Hi everyone and welcome back to Airway First, a podcast from the Children's Airway First
Foundation.
I'm your host, Rebecca St. James.
My guest today is Renata Namey.
A registered dental hygienist and oral-facial myofunctional therapist in Savannah, Georgia.
Renata owns Myo Movers, a practice focused on treating myofunctional disorders in children
and in adults.
She is also the founder of the Airway Circle.
She founded the Airway Circle with the intention of gathering all health professionals who share
the same passion for giving.
You can find out more about Renata at airwaycircle.com.
And now let's jump into my interview with Renata Namey.
Okay, great.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
Absolutely.
It's wonderful to finally connect.
So before we dig in, I'd really like to start with, I guess, a couple of things first.
I know that you are a dental hygienist and oral-facial myofunctional therapist.
It's very hard to say for me all at once.
Which gives you an incredibly unique perspective.
One, you know, we really thought parents and medical professionals would like to hear.
So one thing that I have heard you say before, I can't remember.
I think it was an interview or a podcast.
But if you can't breathe well at night, you're just not going to sleep well.
And for somebody that really hasn't heard that before, that would be a great place for
us to start.
So for parents especially, what does that mean?
What is that impact?
How do the two correlate?
Perfectly.
So during the day, we go through our parasympathetic and sympathetic system.
That means fight or flight or rest and digest.
We're always switching between the two depending on what kind of events are going on in our
lives.
Right?
So if you're running from a bear, your fight or flight is going to turn on.
So heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up so you can run.
And right after a meal, usually your parasympathetic system turns on, which is rest and digest.
Where all of those systems in your body are working with those functions that need to be
done at that time.
So usually you're relaxed, you're calm, your heart rate is low, your blood pressure is
low.
At night time, your parasympathetic is supposed to be on.
So rest, right?
You're resting.
So you breathe in through your nose and you breathe out through your nose.
Things calm and like that.
All of the magic things that are supposed to happen at night time can happen.
All of these amazing hormone releases, you go into every single sleep stage.
Each one of those stages are very important for overall being and for you to get, you
know, for you to getting healing sleep.
So if you cannot breathe well, your body is under stress.
If there's any type of obstruction, if your tongue is falling in the back of your airway,
if you cannot breathe through your nose because you're sick and it's stuffed up, your body
is going to go and survival mechanism.
What is the first thing you have to do in order to survive?
Is to take a breath.
So your sympathetic system turns on because now you're under stress and you have to find
a way for you to breathe.
So instead of you getting healing sleep, your body is just trying to keep you alive.
So your blood pressure is up, your heart rate is up.
All of these things are happening.
People start moving around a lot.
Kids a lot of times will wet the bed or adults have to get up to go to the bathroom or there's
excessive sweating.
There's so many things going on because your body is just fighting for your life.
So that's the importance of us being able to go into rest and digest and breathe calmly
through our nose at nighttime.
So for parents that and we hear this a lot, oh, my child's not a mouth breather.
My child's fine.
We tell them all the time, maybe, but go listen to your child's sleep at night.
You know, it's kind of the stalker thing.
Embrace.
We all do it for about right, five, 15 minutes, three times a week.
Go and watch him.
Go and listen.
What exactly are they looking for when they go in there to do these little check-ins just
to see?
He has usually a command going in about 90 minutes after the child has fallen asleep because
they will give you enough time for a whole sleep cycle to happen.
We are looking for head position, so if the head is too elevated or too far back, what
is a child doing in order to be able to breathe at night?
We are looking for body movement.
So limb movement has to do with low ferritin level, so low iron.
So that would need to be checked out by a doctor.
We are looking for some audible breathing or snoring.
We're looking for drooling.
We're looking for mouth open and tongue low.
So there's, you know, a conjunction of things that we are looking for to try to find out
is this child getting enough quality of sleep because you can spend enough time in bed at
night, but that does not mean that you're reaching every sleep stage and staying in
those sleep stages long enough.
So of course, if we see lots of body movement, snoring, gasping for air, things of that nature,
we would recommend a sleep study in a lab where we're going to be able to really tell
what is going on with that child's sleep.
Okay.
And if you see these signs and maybe you can't get a sleep study, let's just start with the
first step.
You go in, you monitor your child, you see these signs.
Maybe they even have some additional in the morning, you know, the sheets are just thrashed.
They're everywhere.
And the child is groggy.
They have a headache.
Okay.
That's a lot of signs.
Yes.
Where does a parent go?
What's the next step?
If we, you know, do we just, can we go to a dentist?
Is that the right place to go?
Or do we go straight to the pediatrician?
I usually recommend calling a myofunctional therapist first.
Why do I do that?
Because we are the middle puzzle piece of the interdisciplinary team.
A myofunctional therapist is connected with an ENT.
She's connected with a dentist, with an orthodontist, with a chiropractor, an occupational therapist,
a physical therapist.
We kind of have, you know, this whole team that we know who to refer to because we know
the ones that are looking at all of these things.
Unfortunately, in medical school and in dental school, all this airway stuff is not talked
about enough.
Tongue ties are not talked about enough.
So all these things that we learn outside, it's not in there.
So we got to make sure that we go to the right provider.
And I will plug in here.
If anybody's looking for a provider around you, we have a free global directory on Airway
Circle.
So if you go to www.airwaycircle.com, click on directory and you can search by name, by
location.
You can search by procedure if you're looking for somebody for a phrenectomy or for a type
of expansion.
You can literally click the things that you'd like and increase the radius and you're going
to see anybody who's around you.
That's awesome.
We'll make sure we put that in the show notes as well.
Thank you.
And knowing that it's so important, we always say we don't know what we don't know.
We know now, collectively we're learning, we're getting the message out.
So with this knowledge, why is it still hygienists aren't taught this?
Hygienists aren't given the time, in your opinion, to look for these things.
One, they're just so overworked and so busy.
There are so many patients out there that just need cleanings and they need regular dental
visits.
They have to do so much already.
I mean, we're learning about oral health or hygiene, houseetry periodontal disease.
We are already inundated with all these things.
What we are learning now is that hygienists are in the perfect position to go into this
because we are inside the mouth every day.
We know what times look like.
We know which patients are difficult to clean, like little kids are ticklish.
Those are usually kids that don't keep their tongue up.
Little kids that have tons of plaque on their teeth, but it doesn't matter every single
time they come, they're full of plaque.
Most of the kids are tongue tied.
Your teeth constantly, all throughout the day.
If you cannot reach those areas, you're not going to be able to clean your teeth.
So there are so many things that hygienists are the perfect profession to start looking
into these.
Another reason is of course, dental hygiene training, they would have to develop a whole
new program to get these girls or these girls and guys through to be able to start looking
at these things.
And then the third thing that's a big issue are the boards.
Dental boards don't know what to do with this information.
They don't know what to do with us.
Whenever we take our boards, we are training and proving that we are able to clean teeth,
to be inside the mouth, to go underneath the gums, all of these things.
But how would they be able to grade us and make sure that we know what we're doing when
it comes to malfunction therapy if there's no training in university?
So there's still a big, great area.
And of course, we are all working so hard and working together to move the field forward.
And we are going to get there, I believe, eventually.
I don't know how long it's going to take, but I'm here for the ride.
Same.
Yep.
That's why we're all doing these podcasts and sharing this information.
So let's talk about oral habits specifically.
This is something we don't talk a lot about on here and probably should, though.
Things like thumb sucking and long-stage pacifier use.
How are these signs of airway dysfunction or a tongue tie?
So we have, we have nutritive sucking and we have non-nutritive sucking.
So babies, when they're first born, they all tend to suck their thumb and they're learning
how to swallow that way in the womb, all of them do it and it's normal and it's fine.
So after a certain amount of time, if they need to do it, we start looking for other
signs.
Do they have any type of airway obstruction?
Stuff in nose all the time, always sick, difficulty breathing through their nose, enlarged tonsils,
enlarged adenoids.
What do their teeth look like?
Do they have enough room for their teeth?
Do they have an open bite?
Those are all reasons if there's a small airway or difficulty breathing through their nose,
kids are more likely to need a pacifier or a thumb inside their mouth because that's
going to open up the vertical, we call it.
Open up the teeth a little bit, which is going to open up the airway and make it easier for
them to breathe.
Okay.
Of course, there are consequences to prolonged thumb sucking or pacifier use and it's just
going to keep getting worse and in terms of the teeth moving and causing more malocclusion
or crooked teeth.
But we have to ask ourselves why first.
Is this a child, for example, that eats a lot of dairy?
Or is it inflammatory and then they're always sick, they always have secretion, they cannot
breathe well, they have to open their mouth.
We have to figure out what's causing it.
But in the beginning, in the early months, it's totally normal for kids to suck their
thumb.
We actually do not recommend replacing it with a pacifier.
If they suck their thumb in your breastfeeding, we usually recommend continue breastfeeding
on demand and most children will stop thumb sucking on their own.
Okay.
If they're breastfeeding and they don't have a pacifier.
And yes, that's why we say if they're sucking your thumb, just keep it.
It's more natural.
They already do it in the womb.
Pacifiers, of course, is different shapes.
None of them are really great for oral facial development.
But if your child needs, well, no, the kids need to suck to calm down and they need it.
So if there's no other way, go ahead and let your child have a pacifier, but try to keep
it only when they need to calm down or whenever you're putting them to bed.
After they fall asleep, they can take it out.
So just reducing the amount of time, so the frequency, the intensity and the amount of
time that they're having that sucking habit.
If we have to go the route or we choose to go the route of a supplemental pacifier, are
there better ones like the myelomunchie kind of realm of oral?
Yes, we actually recommend a lot of kids who have a pacifier to switch to the myelomunchie,
start doing the myelomunchie instead.
There are so many pacifiers out there.
I think the best one right now is called the nini.
Pacifier is very soft.
And you can kind of see it whenever the child is sucking on the pacifier.
You can see the tongue movement.
But the portion that goes inside the mouth, it's very soft.
The softest one, I think, out there.
It's still not perfect.
You know, it is completely round and it kind of blocks the nose a little bit.
So it would be ideal if they opened up a little room for the nose.
Hans Nini, if you do that, let me know.
I'll make sure we put a link in there for the nini the way it is now.
And what's the difference, though?
I mean, the myelomunchie, though, my understanding, and maybe you could add to this, be great.
That's soothing, but it also helps with their oral facial growth, right?
Because we're all about growing the face out.
Exactly.
And the way that it helps with soothing a little bit is because they're chewing.
Every time you chew, we're releasing all those feel-good hormones in the brain.
Whenever you're sucking, you're also releasing all those feel-good hormones in the brain.
So there are different ways that we're soothing the child.
But the chewing, so pressure builds bone.
The more you chew, the more your face develops.
There's a reason why children nowadays are not developing as much as they used to.
And it's because we have changed the way that we feed them, right?
After industrialization, we have soft foods, we have pouches, we have baby food, we have,
I mean, kids eat mac and cheese, chicken fingers and french fries, peanut butter and jelly.
They don't need teeth to eat anymore.
Back in the day, we're giving our kids chicken bones, right?
Right.
Parents would give the kids whatever they were eating.
They wouldn't blend their food and cook it differently.
And don't get me wrong.
I was extremely proud when I got a baby blender for my firstborn and made all her food at
home.
Yeah.
But now we know better.
Kids need to chew.
If they have an issue chewing, if they're not chewing properly, if they're choking easily,
then of course they need to see a feeding therapist.
But kids need to chew in order for it to grow.
So the myomunchie really helps that.
The myomunchie also helps with proprioception.
So feeling things around in the mouth, if the child always has the tongue low, the tongue
is not used to touching everything, right?
And we need the tongue to touch all the way up there.
So the myomunchie usually will help increase that proprioception around the gums and the
roof of the mouth.
I mean, the tongue will stay in the roof of the mouth, but it will help with the proprioception.
And it's a breathing because you cannot have that in your mouth and breathe through your
mouth.
Right.
It promotes sleep closure.
Okay.
But they don't sleep with it, correct?
It's literally, it's soothing, it's chewing, and then take it away.
I have not had my patient sleep with it.
Some practitioners may recommend that.
And there's also a couple other devices, the myobraise and the healthy start.
They as the practitioners, a lot of times will recommend sleeping with those devices.
They're a little bit harder.
They are not as soft as the myomunchie.
And they're more of these growth guidance appliances.
They don't, none of these appliances really expanded the patient.
They promote the tongue being in the right position.
They promote nasal breathing.
And with that, we see changes with the occlusion.
Also growing the face out again is our goal.
Well, growing the face out and sideways, we need to grow in all directions really.
Right.
Just not back.
Right.
Yeah, that's true.
But these, these devices will help you with the nasal breathing and with the chewing in
the tongue position.
They don't, they do not act like an expansion device.
Like if you go to an orthodontist and they put a device under your mouth, you have a
little key to really expand your jaw.
It's different.
You don't, you know, if somebody is so deficient, they need so much growth.
I don't usually recommend going with these devices.
These devices are usually for younger children, you know, that you cannot find an orthodontist
around you to treat the child yet, but it's correcting habits with myofunctional therapy.
Very important to do myofunctional therapy with any of them.
Yep.
Which is huge.
So.
You're listening to Airway First with today's guests, Renata Nehme.
You can find out more about the Children's Airway First Foundation and our mission to
fix before six on our website at childrensairwayfirst.org.
The CAF website offers tons of great resources for both parents and medical professionals.
In our parents portal and clinicians corner, you can find educational and informational
content, including videos, blogs, our recommended reading list, comprehensive medical research,
podcast events, parent support, and educational opportunities.
Also encouraged to join the Airway Huddle, our Facebook support group, which was created
for parents of children with airway and sleep-related issues.
You can access the Airway Huddle support group at facebook.com backslashgroups backslashairwayhuddle.
Are you a medical professional or parent that's interested in being a guest on the show?
Then shoot us a note via the contacts page on our website or send us an email directly
at infoatchildrensairwayfirst.org.
As a reminder, this podcast and the opinions expressed here are not a medical diagnosis.
If you suspect your child might have an airway issue, contact your pediatric airway dentist
or pediatrician.
And now let's jump back into my interview with today's guest, Renata Nami.
One of the things, as I understand it, is an open bite is a sign of an airway issue.
So if you have a child presenting that way, what are some things you would do when working
with them to help start the process of correcting this?
First thing I would do is nasal hygiene.
Second thing I would do is nasal hygiene.
And the third thing I would do is nasal hygiene.
You got to clean that nose.
I tell all my patients every single time you brush your teeth, you blow your nose because
we need to make it a little bit more common for us to do that all the time.
You got to get used to cleaning your nose and using your nose.
So blow your nose every single time you clean your teeth.
They should go hand in hand.
At nighttime, whenever they take a bath, we can go ahead and get the nose, throw warm
water in the nose and get them to blow.
Pick, I always tell them pick your boogers out, get all that stuff out of there.
And then we can do some nasal sprays.
Saline, nasal sprays, or X-Lear has a great product also.
They can spray the nose and blow, blow, blow, massage the nose on both sides, just getting
the patient used to using the nose.
Because if it's an airway issue, open bites are not caused by tongue thrust.
Open bites are usually caused by an underlying condition, usually breathing or something
else.
So we got to address breathing first always with every patient.
ANT appointment would be great to make sure they don't have anything enlarged.
They scoped the nose, put a little camera inside the nose so they can see the adenoids.
If you're a parent listening, always ask for the degree or the percentage of obstruction.
How obstructed is my child?
Because a lot of patients will come back and say, oh, the ANT looked and they said, it's
fine.
Well, what is it?
I'm not sure.
They said it's slightly enlarged.
Well, what does that mean exactly?
Give me a percentage.
Out of 100%, how much of is obstructed?
Because it's going to make a difference whenever we decide what kind of treatment to go with
for this child.
I usually say if a patient is obstructed 60% or 70% or more and they have sepnea, that's
when I recommend ANT treatment first.
The ANT would recommend either tonsils and anenoids removal or steroid spray or something
like that.
That's a pretty significant blockage.
Yes, it is.
And of course, we all know that expansion now, a rapid path to expansion that we call
RPE can reduce the size of tonsils and anenoids, but it is long term.
It takes some time for that to happen.
And if a child has sleep apnea and they are lacking oxygen every single night, it may be
too long for us to wait.
I'd rather get a child breathing well first.
So whatever we're going to do, I've had some patients that we recommend, okay, I don't
recommend doing flow nays or some steroid spray for a long time.
But if you guys want to do expansion first while you do the nasal spray so that child
can breathe while we're doing expansion, let's do that.
Because as soon as the patient is expanded enough, usually nasal breathing gets better
because you're increasing the size of the nose as you're increasing the size of the
roof of the mouth.
Which makes total sense.
Absolutely.
So when you're looking at a child, the child comes to you for the first time and you're
evaluating them for a tongue time.
That's my understanding, you can't always just see it.
That's how they're going unnoticed.
So what are three things that you look for when you're evaluating a child?
For a tongue time.
So number one is opening the mouth wide open and lifting or elevating the tongue without
closing the jaw.
So if they can elevate and almost touch the roof of the mouth, that usually means that
they have good mobility.
They can go all the way up without closing the jaw.
If they have to close the jaw every time, that's a problem.
And then we also look for the floor of the mouth that's elevating a lot.
That can be a compensation of those muscles to try to get the tongue to move.
Another thing that I look for is for the jaw movement.
So then I'll ask them to go side to side, put the tongue from one corner of the mouth
to the other corner.
If the jaw is going with it, that means that they may have a restriction and every single
time they move their tongue, they have to move their jaw because they're so restricted.
And then the third thing that I look is function.
I want to see this child chew and swallow.
Because it's one of the most important functions that we do with our tongue.
Most of these doctors, whenever they are looking for a tongue tie, they actually are asking
the children to stick their tongue out.
That doesn't really mean anything.
There are plenty of kids who are tied and they can stick their tongue super far.
But whenever you ask them to actually chew food and swallow, it is a mess.
There's food coming out.
They have to keep their mouth open.
They cannot lateralize the tongue to move the food from one side to the other.
Whenever they swallow, they are now forming a good bolus in the middle of the tongue.
The food is all over the tongue and they cannot swallow almost everything with one swallow.
You know, only it kind of stays a lot of stuff behind.
So these are things that we're looking for whenever we are evaluating for a tongue tie.
That's why a picture does not really work.
And that's fascinating to me too, because I always thought that one of the things, you
know, stick the tongue out, see if they can do it.
So that's really interesting.
And the reason why they say that it's because in medical school and in dental school, dental
hygiene and speech pathology also, whenever we learn about ankle oglossia or tongue tie,
it's that ankle oglossia, which is a full tongue tie.
And the three-nam, that little tissue underneath your tongue attaches to the tip of your tongue.
So most of those patients cannot stick their tongue out past their lower teeth.
Okay.
But now we know that there are several different severities of restriction.
Some tongues are super restricted like that full ankle oglossia and some have more of
a posterior restriction.
It's the back of the tongue that cannot elevate.
And that will affect your swallowing those people that can stick it out, but they can't
put the tongue flat in the mouth, for example.
Yes.
Oh, that's interesting.
Okay.
Another thing that we have, we've talked about in some, some previous episodes, we've talked
a little bit about, you know, cavities specifically around sealants.
And I'm not going to make you talk about sealants.
I do have a question because, you know, you've heard it around the PTA and we're all hanging
out talking and we're talking about kids or have a cavity.
I'm not worried about it.
That's just a baby tooth that's going to come out.
But that's kind of a big deal.
And as parents, we're not taking that seriously as we should.
Yes.
I mean, I think that we should ask ourselves, well, why do siblings, right?
We have all these siblings.
Why do some of them have tons of cavities and the other ones do not?
You know, they're pretty much doing almost everything the same.
So there is a lot more to decay than we know.
I feel like there's a whole new conversation now around gut health, vitamin D deficiency,
vitamin K2 deficiency, making sure that the kids have enough nutrients.
Of course, sugar.
We all know about sugar.
But also any types of foods that stay stuck in your teeth, like goldfish.
It's awful because it really stays stuck on all these kids teeth.
It's not sugar, but it's carbs.
Yeah.
Harbs is sugar.
So there's so much more that we're not aware of.
It's not just about brushing and flossing and using fluoride.
It's not just about how much sugar a certain child eats.
You know, it's the same thing.
The frequency, the length of time that he actually stays on the child's teeth.
If they, of course, how well they do their oral hygiene, all those things.
But then again, mouth breathing, whenever they are mouth breathing, everything dries
out and some of these cavities really like the dry air to form cavities a little bit
faster.
The saliva is there to protect those teeth.
It has tons of things in it that protects those teeth from decay.
So if everything is super dry all the time, they're more likely.
Those kids that have tons of cavities on the upper front teeth, we always got to look for
a lip tie because a lip tie keeps the lip really close to the teeth and stuff gets stuck
in there and you can't clean it out.
So again, it's the it's the how long does the food touch the teeth, right?
So if he stays over there for a long, long time, it's more likely for that to to this
mineralize and break down.
It starts at those white spots.
Those white spots is the first sign of cavities.
And the not only does it have those issues that you have to be concerned with, but there
could be long term health implications, correct?
I mean, even though they're baby teeth, this could set up a child for some bigger issues
down the road.
A hundred percent.
So the baby teeth are extremely important because they are going to guide the adult
teeth on where to go.
If you lose a baby teeth too soon, a baby tooth too soon, then the adult tooth is more likely
to come in crooked, come in in the wrong place because it does not have that guide.
Also, it's more likely to lose space because those teeth are always they want to touch
things, right?
They always are looking for a friend to hang out.
There's nobody around them.
They're going to go look for the next one.
So they move and they are going to close those spaces if you're lost a baby tooth way too
early.
So definitely you want to take care of those, keep them as long as you can.
Kids are more likely to develop correctly.
You have their adult teeth come in without any crowding if we keep them.
Awesome.
So I guess I'd like to shift gears a little bit and this is definitely just a matter of
opinion, but you're in the field and you're seeing it firsthand.
So where do you see the role of the myofunctional therapist growing and moving to and incorporating
in these?
Like you mentioned, you're kind of the middle of these cross functional groups over the
course of the next couple of years.
Oh my goodness.
I see and I am hoping for more awareness in not only the medical community, but also the
parents and schools.
If more people understand exactly what we're looking for and what we do and how important
that is for child development.
I really feel, you know, myofunctional therapy is not a true profession.
It is a modality that is practiced by mostly dental hygienists and speech pathologists.
But I would love to see it as a true profession.
It's a specialty that speech pathologists and dental hygienists decide to go into and it
becomes a true certification through, you know, with a federal board and all of that
because it is just that important.
I mean, we're all doing these things all the time.
We're all breathing.
We're all chewing or swallowing.
We all need the oral or official functions in order to grow and develop and be well.
So I'm just really hoping that more awareness comes out and more professionals start collaborating
with us and more parents are seeking the help of a myofunctional therapist.
And I think that last one is huge and granted, I'm a little biased as a parent, but I really
wish I had known.
Right.
Again, you don't know what you don't know, but I wish I had known about myofunctional
therapy when my children were younger because I'm doing research now and I'm speaking with
professionals such as yourself and just the impacts it could have on a child's health
span.
It's astounding to me.
Absolutely astounding.
My dream would be to, for every dentist, every orthodontist, every pediatrician and every
ENT to have their myofunctional therapist.
They don't have to work in the office, but have the person who they work with because
these patients are going to go back and forth.
You can't, and the reason I always say the reason why myofunctional therapy works so
well is because we're never just doing myofunctional therapy.
We're sending these patients to the ENT.
We're sending these patients to orthodontics.
They are doing other treatment modalities and that's why it works.
We are treating the whole body.
We're looking at the whole picture.
We're looking at the whole patient.
We're not just treating the oral facial muscles.
That's how special the myofunctional therapy therapist is because we're constantly learning.
We are part of study clubs.
We have weekly webinars on Airway Circle that we usually get about 70 people live every
single week and they're all there to learn more.
We're always, we got to find out how can we help these patients better.
We need to learn from other professionals.
That's what Airway Circle is.
I want to learn about IV-CLC, which is an othectatic consultant.
What are they looking at?
What is an occupational therapist looking for?
Can a child crawl with both knees?
Also, my kids only crawled with one knee.
I thought it was the cutest thing.
Well, it's a problem.
But until I learned that from an occupational therapist, I didn't know what to do.
How would you know?
That that's the problem.
How would you know?
So, that's the importance of the myofunctional therapist.
They have the knowledge.
They have a little bit of knowledge of every single specialty so they know when to refer.
Any if you go to an ENT, they're not necessarily going to refer back to Maya.
Right.
Which hopefully that will change.
And I'll make sure to put a link to that as well.
So, Ijenist and other myofunctional therapists listening today can join in on some of your
webinars.
Yes.
We have a membership with ARI Circle and we offer weekly webinars.
We have a research folder we have.
We're fun.
So, we have giveaways and we have fun meetings that we do.
But it's not only for myofunctional therapists.
That is our biggest audience.
But we have the whole interdisciplinary team.
We have many Jentist and speech pathologists and ENTs that come in and hang out with us
and we all learn together.
As it should be.
Right.
And I know, I'll give them a plug.
Dr. Bill Harrell is one of your biggest advocates.
He absolutely adores your work and what you guys are doing and is a huge, huge advocate
for you guys.
He goes both ways.
We love him.
So at the end of every episode, I like to hand the floor back to our guests because you
are the experts.
You're the ones.
Everyone's here to hear.
So what final thought or message would you like to leave for our parents or other professionals?
For parents, if you're learning this information now, breathe.
It is okay.
Your child is going to be okay.
You're finding this out at the right time.
A lot of us feel so guilty whenever we find this information.
Oh my goodness, my child is already a certain age and I've missed all these things.
It is okay.
You are always, every single day as a parent, you're doing the best you can with the information
that you have.
Well, now you have good, you know, newer information.
Let's just do the best we can with the new information.
Take one step at a time.
The myofunctional therapist, your myofunctional therapist is going to hold your hand and guide
you through the steps.
For professionals, keep sharing, keep collaborating, keep reaching out to other colleagues and
invite them to come join us because we need more.
There's just not enough, there are not enough professionals out there to screen these patients
and to help treat these patients.
So if you can call one of your colleagues, somebody that you went to school with, you
know, and ask them if they've heard of this, share a podcast episode, share a YouTube video
or Instagram video that you've seen and invite them to join in one of the lectures.
We got to all help each other out so we can help more patients.
Well said.
I could not have said that better.
That was fantastic.
Thank you so much for being on today and sharing all this amazing information.
I really appreciate it.
Well, thank you so much for having me.
This has been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thanks again to today's guests, Renata Nemi, for sharing her medical insight and each of
you for listening to today's episode.
If you're new to our podcast, please don't forget to subscribe.
And if you enjoyed today's episode, leave us a review or comment telling us about what
you enjoyed most.
You can stay connected with the Children's Airway First Foundation by following us on
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Guests can also join us via our Facebook Parents Support Group, the airway huddle, at facebook.com
backslash groups backslash airway huddle.
You can also find tons of great content for parents and medical professionals alike via
the parents portal and our clinicians corner on the CAF website.
If you'd like to be a guest or have an idea for an upcoming episode, shoot us a note via
the context page on our website or send us an email directly at info at childrensairwayfirst.org.
And finally, thanks to all the parents and medical professionals out there that are working
to help make the lives of kids around the globe just a little bit better.
Take care, stay safe and happy breeding everyone.