, the people on the, y- you know, David Gozal, who you may or may not have heard of him, but he's a pediatric sleep medicine physician who was invited,
37:18.2 uh, you know, uh, to speak at, um... Oh, uh, actually, sorry, that was Kentucky. But the week after was UCLA. Um, and there's mostly anthropologists and physicians, uh, that were at that meeting, and James wanted to rub shoulders with those people because, you know, he, he sort of, he and I both are, are really into the anthropological aspect of all this stuff. Yeah. And we've talked and, and he's invited me to venues. Um, apparently the BBC is gonna be airing a, a podcast that, that he invited me to recently. Um, but we'd never met in person. Mm-hmm. So we had three wonderful lunch sessions together and, um, I don't know, I, my, my staff told me, you know, we just put, um, referral
38:04.3 source, James Nestor, and, uh, it, it's surprising how many people come just by him having mentioned me a few times in his book. Yeah. Uh, and the other thing is, uh, more myofunctional therapists. A lot of people don't even... I didn't know this specialty e- existed. And it's, it's mostly, uh, dental hygienists, speech pathologists and physical therapists, and some dentists actually, um, that learn about this, uh, and help kids put their lips and tongues in the right place while I'm building a house for the tongue to live in. Mm-hmm. And I can't, I can't live without them. I, you know, so that's where a lot of referrals come from.
38:44.3 Um, I'm gonna make some suggestions. Steve Carstensen, um, is in Seattle. He's a brilliant general dentist, doesn't treat kids, but knows more about pediatric airway wellness than most pediatric specialists in any healthcare profession, and organized the whole pediatric airway wellness symposium at the Air- American Dental Association. Um, and Lauren Ballinger is a pediatric dentist in Massachusetts who's on the task force, you know, with me on the faculty at the ADA- Uh, and we have a consortium we set up at the beginning of the pandem- pandemic that we call The Endeavor, named after, uh, the Charles Darwin... Or not Charles Darwin, but Captain James Cook, the first scientific vessel, the SS HMS Endeavor- Mm ...
39:33.3 in the 18th century. And so that's... And it's all pediatric dentists, orthodontists, general dentists, and myofunctional therapists. Nestor actually has lectured to us. But you may wanna, um, get some of The Endeavor members, and certainly if you've not had Nestor on, you probably have. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and also Steve Carstensen, who's part of The Endeavor as well. Uh, y- you wanna get some of these people on. They're all visionaries, and they would love to be part of this, I'm sure. Awesome. Awesome. So we've got this, this breathing thing that takes place- ... 20,000 times a day, comes in and out through the nose. It happens on its own if we don't wanna control it, and then we've got the skeletal structure of the skull and, and the face, and we have this oxygen distribution,
40:21.7 we have the structures around the brain. How can we harness these, the s- that's coming up today in the most productive way to leave some really good seeds behind us for the next generation to grow this awareness? Well, one of the ways you can grow the a- the awareness, and obviously you're not afraid to inadvertently piss somebody off. Um, yeah. Well, if it's for a good reason. Yeah. And that I had a lady yesterday, and I have her baby, you know, three and a half, four year old, and yeah, this kid really, wow, this is the poster child. I mean, the doing... The jaw is narrow, the palate is high, they're slip-tied, they're tongue-tied.
41:06.1 Uh, the kid wets the bed, the kid snores, the kid sweats. They can't wake herself up in the morning. Um, they wanna put her on ADD meds. And so, you know, this is great. You know, I, I just... She, she's read about me. She's, she knows. We, we... You know, when I do the consultation, I show the before and afters. I, I've got a list, a huge list of parents that, that say, "Look, if a parent comes in here doubting what, you know, the veracity of what you're doing, please have them call me because you made believers out of us just by, you know, helping our kid, and, and we're grateful." And, um, I said, you know, to this, you know, about the treatment,
41:47.3 and she goes to the front desk and, and then she says, "Oh, Dr. Boyd, would you please write a note so that I can, um, tell the school board that she has respiratory issues and shouldn't wear a mask?" And I said, "Unequivocally, I will not do that. In, in fact, she's supposed to have her mask on now." Now, a lot of people don't know it, a dental office is the safest place to be in the world during a pandemic- ... because of... Well, it is. Because of AIDS and, and hepatitis B in the '70s and '80s, w- the mandate from the CDC for dental offices, we have the best control, infection control
42:23.4 in the world than anybody, and we're on steroids now with it. So, but I said, "No. In fact, you know what? I have additional motivation, and you should too, to get your child to become a habitual nose breather." Because nitric oxide is the most powerful antimicrobial that you can get from mother nature, and it resides in your own nasal, paranasal sinus complex. When you inspire, you create turbulence that turbinates, which causes L-arginine, an amino acid, to turn into pre-nitric oxide synthase, which synthesizes nitric oxide, which opens up the alveoli in the lungs. It takes, you know, uh, oxygen crossing into the alveoli to get into the hepatic portal system, to the brain.
43:13.0 It kills bacteria, fungus, coronavirus. I don't know if it works against the variant. But why take a chance? Inhale and exhale through the nose. You know this. Warmth and humidification of the air. It doesn't happen through orally inspired junk food air. Nasal- nasally inspired air is health food air, and that's what you can do for your child. I'm not writing a letter. If I lose you as a patient, I will help transfer your child seamlessly to somebody who is in LA. Ed Ha- uh, Bill Hang. You're gonna have to travel to LA to guarantee you're gonna get what I can give, or Boston, where, uh, uh, you know, uh, Lauren, Lauren Bellinger is, and a couple
43:53.6 others. But I, you know what? They never leave me. Uh, point well taken. Hopefully she'll start wearing a mask. So you can impact people that way by just getting under their skin a little bit in a good way. Yeah. This is how I can help you and your child. Wear a- mask. I also got a, a ad from a newspaper in 1919 that says, "Wear a mask," and all the lists why men won't wear a mask, because it's too feminine. Women don't need convincing. Uh, I'll send it to you. It's a great slide. So nothing new under the sun. Can you explain a, a little bit, uh, of the bullet points that we need to be aware of in regard to what is the physiological
44:36.4 and psychological differences between nostril breathing and mouth breathing, and why, why do we need to be in this nasal dominance, uh, f- throughout our life? Well, warmth, humidication, humidification, nitric oxide, and, you know, mechanical filtration. I mean, there, there's just all these things that don't happen. Um, you're probably into yoga or meditation. I mean, you know what Ujjayi breathing is. Right. But they never talk... You know, what, what yoga instructor talks about nitric oxide? They should. Mm-hmm. Um, if you've not had Patrick McKeown on yet and talking about Buteyko breathing, you know, he will tell you. He knows about Ujjayi breathing. And so, uh, just, just the actual, what you did at the beginning, Ed, that was beautiful, to get people to relax, to calm down, breathe
45:26.0 through your nose. And I, I don't know what else to tell you. And, and also growth hormone. I really try to shame little kids into, uh, you know, going through with this treatment and wearing a reversible face mask to help the jaw come forward. Mm-hmm. Hey, dude, you wanna be 4'10" the rest of your life? Growth hormone surges when you're s- breathing through your nose while you're sleeping. Mm-hmm. I mean, sleep, breathing, and living in the Northern Hemisphere between May and October, growth hormone surges in adults and kids. That's why kids never look the same from when they get out in the spring and go back in the fall.
46:01.2 They're all taller. And you can, you can play into the kid. You wanna perform better in your sport? You know? Mm-hmm. You gotta be a nose breather. So I... There's, there's all kinds of things you can do. I would say growth hormone and nitric oxide are the things that you can really get people's attention on. Mm-hmm. The person who discovered nitric oxide as being a vasodilator is responsible for why you take nitroglycerin for angina. Won a Nobel Prize- Mm-hmm ... for it. It's the same mechanism. That is amazing. I got a question for you, uh, Kev. Which reverse headgear do you recommend? You know, I really don't talk about, um, protocols, and that I, th- th- that we teach.
46:47.4 We have a, uh, you know, if you're, if you're a dentist or, or a myofunctional therapist, you can sign up. You know, I'm not trying to drum up business here, 'cause we're setting learning center, learning networks all over the country. But if somebody asks me, "What r- what expander do you use? What are in..." You know what? I use reverse traction for a reason. I want you to think about the problem. Obviously, whoever asked that question understands it's a problem. You don't need an underbite to, to need reverse pull headgear, or, or, or one that, that is obvious. That's almost a blessing. When you see a kid with an underbite...
47:20.7 Jay Leno had a borderline underbite at four years old. Somebody could have fixed that. Somebody could have prevented that, but he's probably wouldn't be famous now. So- But, but it really is. You don't... So whoever that question is very, asked that question is very astute, but it depends on the kid, and it's not just that. If the kid has vertical long face tendency, you must suppress that vertical growth development before you introduce any type of reversible headgear. So it, it, it's a thought process. And so I, I don't do that, because then again, people will start doing it and then, "Oh my God, I put him in a headgear and his long face got worse.
47:59.2 Boyd's a quack." No. You must learn how to think about this. And I would be. I'd be guilty. Yeah. Uh, just not gonna do that, and I, I'm sorry. I, this could be somebody who asked that that already knows all that stuff, but I don't know that. And if you wanna email my office, dent-, uh, it's dentistry, the number four, children dot... No. Dent- dentistry4children.gmail.net. Um, you can put it up, or kbo569@gmail.com is my personal email. Um, Google me a- and I'll give you all the info you need. And if you can't join our course, um, we will tell you someone else in your community who's either already doing this or already took our course.
48:45.0 Um, and I'll help anybody get this going locally. Awesome. But it, it seems to me that everything seems to run off of what's going on right here, and this seems to be news to people. Uh, what's up with that? Well, well, again, going back 100 years, in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Boston Journal of Surgery and Medicine, which is now called NEJM, they talk about something called the outer face and the inner face. Mm-hmm. Where we've been two face for all, all of our existence, okay? And what I say is the front of the airway is the external face. That what you see is what you get.
49:32.4 The back of the face is the airway. And again, I have scientific literature that backs this up, and if you want the face to be the most beautiful, attractive face that you can get, it must be one that projects to the eye of the beholder subconsciously that that person breathes through their nose, and that's called Darwinian sexual selection. It's attractive. You know, the, the full cheekbones, the full upper lip, those, the strong lower jaw. Those are some, those are people that tend to be habitual nose breathers and that will carry children well. It's called Darwinian sexual selection or evolutionary fitness. They will survive childhood- Thrive long enough to re- age of reproduction, and live long enough beyond to get their offspring into the next generation.
50:20.0 You must create this, and it used to mean that's the only way you're gonna get out of childhood. You may not make it to age of reproduction. You might not make it to 10. Most people didn't. Read... Another thing your audience should know about, it's called the, um, Health Span, not lifespan, healthspan, all one word, H-E-A-L-T-H-S-P-A-N, The Healthspan Imperative, and watch the 10-minute video narrated by none other than, oh, my God, Martha Stewart. It is wonderful, scientific- scientifically accurate. And there's also from Jenny Olshansky, who I believe is an epidemiologist from the University of Illinois locally, who is very interested, at least he says he is, but can't do anything till 2022, but stay tuned, to work with me to increase children's healthspans and lifespans by optimizing
51:18.0 airway structure and function at the earliest possible age, preferably before the age of six. So watch that. It's a great video. Yeah. The Healthspan Imperative. Uh, it's, it's a- an amazing movement that's going on in heal- healthcare right now. That's awesome. Increasing the amount of lifespan, life expectancy from birth, in- increasing the amount of time that that child will stay healthy into old age, and hopefully die quickly at 106. Okay? And every kid now, even with the pandemic correction, will live to be over 100. Uh, kids who were born from 2015 forward are projected to live over 100 years old. Wow. Wow. See what happens, if we're still here as a species.
52:02.1 It's, it's how, it's how we live. It's great that we're living longer, but yeah. It's how we live in early childhood. Right. And, and, and sleep apnea uncorrected in early childhood, just came out in American Heart Association, um, they will be very susceptible to hypertension and other cardiovascular defect, uh, problems that, that will persist into adolescence and adulthood. Um, also, again, I'll, I'll send any literature that I'm quoting here, but it's there. Google it. Uh, yeah, one of the things, I'll just boast for Eddie for a second. One of the initiatives, um, that's going on with us, and so you can even share this, Kev, with your audience- Yeah ...
52:43.8 is, um, is Eddie has created a whole, um, breathwork platform on Goldie Hawn's MindUP, um, organ- for Goldie Hawn's MindUP organization, and it's dedicated to teachers and parents so that they can stern to- start to learn to breathe better, and then also teach their children to learn to breathe better. So, um, that actually gets launched on September 7th. I'd like to, I'd, I'd like to join that club. That, that sounds amazing, uh, really. I mean, anything I can do, uh, let me know. Uh- Great ... not that I need more to do, but, you know, it's, I'm picking and choosing things, and I'm, I'm trying to practice less.
53:24.9 It's, it's kinda hard getting out of practice when Nestor's got my, uh, schedule building. So, uh- There you go ... but it's a good problem to have. I'm hiring more people, getting more space. Uh, yeah, it's great. Great, great place we're in right now. It is. Well, Kev, I really appreciate you taking an hour out of your life to share this unbelievable rich knowledge with our audience. And gosh, you are just an American treasure, and I am so lucky to be alive- Thank you. Thank you ... when- Thank you ... the time you were alive. This is powerful, and you really are making profound changes and shifts and awarenesses that are gonna last generational, and it's gonna make just a,
54:06.9 a much more better species. So I really appreciate you, the work that you've done, and I, I wish you nothing but every success moving forward. Thanks, Ed and Wendy. You know, a real honor to be with you guys. And, you know, please, Wendy, keep, keep me in mind, uh, as you move forward with the launching of your new platform. Uh, it's- Yes ... excellent. Okay, you guys. Great. Gotta go to another one now. Thank you, everyone. But, uh, have a great weekend. Thank you. And, uh, see you s- where are you guys located again? Utah. We're, we're in Utah. Whereabouts? About a half hour outside Salt Lake City in the mountains.
54:45.4 Oh, my God. Yeah. Hey, boy, I'd love to come out. I go skiing there sometimes with my daughter who's in Denver, so, uh, maybe we can meet sometime. Oh, for sure. Or you could stay with, just stay with us. Please. Yeah. Absolutely. You know what? We might take you up on it. Please do. Plenty of room. All right. Likewise, if you're in Chicago, let's go to dinner. Thank you. I appreciate you. Okay, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Kev. See you later. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye.