Welcome to Grounded Wellness, your go to podcast for
simplified and trusted information on how to live a
more non-toxic and holistic life.
We're your hosts. I'm Bethany McDaniel, founder of
Primarily Pure, biohacking enthusiast and mom of three.
And I'm Courtney O'Connor, holistic esthetician with over
15 years experience in the healing power of touch and
holistic skin care rituals. I am so excited to welcome
Katrina Fey, craniofacial health coach and author of the
revolutionary book Beauty Is Bone Deep.
Katrina brings a unique approach to health and Wellness by
highlighting the shocking fact that our jaws are shrinking.
This is a fascinating conversation on why traditional
orthodontic care may be doing more harm than good, how modern
foods are stunting jaw development, and a surprising
link between jaw health and issues like inflammation,
premature aging, and even anxiety.
Let's dig in. Katrina, thank you so much for
being here. I think that you are now our
furthest guest that we've had on to Grounded Wellness.
You came here all the way from Australia and I am so excited to
dig into this conversation. Yeah, it's my pleasure to be on
the ground of World as podcast. Thank you so much for having me,
Bethany. I want to start a bit with your
story. Tell us what happened to your
face all of those years ago and what you did to fix it and how
it LED you into the world of facial bone structure and airway
optimization. So my journey learning all about
facial orthodontics began by accident about 10 years ago
after I had traditional orthodontics, not because my
teeth were very crooked, but because I wasn't that happy with
my smile and wanted to get veneers put on.
And the orthodontist said, why don't we just create a little
bit more space and put some braces on for six months first.
So we did that and my husband well we weren't married then but
me and my now husband had to move into state and I actually
took them off early the braces and by the time we relocated I
thought Oh my teeth are straight enough I want to get veneers put
on. So I knew offered on to stick
braces off and gave me a retainer.
Me being who I am, damaged the retainer straight away and
needed to order a new one and unfortunately that didn't
happen. They botched the order and if
you don't wear a retainer on the teeth, they start to move out of
position. So because that didn't happen
because they didn't replace it soon enough my teeth started to
move. I didn't quite understand
actually what was happening because our traditional
orthodontic system has always taught us that faces are 100%
governed by genetics. So when I started to see my face
changing slowly over 12 months, I assumed I was just aging
poorly and rapidly and wasn't sure what had happened.
And the orthodontist who hadn't replaced the retainer, I didn't
take any responsibility. So I was left to my own devices.
And I actually wasn't sure how to fix what was complete
asymmetry in my jaws which was making one eye look large and
one eye sinking in and putting my jaw in on this slant.
I uploaded photos to I think it was Quora or one of these sites
real self or something asking people does anyone know how to
fix this? And a kind stranger said pellet
expansion which I didn't know was even a treatment.
So I got researching about it and in an effort to heal my
face, which is which essentially had collapsed inward.
It had lost structure, it had lost seclusion through those
teeth moving. That's what was causing my, my
cheeks to sink in and the eye to sink.
So I had to learn a lot about facial mechanics and how our
faces grow and, and what creates the structure.
And I through my research could see that in the US pellet
expansion was happening with adults and it it started to
develop the centre of the skull by targeting the mouth, mouth,
roof and developing the Palatine bones gradually by using an
appliance that was removable and by turning the key it was
gradually applying pressure and remodelling bone in the centre
of the face. This was initially hard to find
someone who would treat me in Australia because it was still a
new treatment and there was this misconception that you can't
remodel an adult's face because we're skeletally mature.
That's what they're taught in orthodontic school, that once we
reach a certain height, we can't change our bones.
But this is not the case because bones always undergo remodeling
all throughout our lifespan. So when they encounter pressure,
muscles encounter pressure, The bone beneath remodels its
structural integrity to accommodate those new pressures.
So that's what the mouth roof was doing for me by using in
this appliance and people are amazed when they see my before
and after photo that my my mid face became wider.
And when we grow the mid face, which is actually called the
maxilla bone, all of the facial features begin to enhance.
It's known as the beauty bone because it has the eye sockets,
the base of the sockets, the nasal bridge, cheekbones, the
mouth roof, the top dentition. So it determines how wide the
smile is, how high the cheekbones are.
But equally it could be called the health bone because this is
exactly where our airway is. So what isn't understood
unfortunately in traditional orthodontics and dentistry but
is now emerging and becoming its own space of facial orthodontics
is that when we develop the mouth roof, which is the
structure which makes up the floor of the nasal cavity.
When we develop it, the face grows to its full size and our
airway volume increases. And unfortunately the statistic
today is 50% of adult Americans and mouth breathing, which is
crazy that half of the population are not breathing
correctly. And the cases of obstructive
sleep apnea are just climbing and through the roof.
And it comes down to the nasal cavity being encroached upon by
the mouth roof. So if our jaws don't grow
properly, which is a huge problem in modern society for
lots of reasons, I'm sure we're about to delve into the mouth
roof is high in vaulted and the face is narrow and pinched in
and people can't breathe properly.
And then they look at their face, they sense they don't like
the symptoms they're seeing, and they go to a plastic surgeon and
they start playing around with their skin or having a nose job
or doing lots of things, but it's actually masking what is an
airway issue. You mentioned your before and
after photos, which if anyone is listening and not watching, if
you're watching, I'm sure we'll, we'll put these up on the video.
But go to Katrina's Instagram page and look at her before and
after photos. It is remarkable how your facial
structure has changed just from this device.
And I've, I've even seen people speculate and ask you like, have
you gotten lip filler because your lips too are so much more
full and plump than they were before?
Because everything has just expanded.
And I was even Googling, preparing for this before and
after pictures with palette expansion.
It is wild. Like it makes me think like
people, there are no ugly people.
There are just underdeveloped people.
And that's probably a lot of us, but it's just, it's pretty
remarkable. I love that message that you're
saying there's not unattractive, ugly people.
It's people who have an undeveloped jaw.
The airway is too tight, and unfortunately, it's very common.
And as you say, you can see in the before and after photos that
I was able to achieve quite significant facial development
without surgery, which is great. No going under the knife, no
general anesthesia, no downtime. It's just using a device that's
applying pressure that hasn't been there early in life, which
should actually come from the pressure of the tongue muscle,
which people wouldn't understand how crucial their tongue is in
facial development. And one of the factors that
probably contributes to this is that we raise our babies with
pacifiers in their mouth, which actually trains the tongue to be
low in the jaw. The tongue should be suctioned
high in the jaw. And when we placate infants with
pacifiers to keep them silent so they'll happily play, that's
actually time they should be babbling and they should be
using their tongue and making sounds and, and teething on
things and using their jaws. They always bring their fists in
their mouth. Did your?
Kids use pacifiers at all. I did when I was travelling with
my babies. My first two babies didn't want
pacifiers because they were breastfed for so long and so I
didn't even think about pacifiers being a big problem
back those many years ago. But they thankfully didn't want
them. And my third born, her
breastfeeding was interrupted because she had a surgery when
she was quite young. And anyway, so we, we bottle fed
her and, and she did pacify when we went traveling with a
pacifier, but I was like, it's only for a week, that's OK.
And then we'll take it out. And she never got attached to
it. I have used pacifiers with my
kids and now I'm I'm taking a step back from a lot of my work
responsibilities and my big thing right now is like I'm
diving into this for all of my kids and like fixing anything
that any damage that has been done.
What are some other factors that contribute to poor jaw
development in our current society?
I know tongue ties is another one at a young age if they're
not fixed right? Can you speak to that one a
little bit? I certainly can, because all
three of my children were born with a restrictive tongue tie,
which means which means the skin beneath the tongue is too tight
or too short. And it's always been believed
that this is an inherited quality that affects about 5 to
10% of the population. But the more I kept hearing from
parents saying, oh, my children had a, they had a tongue tie and
we had a phrenectomy or maybe they didn't have a phrenectomy
and it's caused huge issues for their malocclusion.
Now it made me look into the issue further and there are
there is some data suggesting that folic acid supplementation,
which is aimed for pregnant mothers, they, they put it into
pregnancy tablets to protect against neural tube defects so
that it over seal that seals the spine and prevents spina bifida.
The conclusion seems to be that maybe it's over sealing the
midline, so the tissues underneath the tongue and the
lip ties are becoming too tight. Would folate have the same
effect? Because I I knew this about I
knew folic acid was not the way to go, but I did take folate
like multivitamins that had folate in it.
Interesting. Yeah.
So folate's the natural version that we should be a mother
should have lots of folate in her diet to protect against
neural tube defects and eating all the right foods.
But the advice is to take these pregnancy supplements.
And I think the folic acid in them is more of an issue because
it's double the potency. So you might be doing all the
right things and having a healthy diet as a pregnant mom
and then supplementing with something that's now
overcorrecting the problem. And we're seeing infants coming
out with these tongue tie restrictions.
And my son, we noticed it straight away.
But 7 1/2 years ago, I didn't even realize what a tongue tie
was. And, and no one really mentioned
that would become a big problem. It did become a big problem.
And the Internet was only saying, oh, tongue tie
restrictions, you know, it might impact breastfeeding and speech
development. And at the time I'd adapted to
breastfeeding, I thought, OK, so that's all right.
Speech development, that seems like, you know, a short term
hurdle. If it happens and didn't think
much into it and it's really bad, it does affect the speech.
It affects the amount that the top jaw can grow and come
forward because the tongue's low in the jaw and that's the
architect of the mouth. It kind of shapes everything,
right? Yeah, and develops the airway.
And if they have a small airway, they start to mouth breathe.
They don't hold the tongue in the right position.
They tongue thrust. They become messy eaters because
they're trying to mouth breathe and eat food and they're like.
Compensating in all of these ways.
Yes and then the whole alignment is thrown out with their spinal
alignment, their hips, even their knees.
I noticed that my son was pigeon toed.
So once our tongue is low and not suctioned high, that the
fact that they're not breathing nasally and are breathing
orally, they they compensate by doing this.
They open the throat and drop the tongue.
And so when you do that, your shoulders come forward to
compensate, and then you get this S shaped to the spine and
then your knees go in. I know exactly what you're
talking about. Yeah, yeah.
So there's quite a few flowing effects that need to be
reversed. And mothers, especially parents
were particularly mothers, notice these things in their
children from age 18 months or two and three, and they think,
OK, how do I fix this? And it's really hard to have a
child that cognitively immature to understand what maladaptive
patterns they have and to undo them and replace them.
So until that child is, you know, maybe late 4, early 5,
they could perhaps see a my functional therapist and
understand and follow instructions on how to correct
that problem. But it's a long waiting game and
I've been through it with my kids and it really sucks.
Yeah. And the best case scenario is to
address it right away. Like with my younger two, we had
the little, the laser that that nipped that when they were just
a couple days old. But with my oldest, I didn't
know about that yet. And so that's one of the things
now I want to dive into with her to to hopefully fix.
So when they are older then what's, what's the, what's the
game plan with that? In the US, I've seen
orthodontists who will treat with airway orthodontics for
children. They say on the website as early
as three if the child will tolerate having the appliance in
the mouth. And I think that's just
absolutely amazing because so many orthodontists say, oh,
we'll, we'll wait until they're six or seven and they've got new
molars and there's something to attach it to.
But they're able to do this with a four year old easily.
And my son did it when he was 5. And that was with a removable
appliance, but we actually had one glued in because we found
that was more effective. And they just moved beautifully
at that age. Their sutures aren't fused yet.
And This is why given just a little bit of pressure, the
mouth roof just remodels and opens up, whereas we can still
do this at any age and with adults.
It's just you'll need to apply a little bit more pressure for
longer to release the suture and allow that remodeling process to
start. Yeah, OK.
Another contributing factor I know is soft foods.
Why should parents not be feeding their kids a bunch of
soft foods? Yeah, I remember when my first
born was young, loving those pouchy vegetables.
Oh, great. You know, they're in the car or
the pram. No mess.
Yeah, convenient. And it's really not the way to
go about it because they're not using their muscles in the right
coordination. They should be chewing on things
that are quite fibrous or even dehydrated.
Biltong is actually a natural way that children would start to
explore with harder natural foods and teeth on them.
Even if they don't have enough teeth to actually grind it down
to a pulp and eat it, they should be teething on foods.
And the. Motion, the motion because
whenever there's a bolus of food that needs to be manoeuvred
around their mouth, their tongue engages to keep guiding food
back onto the dental arch and the jaws and getting them to
lift the tongue is is moulding from the inside the mouth roof.
When they just have a little spout in the mouth, they can
tongue thrust beneath the spout. They're not really using any
muscles and it can set them up for the wrong swallow habit,
which is that tongue thrust where it's not pumping up onto
the palate. It's it's beneath a straw or a
spout all the time. Even these sippy cups, it's a
slightly different swallow pattern than to just drinking
from a cup. The tongue is is held low by the
spout. So I know it's really hard for
parents to navigate all of these things, but we do need to go to
the effort to most of the time, make sure they're given the
opportunity to chew things that are fibrous and crunchy and
engage their tongue to do natural functions and guide the
drawers. Yeah, it's like the opposite of
everything we are like marketed to be doing as young moms.
So, so we're, we're, the folic acid is contributing to the
tongue ties and then the soft foods and then also what was the
other one? And then the pacifiers and, and
then these kids are, have underdeveloped jaws and then
they're, there's not enough room for their teeth to come in.
And then when they're 10/11/12, their teeth are crooked and we
give them braces. So talk to us about braces and
the problem there. Yeah, so I have braces on right
now. Braces can be the enemy if we
don't expand the jaw first. So it can be quite confusing
because I've shared lots of stories online about don't put
your children straight into braces.
And that is correct. That's not the first things that
we want to do because the underlying cause of the
malocclusion is the fact the child has a high vaulted palate
to the high mouth roof and the tongue is not connecting with it
and moulding it. And so the jaws are they're
narrow because the mouth roof is like a high V shape.
Yeah. So if you just try to move teeth
in a tight jaw, once those braces come off, there has to be
a permanent retainer to hold them in that straight position.
Obviously just go crooked again. And that's because the tongue's
not there, the breathing isn't nasal yet.
So what we must do is target the mouth roof first.
Get that child's jaw to its correct size for their age.
When we develop the mouth roof, it actually comes forward and
low and as it moves down that allows the tongue muscle to gain
contact and suction to it. So many children may not be able
to do my functional therapy to train their tongue to suction
correctly because their mouth roof is like this and it should
be a big broad rainbow. So once we expand the jaw, we
lower the mouth roof, we can look to then straighten the
teeth because you want that bottom dentition to also move to
match up with the wider top dentition after expansion.
So you may do that if you're like me who has a big gap in
their teeth because I've just done a maxillary expansion, you
may even want to close the gap at the front.
But we never want to extract teeth.
We never, if we're an adult, close in gaps and make our mouth
smaller if we've never expanded, because those crooked teeth or
those gaps can be the symptom of just a small jaw.
Yeah. And if you widen the jaw, then
often times do our braces even necessary?
Do the teeth could have enough space and then they kind of
like. They can move into a great
position. So you know, in theory for a
child they may avoid braces altogether.
But if if it's a complex case and you want to get the maximum
expansion of the top jaw, you'll probably want to move those
bottom teeth a little bit. My son was told he doesn't need
to do the braces because there's just a little bit of development
here and his teeth are matching up.
But if your child does need to do braces after expansion, the
key ingredient is do not glue on the retainer to the teeth
because the biggest problem is once you have retainers on the
jaws of say a 10 year old. Who's maybe they have expanded,
maybe they haven't. That retainer prevents any
future growth because the bite is now locked to the dental arch
of that 12 year old is locked in place so their face can't
continue to grow. So as they get older.
You'll notice for people who've had braces really early and worn
retainers their whole life, the cranium seems to be the right
size for an adult, but the face is actually pinched in and small
and it impacts their ability to breathe properly.
Yeah. So now there's this whole
epidemic of adults that have jaws the size of a 12 year old.
Yeah, it's so wild. Eat a lot and you can tell
people have had braces. Their teeth are straight, but
their dental arch is small, like a child's.
So it's interesting because I'm, I'm trying to, I'm, I've started
seeing a, an airway focused dentist and when I first went
in, he was like, oh, you had braces?
And, and I didn't, but he said that my teeth are like they're,
they're straight, straight enough, but they're like flared
out as if I'd had braces. OK.
Which is so interesting because I haven't and I I don't know.
Do you have any like thoughts on why that might be?
I actually don't. I had my wisdom teeth pulled,
which I know is another thing we don't want to do.
Yeah, I had my wisdom teeth pulled as well, and I regret
that. Another thing that it just
doesn't allow the jaw to get like they're there to continue
to expand the jaw, right? And when, when, when we remove
them, the jaw isn't able to like continue to grow to its full
potential. Well, without them, our face is
flattened by a tooth width. OK, my jaws would be a tooth
width forward for the forward had I had those wisdom teeth.
But it's been normalized that, oh, they're a little bit, so
let's pull them out. Yeah.
So suddenly. It was finally, it was just
like, oh, you've they're starting to come in, pull them
out. Like even though there weren't
any issues really. Yeah, that.
Is crazy. Yeah, it's like everything that
we we're being treated for the worst case scenario, we're not
even like allowed to. It's there's no like seeing how
it plays out or anything. It's just kind of like same
protocol for everyone with traditional orthodont
orthodontry. It's not the word takes
orthodontism. Traditional orthodontics, yeah,
You mentioned also like the airway not developing properly.
What are the implications of not having a fully developed airway?
Oh my goodness, people wouldn't realise how much this effects
their whole life. So when the airway the the nasal
cavity is tight, people will keep their lips open to orally
breathe, but this route of respiration does not saturate
the blood properly. With necessarily just because
there's not enough space for that, like for the oxygen to get
into the body. Well, people who have a degree
of air hunger through the nose start to compensate by breathing
orally because it feels like a faster way to get the air in.
But it's only drawing air to the top of the chest, whereas nasal
breathing, when we have plenty of ease to do so, is slow.
It draws the air all the way deep into the diaphragm, which
is now saturating the depth of the lungs with oxygen and giving
the body more time to absorb it. When we only breathe to the top
of the chest, it's an anxious style of breathing that's more
rapid. And the heart, because it's
sensing, because there's not enough time to take the oxygen
coming in before there's a breath out and taking another
gasp. So the body's compensation to
not enough oxygen is to speed up the heart rate.
And people don't know. They don't realize this just
becomes a normal way of being to them.
But their respiration is high, the heart rate is high, so
they're in a sympathetic state of being.
So the nervous state, the nervous system state of being,
fight and flight. Yeah.
Whereas most of the time we need to be parasympathetic dominant,
which is the state of our system, which is rest and
digest. And so we can absorb nutrients
and do repair and detox. But if that's not happening to
you, you're in this state of acidosis, rapid breathing.
There's this imbalance between the level of oxygen to carbon
dioxide. And so there's more carbon
dioxide than there should be. And you're not saturating all of
the cells with oxygen like they're expecting.
The brain you can see in mapping with MRI scans, they've even
tested people. They took a big group of people
who are all normally nasal breathers and they asked.
They had two groups controlled trial.
You're going to mouth tape and only breathe through the nose
while doing a cognitive task for one hour.
The other group are going to peg their nose and only breathe
through the mouth. And instantaneously they saw the
effect of breathing through the mouth to do the cognitive tasks.
The MRI scan showed that the mouth breathers were only
lighting, lighting up 10 of 15 brain regions, whereas those who
are nasal breathing, blood flow and oxygen to all 15 brain
regions. Wow.
That's how significant and immediate the effect is to your
whole Physiology. And 50% of people are doing this
all day, every day. Yeah, and it's the body releases
free radicals. It's an oxidative stress.
And then during sleep they're not able to get the proper
oxygenation to detox and repair like they should.
Yeah, So unfortunately, I don't want to scare people, but it
does speed up the ageing process, having oxidative
stress, release of free radicals, not adequate sleep and
not adequate detox because you're having fragmented sleep.
So many people who have a sleep disorder, breathing style or
obstructive sleep apnea need to come out of deep REM sleep to
reposition their body. When the body senses it doesn't
get a lot of air, they're deep snorers, or perhaps not deep
snoring, but they're gasping or pausing in in their breath
during sleep. This brings the body out of deep
R.E.M. And it leaves them fatigued, A,
because they didn't have the oxygen saturation, but because
their sleep quality is fragmenting.
And if you don't stay in deep R.E.M. for a long amount of
time, you're not doing that Wash away of toxins and detox through
the brain at night time. Yeah.
And the repairs system's not working properly.
So I would imagine this, this has an impact on so many things.
I've heard you touch on how this can also contribute to
behavioral disorders and like ADHD in children.
Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Yeah, it's really sad to see what's happening to our children
because we can all think about that child or many children who
you may not even notice their mouth breathing.
But now when I point out the details, you'll know who I'm
talking about. They have a bit of a sunken
face. They have Venus pulling under
the eyes because they're not well rested.
They don't have a lot of oxygen coming in their mouth breathing.
And the bone structure probably doesn't allow for for that to be
in its proper position too, right?
Yeah, there's a facial type for this.
So if it's a small mid face, which may make the forehead look
more bulbous or the lower jaw look more prominent, or perhaps
it looks weakened because it needs to tuck in behind a
recessed mid face. These children are then printed
malocclusion because the jaw is small.
And then as we said, their their whole alignment is thrown off.
And so their coordination, their ability to keep up with their
peers in physical sports is not quite there.
They have attentional issues because they're not oxygenating
the brain properly. And children are not like
adults. Adults slow down and get
fatigued when they're not sleeping properly.
Children get really over stimulated and Rev up when
they're sleep deprived and so it looks like symptoms of
attentional deficit and hyperactivity and that's a child
who just can't regulate their nervous system because they're
in this flattened flight and their whole system is thrown out
of whack. Oh, that makes so much sense and
such an important thing to invest in for your children.
I've heard you say like invest in this before a college
education, which what? Difference.
I completely like agree with because it just it impacts
everything. Yeah, yeah.
I'm not saying don't get an education.
Education is important. But I am saying put your money
into this early if you can. And some of these options are
fairly affordable for parents. They're not, they're not
attached to the teeth or they're not a pellet expander.
They're actually helping a child guide their muscles.
So I think there's a Myobrace and Vivos have a system like
this and there's a tooth pillow that's guiding a child who
doesn't have severe problems to put that tongue high and maybe
correct their tongue position. And the effects are slower.
It's a gradual process, but they do then start to open the face
up a little bit and get the jaws a bit wider.
But the best solution for a child is a glued in pallet
expander, which works in about 6 months.
And you turn a key at home. There's less visits than
probably going to get braces because you're not going in to
get them tightened. The parent will just use a
little key and just twist it, you know, one tiny turn every
day and it starts to develop the jaw and the airway and that
child's body just comes into alignment.
It's really beautiful to watch and it doesn't take as much time
as braces. Yeah, I remember as a kid, so I
always wanted braces as a kid. And my parents were like, no,
it's too expensive. And then they said you didn't
need them, so you're not getting.
Them. I know now I'm happy.
So I'm like not super familiar with the world of like braces
and retainers, but I remember some kids getting like expanders
like so. And is that the same thing that
you're talking about now or is that was that different back
then? I remember like having friends
that had expanders and they were, they had like maybe rubber
bands in their mouth or something.
Is that the same thing? That's why it shocks me that
traditional orthodontists who just do braces try to discredit
this method. It's been around for 40 years
with children. It's now only just becoming more
popular with adults because they've realized, oh, our bones
keep remodeling forever, so there's no barrier to doing
this. Yeah.
But yeah, children have been having expanders for decades
now. And I say to people, my
husband's friend, he goes, Oh yeah, I had one of those
expanders as a kid. And I just think you don't know
how lucky you were that you happened to step into that
orthodontist clinic who looked at your teeth and thought, we're
going to Createspace in the jaw. And he has a great facial
structure. And that's because of the
expander. But he probably wouldn't realize
how much that changed his trajectory because had he walked
into the other clinic, he said, OK, crooked teeth will take out
four premolars, and then we'll close the gaps with braces and
give you a lifelong retainer. He'd look completely different.
He'd probably have health issues.
He would not be the same person. Yeah, where can people go to
learn more about this? Is there a database of the right
type of orthodontists to see? Or like how can someone take?
How would someone know where to go for this type of thing?
It's it falls under so many different labels that it's
actually quite convoluted for parents to understand.
Some dentists go by airway dentistry, some orthodontists
are calling it my functional orthodontics, functional
orthodontics, face orthodontics. There's there's so many
different terms for this and to help parents navigate it, I
wrote a book and I gave a list which helps them with the search
terminology on how to locate someone who's going to approach
orthodontics the right way. And also a list of ones who are
known to be helping adults with this very problem.
Because it's unfortunately a tough system to navigate.
And parents and individuals really should be equipped with a
little bit of knowledge about this before they speak to their
orthodontist they consult with. So the orthodontist realizes,
OK, I can't just push this person into wisdom tooth
extractions or braces. Yeah.
The person needs to know what their options are.
Yeah. I love how you say that beauty
is health and health is beauty. Talk to us about supermodels and
why we find them to be so universally attractive.
My background is psychology so I always love how the mind works
and what we're innately wired to appreciate, and then what part
of us is shaped by culture and environment.
And the studies on facial beauty have always shown that people
like structural qualities about faces.
Big eyes, prominent lips, a healthy sized mid face and
symmetry. And those things come about by
having jaws that are full size, that allow the teeth to come in
straight. And when the teeth come in
straight and you're able to keep them all because no one
extracted them because the dental act was small, then
there's equal loading on the jaws and the mouth roof is wide
and the cheekbones become prominent and therefore the eye
sockets sit prominently on the face and they're not sunken and
tired looking. You have a wide smile.
The teeth aren't crooked and and that person has vitality.
Actually, we're almost picking up on on subtle cues about their
health because their their spine will be in alignment.
Their breathing is better. They'll have more energy and
that may show up even in their skin tone because they're
getting more oxygen to every part of the body.
And so look at the gut health as well, because their digestion is
allowed to be running for the rest of the day than on the
stress response. So they're actually absorbing
nutrients better. And This is why why we innately
like beauty and particular traits.
It's because that's how our body, when everything works
optimally, our body should have these traits and.
It's like you're we're attracted to healthy traits in others.
And sometimes surgeries or other cosmetic things can sort of mask
it and they can improve someone's confidence.
But done too many times, people are not attracted to that
because it's a false cue of health.
It's signaling to person that something's actually awry and
and we want to fix the root cause and bring the whole face
into harmony, not just try to like, fill some areas or other
areas look sunken and like something's a little bit out of
alignment. Yeah.
What plastic surgeries do you think can be avoided if the jaw
is grown to its full potential? That's a really good question
because many people unknowingly have an airway problem and not
like the outward appearance of their nose.
And they go, I don't breathe that well through my nose and I
have a bit of a hump here and I don't like the size of my nose.
And they'll go and seek out a septoplasty.
Like a nose. Job, a nose job.
And they often find that coming out the nose may be
straightened, but they did not breathe any better.
And I, I want to say to those people is that the reason the
hump will start to form is that the nasal bridge is supported by
the maxilla bone. And if that's retracted, we have
bone here and then cartilage. So if this is not supported, it
pulls down. The nose, The tip of the nose is
not supported. OK.
Because this is back and not forward and because the mouth.
Well, we don't see that in kids. It's like something that
develops over time, right? I mean that that Ridge on the
nose. Sometimes around puberty, this
is when we start to realize the symptoms, like the growth hasn't
quite occurred and there's symptoms popping up.
But the bent septum that they're talking about and the inability
to breathe is because of that high vaulted mouth roof that is
so common. And the reason people are mouth
breathing is that the mouth roof isn't.
So that's a nasal cavity. The mouth roof should be flat
and wide, but instead it's like this and the face is narrow.
So the mouth roof has encroached in the nasal cavity.
And because there's a septum in between, the plastic surgeon
saying, oh, I'll just, I'll just straighten the septum.
That's not increasing any volume for airflow.
What straightens the septum is actually developing the mouth
roof low and wide. It's been able to straighten and
you've increased the volume of air coming in.
And when you've done this, you've widened the dental arch
and you've actually pushed the cheekbones out.
So there's many of their traits that are coming into harmony and
they're able to breathe better. And if you're able to get this
slightly forward, you may even get a straightening along the
bridge. Yeah, that makes sense.
And when you were dealing with the whole thing that was
happening with your face, I know you were told like, oh, we can
put like an implant on one side and like, shave off bone on the
other side. It's crazy what kind of masking
techniques, because this was an orthodontist telling me that,
and they didn't even understand facial mechanics and they didn't
understand that faces can grow or not grow.
And so they're thinking, OK, we'll do the teeth and maybe
I'll just have to refer you to a Doctor Who's going to take the
weak side of your face and put in a cheek implant of silicon.
And then that side that's hanging down low will just shave
the bone down. And I'm just thinking, I can't
do this. A, it's probably not going to
look great. And B, I'll never have any hope
of actually correcting this problem and, and correcting my
face when I saw it, it's demise come on gradually.
So my intuition was just thinking there's gotta be, I can
be a way I can gradually bring it back and actually enhance it
further than it was before. And thank God I followed my gut
and went down this rabbit hole of facial mechanics and facial
orthodontics because what initially was led by a desire to
aesthetically correct what had been damaged to my face and the
damage that had been done opened up this whole world of of facial
beauty and what is actually health and what is airway and
Sleep Medicine and dysregulated nervous systems that need to be
brought back into harmony. Yeah.
It's all connected. Yeah.
And I bet you're so glad that you you did this instead of
that, because if you had done all of that and then fixed the
airway like, you would have been lopsided.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I bet with facelifts too, like a lot of that isn't necessary when
the volume has been restored through the bone growth, right?
Yeah, yeah. So when we can grow the bone for
nasolabial folds start to diminish.
I had deeper creases here prior to developing the maxillary
bone. Once the cheeks are a bit
higher, we can start to, you know, these fade the crew's
feet. Yeah.
I mean, people can get a facelift if it's minimal, but
for someone who's really later in life and has had a lot of
bone resorption and a characteristic trait of getting
into later stage life is that this sinks.
People start to lose bone density and and even muscle
strength and the tongue becomes weaker.
And This is why older people aspirate when they're eating
their tongues weak. So they're starting to sink
here. There's less muscular support.
If you are sunk in here, the eye sockets will start to sink in,
creating more eye bags. So if you're trying to get a
facelift, but your eyes are narrowing and and your teeth are
starting to, a lot of people say my teeth are straight, but now
they're crooked in later life because their dental arch is
sinking. When you have those traits but
tight skin from a facelift, it just doesn't have a natural
looking result. And so I say This is why we need
to always remodel bone to structurally scaffold the fat
pads and the skin better and put them in the right position.
What can people do to minimize that from even happening as they
age? I mean, yes, we can.
We can wear the devices to create, to regrow the bone in
the facial structure. But like what role do like
nutrients, facial exercise, like things like that?
What roles does that play? There's so many ways to come at
this because bone health is really cellular health.
Our bones are made from cells which are called osteoblasts,
and they're constantly in this state of there's osteoclasts
that are bone resorption and then there's osteoblasts where
we're building bone and wherever we put pressure on bone, it will
remodel and create osteoblasts. So we want to keep using our
jaws and chewing harder foods for the whole extent of our life
so they stay strong. We want to keep our tongue
actually strong. So doing facial exercises like
how do people want to do it using their tongue, keeping it
toned is going to help. But when we look at diet,
there's so much we can actually do to make sure that we're
bringing in lots of minerals and antioxidants.
So I'm about to release another book, which is looking more at
bones at a cellular level. And most people think tap water
is fine. You know, I drink tap water, but
the fact that it has fluoride added to it, our overexposure to
fluoride actually leads to skeletal fluorosis.
And people can look at the studies on this.
We're not controlling how much fluoride we're actually
absorbing when it's coming in through the tap water.
And this. Is skeletal fluorosis it's.
The bones actually weakening and the enamel on the tooth
weakening. So fluoride is helpful within
this really small window where it's safe and apparently
effective for your teeth. But adding it to our water
source and not controlling how many glasses of water everyone
is drinking is not an effective way to to be exposed to
fluoride. And it's even in our food system
now. So people are having too much
fluoride coming into their body, which weakens burn remodelling
along with our bodies tend to be in a more acidic state than they
ought to be. This comes down to our ultra
processed foods. People are probably eating too
much meat. I think people should eat
protein from from animal foods, but we're eating a lot of it and
and dairy foods, way too much dairy.
Do you think that the pasteurization plays a role in
in the absorption and like the the body's ability to properly
assimilate the nutrients from dairy?
I actually had never thought about that Bethany, but this I
haven't got down the raw milk rabbit hole as much to talk
about round. Yeah.
You'll be able to fill me in probably more on that topic, but
I'm just looking at when we get our water re mineralize.
So a lot of people will filter their water because they don't
want the heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, chlorine,
fluoride coming in. Yeah, but that can also strip
out of mineral quality. And actually, a lot of our
calcium is meant to be coming through our water.
I never knew that. You told me that before we
started recording. Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah, so before water was
contaminated and people were drinking from springs, that
water water was running off waterfalls and off rocks and
through soils. By the time it got to a human,
it might have been groundwater from a well.
And it's filtered through all the soil collecting these
minerals and that comes into our water source.
And that's one of the primary ways that we re mineralize along
with having antioxidants. So what people wouldn't realize
is that when we're in an acidic state, because we're not eating
all these foods, we should be like the green leafy vegetables
and antioxidant rich fruits and veggies.
Is that our bone, sorry, our body compensates for this over
acidity. The foods being acidic, tap
water is more acidic than a natural mineralized water.
The buffering system to handle that acidity coming in is that
the the blood needs to stay at this particular pH to maintain
that. When there's so much acidity
coming in, minerals are taken out of our bones.
So our bones store minerals. This is bone mineralization.
Those come out to neutralize the acidity that's being introduced
to the body. And so over time, we weaken our
skeletal structure. So my hunch is that all of these
rates of osteoporosis, this is not just natural aging and
decline, It's the fact that people live in a state of mild
acidosis and they're exposed to heavy metals through drinking
water and food that do also interfere with the bone
remodeling process. Yeah, because heavy metals
inhibit you from absorbing minerals properly, right?
Yeah, they're actually binding to the cell site where the
minerals should be, getting to some of these different heavy
metals, whether it's arsenic or lead or cadmium.
Aluminium will bind where minerals need to bind, and they
just interfere with this balance of osteoclast osteoblasts.
So that's a big problem along with the fluoride, too much
fluoride in this water. Yeah.
Have you ever heard of taking a teaspoon of baking soda and
mixing with water for alkalinity?
Yeah, that's meant to handle the acidity as well.
This. Why did we not know about this
earlier? Yeah, it sounds ingenious.
Just adding a little bit of bicarb soda.
Yeah, it's not becoming too reliant on it because apparently
we become too alkaline. Can be an issue.
Yeah. But I don't think many people
are running the risk of being too alkaline right these days,
given our dietary choices, right, what we're exposed to.
While we're on the topic of nutrients, I thought it'd be a
good time for us to try the liver smoothie sitting in front
of us. Have you had organ meats before?
I've had them in capsule form and I've actually sprinkled them
in food and I love them. Really.
Yeah. So I'm excited.
I feel like that's rare. Like I don't, I don't actually
like them, but like I have to. I have to like put them in a
smoothie to cover up the taste. OK, all right, well, let's try.
It see what you think This is chicken liver, but it's it's it
with berries, raw milk, honey, mint leaves.
I cannot taste any chicken liver.
Yeah, that's great. Are these little chickens?
Where are they? What?
Yeah. Who's chickens?
Yeah. Cradle pastor's chickens.
Chicken is more mild than beef. The beef is, like, intolerable.
I think if you just eat it plain.
Yeah. But yeah, the chicken's more
mild. This I love the the ingredients
you've matched together. It tastes delicious good I'm.
Glad you like it. Yeah, I just love, I love the
nutrient profile of liver and that's why I consume it.
Yeah. But I don't love the taste.
You have posted about Lindsay Lohan's transformation and the
Internet is speculating, has been speculating for a long
time, I feel like over what plastic surgeries she's done to
get the transformation that she's achieved.
What's your take? I'd love to know.
When I look at her face, how much it changed and how
naturally beautiful it looks now, it looks like to me how her
face should have grown in the 1st place.
Everything is in harmony. As I'm saying, the cheekbones
look a little bit more defined, her lips look a little bit more
supportive. The eyes noticeably to me look
larger and healthier. And there's no treatment on the
market aside from developing the mouth roof that I know of that
can deliver the results that she's showcasing the way her
skin looks healthier. Everything is well supported.
So I was saying, I believe this is facial orthodontics at work.
And I remember someone messaging me and saying, but she doesn't
have the gap in the teeth. And that's true.
When you do an axillary expansion like what I'm doing
where it hooks into the mouth roof, you get a gap that when I
did the removable expander 8 years ago, I didn't experience a
gap. And as you've witnessed, there
was a lot of change I achieved by using just a removable
expanding device. So she may have used one of
those when I even went back through her profile.
And I looked over the months and I thought these changes are
actually gradual over about six months, whereas if you go in for
a surgery, it's instantaneous. Yeah.
If you have a jaw surgery, you're going to have you look
one way, have a surgery with downtime, and then have to heal
from that and look different. And she seemed to gradually
improve. So I think it's fatal
photontics. Yeah, that actually makes a lot
of sense. What is your take on Botox and
fillers? I have tried them, the last time
I did them was about 3 1/2 years ago and I'm not against people
using them, but you're just getting in this loop of having
to rely on them when I know that deep down bones can do a better
job. And I don't hate the look of
fine lines. To a degree, I feel like
attractiveness comes down more to a healthy structure than it
does about whether or not you have lines on your face.
I think you can have lines on your face and look good for your
age. So I I choose not to do Botox.
I don't really like the feeling. It leaves that heavy feeling in
the face. Do you think like the muscle
paralysis can have a weakening effect on the bones?
I'm just thinking like for the body, we're told to to move the
body and exercise and for, you know, strength training, the
important role that that plays in like bone density and bone
health as we age. Do you think the same could be
true for the face? And if we like paralyze the
muscles, do you think that could have a negative effect on the
bone growth and bone structure? That's true.
We want to be engaging muscles, not paralyzing them because when
muscles are used, that's when we see the the structure beneath.
Stay strong. So depending on where you're
putting the Botox and how much paralysis, I I guess in theory
it could weaken bones. I don't choose to use filler at
the moment because personally I've been watching my face
changing and I'm trying to get it more symmetrical.
So if I went to get fillers, I'd be saying OK, now plump it here
and get this matching the other side, which would be pointless
to me because then I can't see what changes are happening
beneath by doing expansions it's.
Like masking rather than treating the root cause.
Yeah, it's a masking. And a lot of the symptoms we're
trying to combat with filler is a symptom of a maxillary
deficiency, which my whole advocacy is around airway health
and maxillary growth. So to me, just go to the root
cause. Yeah, and don't fiddle around
with fillers endlessly. Yeah, and I know you've been
talking about how this is possible for adults.
Is there ever an age where it's too late to work on?
This. No, unless you find an
orthodontist who says they won't.
Some of them are cagey about doing this, but I know
orthodontist who are doing it to people with people who are in
their late 50s. So there's no barrier.
There's no reason why they can't do this later.
The FDA have just approved the Vivos DNA appliance for use on
adults as a prevention or turn reversal of obstructive sleep
apnea. So it's designed for adults in
later life who are not breathing well.
So they don't put a cap on this age wise, no.
What I love about your message, too, is that there's still hope.
Like there's always something you can do.
What would you say to maybe a mom who's listening, whose child
has braces now? Maybe they've already had some
teeth pulled? Like what is the best next step
forward? If they've just started braces,
I would say don't freak out once those braces come out.
Your child has stranded teeth, but that's the time.
Don't rely on that retainer. I know that they're given a
retainer so the teeth don't go crumpled up again, but the
retainer is going to lock the bite and prevent that jaw and
mouth roof from growing. So if you're child's embraces,
you can either take them out of braces now or wait till the
teeth are a bit straighter and do it then.
And then say to the orthodontist, don't glue any
retainers on the teeth. Give me a night time retainer,
that plastic Invisalign looking one and then your child can wear
that for a few months while they complete myofunctional therapy
with a trained professional. So the professional who does
orifacial myology is teaching a child how to put their tongue in
the right position, how to swallow properly and maybe undo
some poor habits around breathing.
Hopefully your child has the ability to nasal breathe and the
mouth roof that's not so high and deep that they can put the
tongue there and retain their new straight occlusion.
But what they may actually need to do is take the braces off and
then go to the orthodontist who does pallet expansion and say,
look, the teeth are fairly straight, but the mouth roof is
high and narrow, leading to a narrow face, leading to a small
concave airway. That's creating all these other
issues that I can't really address with my functional
therapy because the mouth roof is too high.
So it's this thing where the child's at trying to get the my
functional therapy that could even do quite a lot of change
just fixing the muscles. But unfortunately, if your
child's face is quite narrow and they are struggling to breathe
nasally, go and get the pellet expander and you can expand with
braces on. So I don't know how that would
happen with two different orthodontists.
That's probably too complicated. But when you go to the right
orthodontist, they sometimes put the expander in and they've got
their braces guiding the teeth at the same time.
And that's an optimal situation. So for the parent who just have
their child's teeth extracted prior to braces, I really feel
for them because I've just been given some really bad advice.
This can be corrected down the track by doing the pellet
expansion. As I say, take the braces off,
expand the mouth roof. If you have a skilled
orthodontist, they can guide the teeth to reopen those extraction
sites. So normally premolars, they tend
to take those out and then close gaps, open those extraction
sites and put ceramic teeth implants.
That's at least going to hold the mouth roof at its full size
that it should be. And then the face will be
structurally the right size and the airway is the right size.
So you do want to undo the damage of tooth extractions,
particularly if they're premolars.
What about teenagers and young adults who are being told that
they need to have their wisdom teeth taken out?
Wisdom teeth should be kept. We want to keep our teeth.
We don't want to have them extracted.
I know sometimes people say they're impacted, they're
painful. Go to the face orthodontist
who's doing pallet expansion and ask them, can you guide my jaw
to come forward and slightly widen my dental arch with pallet
expansion to just get the teeth enough room so that those
impacted teeth straighten out and you can keep them because
that's going to keep the structure stronger.
You don't want to lose teeth that can cause infections and
it's a whole other issue you don't want to worry about.
The solution is creating room and keeping all adult teeth.
Mouth shaping is all the rage right now to help facilitate
nasal breathing at night. I know I've experienced benefits
with mouth shaping. I'm curious what your thoughts
are. Yeah.
So mouth taping is a tool to support the right myofunctional
habits. I guess it's encouraging the lip
seal and keeping the teeth in occlusion and touching because
when our mouth is open, our teeth hang open, we're going to
have the teeth touching, which gives a better availability for
the tongue to touch and sucks onto the mouth roof.
So if you need that as a signal to remind you while you're
sleeping to have those in place, then that can be really
beneficial. However, word of caution is that
if you already do not have a lot of air flow through the nose,
especially if you're trying to encourage a child who's not
breathing well through the nose to mouth tape, I'd say let them
breathe through the mouth if they need to and go and get the
expander. It really depends on their
degree of severity as to whether or not that's right for them.
Yeah. You have a book called Beauty is
Bone Deep, which I have on order and I'm so excited to dig into.
What can people expect with your book?
What can they expect to learn? So in my first book Beauty is
Burned Deep, it's titled Learn how we grow a beautiful Face.
Plus by doing so sustains health of the body and mind.
It talks you through really how we get this right from the get
go and how our society got it wrong.
The food system, our traditional orthodontic system, just doing
everything backwards and then guiding them through the
evidence and the data on adult pellet expansion and how the
face actually changes and delivers us these
characteristics of natural beauty that we're all looking
for and all genetically should be representative of.
From there it then delves into full health.
And the last, last half of the book is all in the health of the
body, the nervous system, brain oxygenation, cell oxygenation,
all the diseases that now stem from oxidative stress.
Essentially all disease has a a foundation in oxidative stress,
the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide being off.
And this speeds up aging. So we're looking at sleep
disorders, sleep disorder, breathing, heart disease, which
is our number one means of mortality.
Now the heart gets dysregulated. Our circulation is poor when
we're a mouth breather and have sleep apnea.
And that's because we only release nitric oxide through the
nose when we nasal breathe and that's our vasodilator.
So when we breathe through the nose, the nitric oxide opens up
the circulatory veins and capillaries and allows blood
flow to pass really easily, which takes pressure off our
heart. But if we're breathing through
the mouth and we're bypassing the nitric oxide, not only are
we taking those shallow breaths that don't inhale oxygen,
speeding up the heart, we've got these tight veins.
So the heart's pumping really fast.
And this is really putting people out of alignment, giving
them the physical symptoms and interfering with detox pathways,
but also mental health issues, poor sleep, anxiety, depression
from fatigue. It's this whole spectrum, this
whole holistic look at health. And the best part is, is when we
correct this, we look better and we feel better, yeah.
Have you? Are you familiar with hyperbaric
oxygen therapy? Yeah, they use that now for
cancer treatment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of
different things. I mean, I kind of did a deep
dive on that a while ago because my husband and I bought one for
our own home. And in my research, I was just
learning like how crucial oxygen is for every function within the
body. And just, there's so much
powerful research on how having the proper oxygenation can
prevent and reverse so many diseases and disorders.
And so this all just makes so much more sense to me that
optimizing that intuitively to like what our body, you know,
what our body was like made to and meant to do would just
optimize everything like how the body functions, the features,
like it all kind of harmonizes like you mentioned earlier.
We're born to be beautiful. That's what I say about bringing
that up earlier. We're born to look good and feel
good. And unfortunately it's been
labeled as some people are born beautiful and others aren't.
And it's just there's so much lifestyle in the way of us
realizing our potential. I was literally thinking that
like, as I was looking at these before and afters online and
like everyone and everyone like should look great and can look
great. Yeah, if this is kind of like
optimized. Yeah.
And even their their struggle with their weight and keeping
their weight right, even that becomes easier when they're
getting oxygen in. So when we have plenty of oxygen
coming into ourselves and we've got rest and digest working well
because we're not sympathetic OverDrive, we're rest and digest
dominant, then we actually because the to process glucose,
we need oxygen and then it turns into ATP, that energy supply.
But if there's not a lot of oxygen and we just got enough to
kind of keep us alive, then that conversion of glucose and
absorption nutrients doesn't happen.
And we just store food or we get, you know, we're dehydrated
and we're blocked up and everything just gets put out of
whack and people start to put weight on.
And when you're really fatigued, not sleeping well, it's super
hard to stick to those healthy lifestyle choices because you're
just struggling to get through the day.
Right. Yeah.
I think this is really going to be a topic that is going to be
more widely discussed in the coming years and I love that you
are paving the way for that and just putting so much good
information out there for people to learn.
Where can people follow you and continue to learn from you?
Yeah, so I'm mainly showcasing myself at healthyface.com and
Instagram at Nurturing Healthy Faces.
I'm always putting up new content to Nurturing Healthy
Faces on. Instagram yeah, Katrina is a
great follow. Your reels get so much
engagement and sometimes I just like to look through the
comments. Always like so many good
discussions on those. Thanks, Bethany.
I know I love the community that's there because people
they've just really resonated with it and there's it's, it's
explaining to people why they're having all of these seemingly
unrelated symptoms and it. Just makes so much sense.
Like once you hear it, it's like, oh, it's just like Western
medicine. We've been masking these things
instead of getting to the root cause.
Yeah. So I think it really resonates.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, thanks so much for being
here. This was such a treat talking to
you. And I just thank you again for
coming all the way from Australia to be on the farm with
us today. My pleasure.
I'm so grateful that you invited me on the show, Bethany, because
this is such an important topic and hats off to you to giving it
another platform to showcase what's possible for people and
help them actually heal their health and set them on the right
path. It's so important, so I applaud
you for jumping on this topic and letting more people know
about it. Thank you.