An Article by Dentist/Manual Osteopath

Dentist / manual osteopath, Dr. Paul Greenacre, DDS, DOMP, one of National Academy of Osteopathy alumni in Ottawa, Canada, wrote this article that is scheduled to be published by Cranio UK next month. Dr Greenacre gave us permission to share this article.

 

DEFICIENCY DYSMORPHOGENESIS SYNDROME (DDS)

A personal view by Dr. Paul Greenacre, DDS, DOMP

Introduction:

Today we are faced with an epidemic of disturbed and deficient human growth patterns termed Musculo-skeletal Dysmorphogenesis (MD), which are being caused by widespread micronutrient deficiencies. These are due to such factors as deficient maternal nutrient supply or insufficient resources within the mother’s system generally, and this might include other factors such as poor modern macronutrient food choices, most probably due to the massive world-wide soil nutrient depletion, combined with a dangerous decline in breastfeeding. In summary, all of these factors lead to imperfect epigenetic expression of the human physical genome.

The first obvious indicator-area of Mankind’s Dysmorphogenesis or skeletal breakdown is the shape or width of the palatal arch – Maxillary Dysmorphogenesis (MD) - that starts forming at about 8½ weeks in utero. No one in clinical medicine is measuring the size or shape of the palatal arch at birth or beyond. This is a major medical oversight as it is vital diagnostic information. It is a key biological marker measurement that is being overlooked by all practitioners worldwide.

Under-developed palates mean that 60% of the children today will need orthodontics. Small palates have serious jaw, cranial, airway and spinal consequences.

An under-developed palate can cause a posteriorly displaced lower jaw, leading to a forward-head posture so that C2 and C3 are displaced. Consequently, the whole spine suffers. Putting it very simply,  “the head does not balance well if the palate and the mandible are off”. Similarly, the (female) pelvis does not develop as widely as intended and therefore there is no full pelvic brim development to facilitate traditional vaginal deliveries. This may lead to a need for a C-section. One astute Australian Obstetrician, Dr. Kathleen Vaughn, told Dr. Weston Price that she could usually predict which women would need a C-section by looking at their faces and their crowded teeth and smaller jaws and also by the nature of their gait due to their narrow under-developed hips.

The Dysmorphogenesis Dilemma:

Maxillary DDysmorphogenesis (MD) leads to shrinking Faces, shrinking airways, shrinking pelvises and possibly premature brain dysfunction. Why are human palates, pelvises, airways and faces shrinking? Is this related to Brain Dysmorphogenesis and Sleep Apnea Dysfunction?

Why do today’s humans not grow wide healthy palates like they did for 2 million years of humanoid history? Dr. Clark Spencer-Larsen, professor of anthropology at Ohio State University, states - “Over the past 10,000 years there has been a trend toward rounder skulls with smaller faces and jaws.”

Could it be that our jaws, faces and brains are all exhibiting Musculo-skeletal Dysmorphogenesis for the same reasons? Dr. Harold Arlen, MD ENT specialist, often spoke about jaw deterioration and the connection between the Tensor Veli Palatini (TVP) muscle, jaw dysfunction, stuffy ears or hearing loss and the Trigeminal nerve.

“ the TVP is the only muscle of the soft palate innervated by the Trigeminal nerve and the only muscle that functions to open the Eustachian tube. This is the key to the relationship between the jaw and ear dysfunction that is plaguing modern man, along with the deterioration of other parts of the jaw and the dental apparatus.” Others have referred to Maxillo-mandibular Dysmorphogenesis as well.

The following summary of a TMJ/MRI study refers to Maxillary Dysmorphogenesis in relation to TMJ problems and retrognathia and midline distortions:

A retrospective MRI study on 128 children 14 years of age or younger by two neuro-radiologists and an oral surgeon was designed to “evaluate the relationship between internal derangements of the temporomandibular joints and disturbed facial skeleton growth (Dysmorphogenesis),.........We conclude that TMJ derangements are both common in children and may contribute to the development of retrognathia, with or without asymmetry, in many cases.” (Pediatric Internal Derangements of the TM Joint: Effect on Facial Development. Published in the American J of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics 1993; 104:51-9)

Authors:  Dr. K.P.Schelhas,MD , neuroradiologist. Dr. S.R.Pollei,MD, neuroradiologist.

Dr. C.H.Wilkes,MD, oral surgeon.

Why do humans have noticeably more narrow skulls while other mammals’ skulls and jaws have not changed? What are we doing wrong? Is our “civilized” diet now becoming a major disease factor?

Humans and our Hominid ancestors consistently grew great wide jaws with an almost edge-to-edge bite for about two million years without any effort.  These jaws grew to be very wide and healthy. Their simple raw and partly cooked diet and consistent tongue-swallow pattern essentially powered all this magnificent palatal growth. However, our civilized diet and feeding practices have changed this pattern of growth for the worse. Today 60 to 70 per cent of children require some form of orthodontics. There is now an epidemic of smaller maxillae creating under developed jaws and faces.

Maxillary Dysmorphogenesis, or a smaller than acceptable palate, is very common today. This is, in fact, an undiagnosed medical epidemic, a poorly underestimated osseous key marker of human health. It is simply overlooked and an undeclared modern human crisis. The first consequence of a small upper jaw is that this problem affects and disturbs the lower jaw posture and the function of the two jaw joints as a direct consequence. If your jaw grows properly to be full sized how could it fit into an undersized maxilla? This is why everyone knows about TMJ problems. As my teacher and orthodontist confrere, Dr. Lawrence Funt, used to say:

  “The Maxilla is the Criminal and the Mandible is the Victim.”

Archeologists and anthropologists know that the human palates, faces and pelvises are shrinking but they do not know why. Perhaps this is all part of a larger overlooked problem - The Deficiency Dysmorphogenesis Syndrome or “DDS”.

Here are a few of the possible reasons for Mankind’s Dysmorphogenesis:

1.                  Changes in how modern humans swallow.  The hypoglossal muscle gets mistrained when we use badly designed and unphysiologic latex nipples when we bottle feed. This means the tongue does not consistently push up and forward on the developing palate to empower or stimulate proper palatal growth. This means the palatal and the two lateral growth plates do not grow to their full genetic potential.

2. Micronutrient deficiencies in our food supply due to soil depletion means fewer trace minerals, vitamins, amino acids and enzymes and essential oils. Dr Roger Williams said years ago

 “After 55 years in the field of biochemistry, I believe strongly that good nutrition is the key to expanding our physical, mental and emotional powers.”

 Other experts have recognized Micronutrient Deficiencies. Linus Pauling, PhD. said “You can trace every sickness, every disease and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.”

Sadly many children are deficient in trace minerals and other nutrients today. Yet we as dentists could measure these easily using baby teeth for mineral assay.   

Teeth are the most mineral-dense structures in our bodies. Our baby teeth and our adult teeth could provide us with an exact trace mineral record or mineral assay of any trace minerals that we have lacked during prenatal and post natal development. Some researchers think that they can predict our future disease tendencies by knowing our trace mineral deficiencies.  Certainly, this is true in veterinary medicine and logically  it should hold true in human medicine.  The concentration of trace minerals in our baby teeth and adult teeth is a unique biological phenomenon.  We should be using information about minerals more in modern medical and dental diagnosis. Imagine counseling all your patients on their actual  trace mineral deficiencies and which diseases these deficiencies will make them susceptible to develop. This knowledge and methodology is coming soon.

 Dr  Haigivara, MD and medical researcher stated “Modern science has made it clear that all changes within the cells of Humankind are performed by the action of enzymes. It has been found that minerals have much to do with the activities of enzymes. In that sense , minerals can be said to be enzymes for the enzymes.”

Dr. Alfred Aslander wrote about trace minerals over 50 years ago in the Journal of Applied Nutrition (Vol 17 No 4, 1964).  He applied the principles of plant-based trace mineral supplementation to his children via bone meal. They all grew perfect teeth.

3. Less breastfeeding, or none at all, for economic or other reasons. This is made worse by substituting cow’s milk for human milk; cow’s milk is high fat and human milk is only 4% fat content. Think about that fact. Look up Milksucks .org. Read and think.  “What in milk’s name are we doing?” Cow’s milk has so many large molecules that can damage the child’s immature microbiome before he or she has the chance to make an informed decision on what he or she should eat for food. Why not stick with Mother Nature’s original plan?

4. Poor macronutrients food choices are made by too many people. We consume too many sweet drinks, sugars, synthetic sweeteners, and non-foods from the “just for profit” junk food industry; these are dangerous to human health. Contrast this modern fast food to Stone Age man. They used their stone clubs to smash open bones left behind by other animals to get the bone marrow “treat” in the center of the bones. Native North American Indians would transition a breast-feeding infant on to bone marrow from deer or moose. Today we stress out our infants’ microbiomes by introducing solids too early. Drop in at your local butchers and buy some bones for a bone marrow “treat” and make bone broth soup like your grandparents used to do. Corn syrup and fructose production increases every year in the USA and so does the level of Diabetes. We consume far too much sugar.

5. Metabolic Disruptors in our diet and chemicals in our environment are disturbing human growth and development. We have added 100,000 new chemicals to our food and our environment since World War II. The chemical industries actually won the war. How can good fertilizers come from the oil industry?  Instead of traditional biologically smart farming methods we now farm chemically.

6. More allergies and food sensitivities block more noses and this changes the pattern of facial growth. Look at all the kids with open mouths and long faces. They are mostly victims of environmental allergens. Blocked noses are signs of lymphoid reactions to the wrong foods and other allergens and perhaps even earlier in utero predisposing nutrient deficiencies

7. More high-speed traumas to children’s jaws because we move at a much faster speed in high-speed vehicles. One of the overlooked issues in almost all accidents and falls is the damage done to the discs and ligaments of the jaw joints caused by whiplash. Reciprocal to whiplash is ‘jaw lash’, which is always present and rarely checked.  Every accident victim should be checked for “jaw lash” to the growing jaw joints  - the two most important joints in the human body. Most test crash dummies do not even have jaw joints incorporated into their design. How stupid is that.

8. Frenum ties, both lingual to the tongue and under the upper lip are often undiagnosed or untreated. Midwives a hundred years ago treated these problems within minutes of the child being born. I have several midwives as patients and I greatly respect their knowledge and opinions. Actually palates and noses are getting measurably narrower and this in turn causes maxilla-mandibular-nasal-hyoid dysfunction. Lower jaw displacement can contribute to airway distress and even more myo-neurologic and myofascial distress and the incidence of epileptic seizures.

9. ‘Disuse atrophy’ is another theory that says we just do not chew enough any more. It is true that we do not chew as heavily or as heartily as we used to. Can you imagine the Kardashians being invited over to a “hide chewing” party to make some new animal hide clothes? Actually the Kardashians would probably do it as a publicity stunt.

I guess times have changed in the clothing industry. Jaw muscles simple are not used that much as in the time of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Maxillary Dysmorphogenesis due to the “Deficiency Dysmorphogenesis Syndrome “ leads to major health problems for the lower jaw and for the growing child. Then the adult suffers from this loss of facial form for a lifetime if the palate and jaws are not corrected. We should look now at the importance of the maxilla and its development to all humans through the eyes of a great researcher, Dr. Weston Price DDS, who went on a worldwide odyssey to study human palates and jaws and the effect of the civilized diet on jaw growth. He wrote a book called “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects.” Every physician and dentist and health care worker in the world should read this book. He knew human palates well. When Dr Price summarized his life’s work, studying the beautiful wide arches of primitive cultures that were not exposed to the so-called  “modern diet” or “civilized diet”, he said this:

“The most indelible impression left by my investigations among primitive races is that which came from examining 1276 skulls of (Peruvian) people who had been buried hundreds of years ago, without finding a single skull with the typical marked narrowing of the face and dental arches that afflicts a considerable proportion of the residents in modernized Peru, the United States and many communities of Europe today. I know of no problem so important to our modern civilization as the finding of the reason for this, and the elimination of the cause. Few will recognize the significance of this important point.”

This last sentence sums up his lifetime’s work; it is important that every family know this fact. The human face is shrinking. Jaws and faces are getting narrower. We should all know why this is and to understand how to reverse this pathological trend. The key to reversing this is to keep our natural tongue to palate swallow, use no artificial nipples, intake more enzymes, more trace minerals, more good fats in our diet through more seaweed, more bone marrow and bone broth soups and of course more breastfeeding for our children.

Dr Price was right and is still right. Today few if any medical practitioners or researchers are considering the importance of the growth and development of the upper dental arch or our palates. Our palates form the anatomical basis for our airways, our sinuses, our eye sockets, our noses and make our beautiful facial form.

Do more children today need reading glasses because the maxilla is not enabling the development of the eyeball and its attached ligaments? I could find no investigative research articles on this topic. If you do please inform me at once. 

                      

The palate or maxilla is actually the gateway between the neurocranium and the viscerocranium. So does a small palate reflect Brain Dysmorphogenesis and Dysfunction as well as Facial Dysmorphogenesis and Dysfunction? Some researchers see a co-relation. “In the context of human developmental conditions, we review the conceptualization of schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental disorder, the status of craniofacial dysmorphology as a clinically accessible index of brain Dysmorphogenesis…” (Waddington et al).

Then Buckley and Dean et al said  “Subtle Dysmorphogenesis of the craniofacial region constitutes important corroborating evidence of the neuro-developmental origins of schizophrenia”.

It seems several experts have correlated these two problems but it is not well known in the dental or medical clinical contexts and not well correlated in our clinical literature yet. Perhaps we have missed a critical correlation of these major orthopedic and neurocranial contexts of problems associated with the “civilized” modern diet.

Sir William Osler said,  “What the brain does not know, the eye will not see.”

This seems to be the case in this matter of “Dysmorphogenesis Misunderstood”

Dentists and orthodontists see fewer and fewer well-developed maxillae these days. However, we do not see it for what it might really represent. A full body and mind phenomenon.

This can be corrected only if we recognize it as a major growth deficiency nutritional epidemic. Then we can feed our children differently to reverse this epidemic of shrunken palates and faces and dysfunctioning brains and underdeveloped pelvises. Most doctors do not look for this problem at all and thus do not observe it in their practices. We overlook this anthropologic whole body tragedy every day. This will have to change in the future of medical education. One doctor actually saw this a long time ago. His name is Dr. John Diamond, MD of New York State. Here is his assessment of the importance of the Palatal Arch:

 “One of the greatest gifts a child can receive from his mother is a well-formed palatal arch. But it is doubtful whether any of us have ever seen a normal arch because it may well be that only primitive man on his so called “primitive” diet has a fairly normal arch. With such an arch the following benefits are conferred:

1. There will be minimal occlusal problems.

2. Three of the structures with the most to do with centering and balancing the body in space will be free to function normally: the sphenoid bone, the hyoid bone, and the temporomandibular joint.

3.There will be an accompanying development of the lateral aspects of the face –especially of the malar and zygoma (cheek) bones.

4 Normal development and stimulation of the pituitary will be facilitated (master hormonal gland.)

5. The overall health and well being of the patient will be sound.”

Dr. Diamond concluded by further saying: “ Maternal nutrition, proper infant feeding and the ability to smile are three of the most important essentials for good health and they all relate to the palatal arch.”

Thus, we need to grow bigger “back in the day” paleo-sized palates and develop better jaws and tongue function because our mouth is the mirror of our health. The swallow is far more important to human health than we have ever realized. It is no accident that Yoga experts ask us to place out tongue on the rugae just behind our upper front teeth and swallow with that tongue position or yoga posture. Since good facial growth is critical to our overall good health; we need to grow the next generation to be “Paleo-moderns”.

This issue is probably why Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the  Nobel prize winning Hungarian Biochemist, said:  “If structure does not tell us anything about function, it means that we have not looked at it correctly.”

We doctors and dentists overlook this small under-developed palate and retrusive jaws/deep bite problem which we now know is an anthropological and growth-deficient tragedy. We need to look more closely at human structural changes and start doing daily palatal measurements now on all our patients. This will change the future of medical education and incorporate dental medicine into general medicine.

Dr Roger Williams would agree since we will repeat what he said many years ago “after 55 years in the field of biochemistry, I believe strongly that good nutrition is the key to expanding our physical, mental and emotional powers.”

Could airway problems like snoring and sleep apnea, brain dysfunction, visual disturbances, ear problems headaches, neck aches, sinus problems all be related to Maxillo-mandibular Dysmorphogenesis?  Could all this be related to and caused by the “deficiency dysmorphogenesis syndrome”?

I leave you with this challenge; how can we inspire people to make this change in their diet? This requires more thought, work and insight from more doctors, anthropologists, archeologists and medical researchers. Dental palatal width measurements are key modern osseous measurements and should definitely be included in daily clinical practice and facial skeletal research. Politicians could be asked to put their energy and influence behind the idea of financial reward for mothers who breastfeed. Plus supporting the simple concepts of growing more healthy children by using Dr. Aslander’s super supplementation methods to create paleo-moderns. This would result in children with well-formed palates and well formed teeth with better airways, pelvises, resistance to diseases and overall better mental and physical development.

“If civilized man is to survive, he must incorporate the fundamentals of primitive nutritional wisdom into his modern lifestyle.”    Good advice from Dr Weston Price

Dr George Paul Greenacre, DDS and Manual Osteopath..

613 875 2654

Ottawa, Canada

Editor writes:

Most dentists will be familiar with the “Schwarz-Korkhaus” method of measuring the size and shape of the dental arches, which is based on the original work of French dentist Dr Pont in 1910.

For the convenience of those unfamiliar with this method, I am showing the relevant chart devised by Drs Schwarz and Korkhaus.  The original plastic chart is available from North American Orthodontic Laboratory (US) and from Triple “O” Laboratory (UK).