The article advocates changes to how children are raised — encouraging more chewing of tougher food — as a way to improve the situation. But is there any suggested intervention for adults? Perhaps more adults should be encouraged to have jaw adjustment surgery, instead of regular orthodontic treatment? Right now it seems like braces are considered the first choice, and surgery the last one, but perhaps this should be reversed?
"Get a bigger jaw" doesn't seem feasible, and would probably not be very appealing (for aesthetic reasons) anyway. "Get a smaller tongue" isn't much better. It does seem like there might be some kind of retainer that could work. The fact that there isn't already someone making billions from that idea suggests that no alternative has been found that's both effective and convenient. Anything that could keep the tongue from sliding back is also likely to trigger a gag reflex. Or maybe there is a solution in that area, but nobody has quite hit it yet.
It can be done, but it's extremely painful. They basically break your jaw, then slowly force the pieces apart over a period of around 6 months. I had this done when I was in 7th grade, before I got braces. It was extremely painful at first, then kind of settled into a dull ache. There were 3 screws on the bottom and 1 on top. Made talking & eating very difficult (the hardware across the roof of your mouth makes it hard to swallow and enunciate clearly).
It was either this, or they'd have had to pull adult teeth to make room for the remaining.
There is this guy John Mews, and his son, who advocate something called Orthotropics. It's basically forcing yourself to push your tongue onto the roof of your mouth. I recently got braces, like a few weeks ago, as a 26 year old male adult, and have been doing this. I've been pretty consistent daily, not all day, about keeping my tongue on the roof of my mouth. I really recommend just reading it. It probably is just a placebo, but the cool thing is that I can feel the difference in my breathing. It feels smoother and less forced coming out through the nose. Just the idea of keeping your lips together seemed to have helped. Hopefully over time it improves.
Braces will train you to avoid pressing into the front teeth with your tongue because of the pain once the teeth are loose and migrating. I still keep my tongue on the roof 20+ years on.
I have a mouth guard that keeps my mouth open and pulls my jaw forward (via rubber bands connecting the top and bottom pieces) that helps cut down on snoring. It works less well once the bands are stretched out a bit (you can swap them out though), but overall it's helped improve my and my girlfriend's sleep considerably.
I have one that was custom molded but it looks like you can get OTC mouth guards as well.
>Anything that could keep the tongue from sliding back
They do that procedure of small electric burn to the soft palate and/or back of the tongue - it supposedly creates scar tissue which firms those areas. Had it to the palate 14 years ago and snoring is still significantly lower - was told that the effect may be temporarily as/if the scar tissue goes away.
The jaw seems like a pretty complicated joint in its function. Not necessarily as complicated in movement as some of the other joints, but as far as clamping force required, and necessity to have proper alignment to function (pain-free).
I don't think that surgery on the jaw itself should be an option in cases other than severe pain limiting function of the joint. If the teeth are crowded, remove a couple - that definitely seems like the choice with the least potential for complications that could essentially ruin someone's everyday life anyway.
When do you propose to do this? You can't do it until the final set of teeth have come in. If you do it later, then it might address the overcrowding of the teeth themselves, but it's too late to do anything about the size or shape of the jaw itself. Maybe you can affect the position/alignment of the jaw somewhat. That can be beneficial in many ways, but I'm not sure it would address the snoring issue.
This is ridiculous but when I had snoring problems my research led me to 2 things. Weight loss and the didgeridoo.
Really its a weight/bmi thing from what I've read. All that fat presses down on the different soft areas of your throat and mouth. This causes the rattling and flapping which we hear as snoring.
I'm only slightly overweight and hike a lot. I'm 43 and not known as a snorer. Got my CPAP a few weeks ago. Snoring isn't always obvious and doesn't require being fat.
If you wake up tired and have low energy with daytime sleepiness try getting checked for sleep apnea. The home test is pretty easy (pulse oximeter followed by a slightly more involved test with a chest strap and a cannula).
