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 Mary Burke.
Mary is a member of the Segro-Oxipital Technique Organization and has obtained advanced craniopath
certifications.
She has also been involved in the education and training of other practitioners in this
field.
Mary has been in chiropractic practice for over 29 years, and during this time she has
undertaken further studies in many aspects of pediatric development.
She developed the Vital Babies Program for mums with babies under six months of age to
offer education and understanding of factors that can influence optimal growth and development.
One area of particular interest for Mary has been facial growth development.
She has spent a great deal of time attending conferences all around the world looking into
the different aspects that are affecting growth and development of this vital area.
Mary has undertaken over 300 hours of training in the field of oral facial myofunctional
therapy and in 2016 with the blessing of her father, Dr. Kevin Burke, she took over leadership
at Myomunchie with the intent of relaunching the product her father originally developed.
Mary's particular interest lies in the early detection of potential problems for young
children and addressing the underlying causes of oral growth and developmental issues.
You can find out more about Mary and the Myomunchie at Myomunchie.com.
And now let's jump into my interview with Mary Burke.
Okay, great.
Thanks so much for joining us on the show this evening, Mary.
I appreciate it so much.
Good to be here with you, Rebecca.
Great.
So we're just going to jump right in.
I would like to talk a little bit about the history of chewing or rather the lost art
of chewing as I've heard you refer to it.
So for those who don't know what it is, let's talk about what it is and what we've lost
and why it's so important.
Well, that's a big question and a big one.
It is a big one.
I thought we'll just dive right into it.
Yeah, let's dive in there.
So chewing is what we would call a functional movement.
We have to do it.
It's an archetypal movement for human, optimal human genetic expression.
It's really interesting that when we're growing and developing in that first 12 months of
life particularly, but in that first three to four years, there's a lot of these movements
that occur that are really enabling the next level of development to occur.
And chewing is one of those movements.
I think we're aware of things like rolling and crawling.
We know that babies go through these milestone movements in that first year of life that
enables them to get up.
And I'm not sure how many people are aware, but a lot of people, more people are aware
that all those movements, so for example, crawling is a classic one, gets both hemispheres
of the brain communicating.
We sometimes can find that children who haven't gone through these movement milestones can
have compromise in the way some of those higher centres are working in the brain function.
And so it's really important in that first year of life to make sure all these movements
occur because what they're doing is activating to the next level of development.
And the first seven years of life is about all this really early, really good, strong
body movement and function.
And chewing is one of those movements.
And that's what I found really interesting because I have been interested in all that
early developmental work for a long time from a body posture perspective because I'm a chiropractor
by background.
So I was interested in body posture and how those early movements affected people ongoing
and learning and behaviour as well as body posture.
So neurodevelopmental chiropractor, that's what I do by background.
But I became very interested in the oral space because of the history of the munchie and I
realised that chewing was one of those movements because I had all that other understanding.
So chewing, if you don't chew at the appropriate time, it's a milestone movement when the brain
is ready for that next level of development, we can miss a moment when the brain would
automatically get onto it.
And chewing is essential for eating.
But it's also how we grow the lower third of the face and getting really good jaw stability
and function is a huge part of keeping airway stability and function.
So if the lower third of the face isn't well developed and strong, it can have really
big compromise to the way we breathe, to the way we communicate and eat and drink.
So it's a really, it's the movement that gets that whole thing happening.
So sucking and swallowing is the very first functional movement that we do when we're
very tiny babies.
And then chewing, chewing is the next bit we've got to do to really get that well established.
And then that chew swallow grade is the next combination of movements that are functional.
So we're talking breastfeeding to baby lead weaning to eating solids, this kind of regression.
Yeah and with they need to be able to manage pure razor smooth, other textures in there
too, but they definitely need that activation of the chewing.
And what's happened is we have tended to be wanting faster foods that are more processed
and quicker and easier and less messy and convenient.
They're cultures.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, those ones, disaster.
Yeah.
So that can really interfere with this chewing activation because if you don't get textures
and things that are harder work and more difficult to manage, you won't get that activation.
You'll be then stuck in the, you know, you're letting it get half the program fully activated.
Yeah, if you won't get the full activation.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
And if you don't get the full activation, then not only will we have jaw development,
it sounds like we're going to have some kind of impact or synaptic connections and our
brain development.
Well, it can do, it's interesting because a lot of our sensory motor mapping is coming
out of this oral space.
That's the very first foundational piece of where we map a 3D space.
You know, they put everything in their mouth, babies put everything in their mouth.
This is helping them start to map who they are, where they are, how they are in the world.
So it's such an important thing that they get a lot of things in there because there's
so much sensory and then, so the information comes through the sensory back to the brain
and then the motor comes in and loads of.
So it's, it's all very complex, but amazingly designed.
Those 12 cranial nerves that are firing into this area around the eyes and the ears and
the balance and the movement and the beach of those teeth has all this incredible proprioceptive
information, positional information that's telling the brain exactly where to land that
occlusion.
It's quite amazing how that's all there waiting to be loaded, but we don't realise.
So we end up putting things in there like pacifiers and bottles and other stuff.
So babies are very clever.
We need to come and look out what they want to stick in there because that's telling their
brain where everything is.
Wow.
That is, that's, that's mind blowing.
And we'll kind of, we'll talk a little bit more and a little bit about pacifiers and
the difference between that and a myo-munchy because I have, I have a little bit of advantage
to our listeners because I've done some research on your site and I've seen them and I've talked
to others about them.
So well, disclosure totally sold on them.
But before we get there, let's talk a little bit about proper chewing.
And we know why it's important, so what actually is proper chewing and how does it impact this
job on growth and occlusal balance?
So proper functional chewing, it'll occur before they have teeth.
You don't need teeth to chew well.
Some children don't get their teeth to live, you know, a little bit older, 10 months to
one year.
They don't have to wait until their teeth are in.
They have these two reflexes that are there.
And if you put your finger in on a baby's lower, you know, gum there, they will, they
will come against it.
That little chomping reflex, it's called the biphasic chew response, is there from very
early on.
So that's there.
This is a reflexive movement.
So when something comes into contact, they will start to activate this.
What we want is then when they get to the age where food's being introduced, and around
six months of age is ideally when those reflexes are ready to integrate and the more mature
chewing responses come into action.
That's what we want to see is that between, between two and six and eight months, we want
to see really functional chewing starting, where the baby brings the food in, moves it
around with the tongue.
The tongue moves it side to side.
That lateralization of the tongue is part of the chewing.
So the chewing needs to happen, the action of chewing and the tongue is moving it round
in the mouth.
The tongue has now is, isn't thrusting forward anymore.
That was more the, the immature response because it was forward, backward.
They're coming out to bring the tongue in for breastfeeding.
Now the tongue is separating out more to stay in the mouth and it's getting this lateralization
movement happening.
So it's this side to side and then it's going to get the vertical and eventually it's going
to rest up into the palate and that's getting that vertical height.
So this chewing action, this up and down is kind of what they're doing at this age.
It's more up and down and the tongues moving things around.
When they get to around two years, they're going to be doing more of the more complex
rotary chewing where they're able to take on more complex foods because they've got more
teeth.
So at the start, they haven't got teeth, so they haven't got that ability to really do
a huge amount with the rotary.
Once they get those two year old molars in, they can really take on the complex rotary
movements of chewing as well as just the up and down.
And these, these chewing movements, is it fair to say that that not only impacts jaw development,
does it have some sort of an impact?
Obviously jaw development impacts airway.
So that one we know, but does it also impact their speech or could it?
Yeah, it's also, yeah, so it's, neurologically, the brain is, these are foundational movements
that then are wiring things up in the brain to be ready for the more complex speech movement,
a lot of complexity in speech.
It's hugely complex program.
Yeah.
So you've got to have these foundations in of, and the chewing movements, the swallowing
movements, the tongue movements, they're all part of what will be required and the lip
movements for speech.
So they're the foundational basic movements that are required.
And then that very complex program of speech is there to be activated, but it needs that,
all those foundational movements in there first.
It's like getting up to walk.
You can't get up to walk unless you've done all of those early foundational movements
of, you know, to start, first they start by lifting their head, then they roll, then they
command or crawl, then they push up, and they crawl, then they sit, then they get up to
upright and cruise.
They're all part of the foundational movements that then enable you to walk.
And that's all laying down the foundations in the brain for walking.
And this is the same for speech.
All these early movements, the tongue lateralization, the chewing up and down, getting all that
joustability, as well as the coordination for our breath management.
That's a huge part of it too.
For speech.
Speech requires so much to be able to manage the air that's coming to make the sounds for
the, get the tongue in position, have the joustability to hold the different grading
required for the speech.
It's very complex when it doesn't work to work out which bit's not working.
But the diaphragmatic breathing is a huge part of that.
And so the chewing as a movement, what it does is it, yes, it activates and grows the
growth centers in the bony parts of the jaw.
It fires up into the brain around all this cranial nerve coordination that's responsible
for all of these muscles to work.
And then also you have to move things to get, we have a lot of complexity around all the
little muscle groups in this lower third of the face.
But they've also got to then relate to the upper cervical spine and the base of the skull.
And all those relationships, those little muscles need to operate in a certain length
tension relationship.
And that's where you've got to move something and exercise it to get the growth.
It's a very, when you do it all, it works.
But it's very hard to write the program to make it work perfectly.
But it does give enough exposure and activation to get these movements in that it will, it
will establish the right vertical height and the right relationship to the occipital base
which puts in the right relationship for the rest of the spine and the way we are in the
upright space in the world.
So it's all very complex.
And it is, no, and it's fascinating.
And unfortunately for you, my guess, it's going to just stir up a whole bunch of other
questions because now my brain's going, so it is that connection, you know, especially
when you were at the top of the spine.
Is that part of why airway dysfunction can somehow cause that, that head forward posture?
Absolutely, that's incredibly closely related.
If we don't get ideal function early on, we will then be adapting to try and open that
airway.
So good airway function is oral posture, body posture.
It's got to be both working together to get an ideal setup initially.
And if you don't get an ideal setup in this first growth phase of life and you're trying
to treat or work with a client who has this breathing airway dysfunction, you have to
look at the body posture because both work together at this stage.
They've adapted and that's what you see.
They'll adapt forward to get the airway open.
But that's because there's dysfunction in the way that whole system wired up originally.
And especially if they then go in and look at the teeth in isolation and go, oh, okay,
we need to fix that bite.
That bite's there for a reason.
That bite's telling us something.
What set that up?
What was the initial bit that set that up?
And that's where we've got to make sure we get enough movement because sometimes lack
of movement doesn't enable optimum expression.
And then there's this low tone.
And when you've got low tone, it cascades into that.
And the airway needs tone, muscle tone to function well, to stay open.
And so a lot of that upper airway work is getting the, you know, thinking about a baby
that's pushing up on tummy time, getting all the opening.
And that's when the diaphragm starts to engage as well.
See, if we have these babies who aren't moving enough early on, often their diaphragm doesn't
get in good engagement because when they're first born, they don't breathe through the
diaphragm.
They can't, it's this whole Brody movement.
So it's about three months that they start to get engagement with top to the bottom because
this is all, this isn't all, when they arrive, they're not in, it's not connected.
Nothing's connected.
This is the first big mechanics.
So I agree.
The baby starts to get organized, the program starts to load.
And then they've got to be given opportunity to move.
And a huge part of this lack of airway function is lack of diaphragmatic engagement because
babies aren't moving.
They're in capsules, they're in baby capsules, they're not getting enough opportunity to move
to get that diaphragm and top to bottom engage.
So then they're stuck breathing up here.
And that's why tummy time is so important.
It's tummy time is so important.
Yeah.
To give them lots of opportunity to get strong and to get all of that engagement in that
rib cage and that diaphragm, they start to roll.
That requires top to bottom.
It requires all that through the middle area to engage.
So rolling's not optional either.
Rolling, chewing, they're all really, really important things to do to get your...
As is crawling.
So we don't just go from floor to walking, make sure they crawl as well.
Yes.
Make sure they do all these movements.
The longer they spend on the floor and the stronger they get in their body in that first
year of life, really, really important.
And so it's something that when we're looking at chewing and that's really important.
But when we're looking at these little children who've got these issues, we're going to look
back at was there less quality in some of those milestone movements.
Sometimes they'll roll, but they might roll once.
They roll over.
I know.
They say, oh yeah, they roll.
Then you go, oh okay.
We want lots of good rolling because we know that that's when the diaphragm really starts
to get activated and engaged.
And these, these dual pathways, you said those start around six, eight months or is that...
They're earlier, but we sort of introduced six to eight months is the window when they
need to be really activated and really, because you've got to activate and then to get them
integrated.
And so you think about a lot of children who, yeah, struggle with feeding and speech.
I would say there's high incidence there of children who didn't fully activate into their
chew responses and their tongue lateralization.
And whether there was, might have been tethered oral tissues there or some other reason or
lack of exposure.
So we've got to make sure the lack of exposure isn't what's coming against this next generation
of kids because of that convenience world we live in.
Yeah.
So, and this is, this is a great time to kind of segue into this.
Let's talk about what parents can do to stimulate all of these connections and proper jaw development.
What are some things we can do to...
Yeah.
So, we've been giving them lots of opportunity for sensory exploration and sort of understanding
that then putting things in their mouth is, is them mapping that area and making sure
they have lots of different things to, and access to different toys and things that have
got different textures and different shapes and all of that.
I think that's the other thing we get worried about too is the germs and the dirt.
And it's like, we've got other things to worry about.
Like that, they're immune, they will work well, as long as they're all well-todd, they'll
be fine.
I always heard growing up, you have to eat a pound of dirt growing up.
That's just part of life.
It's part of childhood.
So go be dirty, go roll around, have some fun.
Yes, roll around, have some fun.
That's exactly right.
So certainly in that first few months of life, ideally getting breastfeeding happening.
If they're struggling with breastfeeding, that makes life very difficult.
So we then have to work out ways to introduce some stimulation to those areas that are going
to get less input that they need.
So we've got to try and up-regulate that system somehow.
So okay, so breastfeeding didn't establish for whatever reason.
We now have less than ideal intraoral or functional movement that's occurred.
That sucks, swallow, breathe.
So making sure I'm working with a bottle, they're doing pace feeding and really working
at getting that suck, swallow, breathe happening, that they're swapping sides with feeding.
That's really important because there's so much development going on body posture-wise.
Head writing reflexes are activating about head posture, revision.
So if you're always feeding on one side when you're bottle feeding, that baby isn't going
to develop.
That's one of the things in breastfeeding, you swap sides all the time.
So you're always inside getting all that vestibular stimulation, head posture, or eye
visual, as well as body posture or stability, all these things are happening.
They're all functional movements, so as well as the feeding and the sucking.
In case I was thinking of things like that, really important for parents so that if they're
bottle feeding, making sure they're getting that, doing suck training with their finger,
getting more activation, so often bottle feeding babies will use a dummy or a pacifier to settle
because they haven't got the breast as the calming sucking.
But making sure you take that out.
If you're using a pacifier, take it out.
Use it for calming, take it out.
It's not to say don't use it, it's just frequency and duration are the issues.
Don't let them have it all the time.
So just use it at what it is for a calmative moment or get them sucking on your finger.
You can really get that suck training working.
And that's where things like the baby munchie come in really helpful when there are about
four to five months of age.
You can introduce little munchies and little munchies have little, they're very flexible
and soft, but they have these little prongs on them.
And that really helps create that stimulation because that's what we need to realise too,
is that we want that there's lots of little sensors, many, many little sensors mapping
that, that palate or the gums, that whole, it's so much sensory information in there.
So the more we can have in there, that little toothbrushes that are finger cock toothbrushes
that you see.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah, great.
Rub that around in there, rub it around, get the baby very used to that, but really mapping
that intraoral space with them, especially if they've had a tongue tie because they are
behind the eight ball when it comes to that tongue wasn't sitting up and stimulating that
palate or growth.
And so there's lots we can do with this intraoral stimulation.
And yeah, that's, that's sort of the sort of things you can do as well as making sure
they get plenty of really good tummy time.
As I said before, to open this area and make sure they get that upper cervical stability.
So by three months of age, a baby should very comfortably be on their tummy up, looking
around, getting really good cervical range of motion.
So these are, it's all really important they get all these relationships working with each
other.
And so they're just spending their timeline on their back.
They're not getting this opportunity.
And we need gravity to grow the jaw as well.
So when you think tummy time, gravity is helping.
If they're on their back, gravity is not going to help them because the jaw is going
to see it back.
Pull it back.
Yeah.
That's your first person that's ever said gravity to me.
So that one just kind of threw me off.
So yeah, never really thought about it, but it's logical when you think about it.
And then I think the other thing with parents too is to play with them or mimic.
They will mimic what you do.
So bring your tongue out.
Play a little games.
Get them, you know.
Yeah.
Engaging with their tongue.
Get them, you know, when they're older, you know, not at three months of age, but you
can get them licking things.
Get the tongue out to, you know, to sort of explore different things.
But in that three months of age, you'll see their tongue start to come out and you want
that sort of them to develop that awareness and really see them making lots of noise and
really starting to engage.
You're listening to Airway First with today's guest, Mary Burke.
You can find out more about the Children's Airway First Foundation and our mission to
fix before six on our website at children'sairwayfirst.org.
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podcasts, events, parent support, and educational event opportunities.
Parents are also encouraged to join the Airway Huddle, our Facebook support group, which
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Then shoot us a note via the contacts page on our website or send us an email directly
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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, Mary Burke.
We've talked about this on some shows before, but I would really like to hear, especially
with all the things we're talking about, your take on this connection between chewing and
airway and sleep, which is something that I don't think logically parents always put
each three together, but they are so intricately related.
They are because chewing is the functional movement for airway stability.
Those muscles that keep that airway open, muscles down here, the posterior aspect of
the tongue, that's all part of our swallow mechanism.
And when you chew and you get enough chewing activation, you then really manage all that
food.
So it's the chewing and the tongue lateralization that are what's, and then getting that ideal
swallow pattern that is getting that airways sort of stable and all those linked tension
relationships.
So once again around, if we don't activate into chewing and get the growth centers of
mandibular growth activated, so Wolf's Law says that a bone will grow in accordance to
the forces placed upon it.
So if you do not put force and pressures through bone, the bone won't grow to its genetic potential.
So we need to really work those jaws to get the optimal length of jaw bone growth.
We need to activate those growth centers and chewing is the movement that will do that.
And then ideally when that jaw activates to come forward, as well as all those other movements
I talked about before trying to get that jaw for the tongue, as soon as you get the tongue
engaged and coming forward, it'll bring the jaw with it.
But that helps get those linked tension relationships for that airway to be open.
And so when you swallow, ideally when we swallow, the tongue should go up, the posterior aspect
of the tongue will work, the pharyngeas and all the little muscles in there, remember
all their names right now, but they pull on the eustachian tubes, they drain the ears.
It's all super functional.
The mechanism of swallow does all of that.
It's what keeps the airway open.
So that's the movement.
So when you're stuck with a tongue thrust swallow, that means that there's not ideal
functioning back there and it's never set up properly.
And so it's, and chewing is just a huge part of that early programming to get all those
muscles woken up and then working at the right length.
So it's one thing to have a muscle there, but we all have in all of our muscles in our
whole body an ideal length at which they can work best.
And if they're too short or they're too long, they're not going to be able to get that ideal
activation for that airway to just have the right amount of opening.
It's not a static cue.
It's not about, oh, it needs to be this side.
It just needs to work really well.
Those little muscles that, and at night when you go to bed, they should be active.
It's not like they become inactive at night.
It's just there's other adaptations we're using during the day to keep it open.
So it's all that, it's all that other body postural stuff we're using to keep it functioning
during the day that stops us having a problem during the day.
And then we go to bed at night and those bits and pieces switch off and we're relying on
the ideal activation of what should be there in what we call unconscious competence.
It should just be working.
That's when it becomes obvious that actually, no, we're having to consciously full body
swallow or we're using a whole lot of other muscles to breathe and keep us working.
That shouldn't be working.
Does that kind of answer your question?
No, it does.
No, no, it does.
No, I love the detail personally.
So, you know, and then building on this, obviously, if it's not open, then now it's going to impact
your child's sleep and now we're back to this vicious cycle because now we're impacting
their development, mental states, moods.
And this is where I think, and I've seen enough of it now just clinically to see the improvement
when you can improve the level of tone in the child's body in general.
So say you've got a three-year-old, four-year-old comes in and their, yeah, mum's noticed their
mouth breathing at night, they're snoring at night, worried about their behaviors off,
you know, they're not great.
They're just in that.
And you look at them and you go, okay, you can just see that there's just generally a
little bit of low tone there.
They might have their feet a little bit rolled in and the knees might be collapsing in a little
bit.
You can just see that they're, and they're not diaphragmatic breathing at all.
They're just kind of, you know, they're adapting around a system that's only really activated
probably to about 60 or 70%.
They're not fully, but if you can get fully activated, but if you can get them doing things
like on a ball, big, big exercise ball, big exercise ball doing stability exercises to
get that nostril activation, because these kids will be very weak.
You won't be able to get much out of them at all.
Get that activation working, get their breathing working, get a munchie in there.
You'll see quite a quick uptick in their sleeping and ability to sleep at night because we tone
into the system.
We're activating that tone.
We're raising that level in the brain of the tone.
There's going to be a whole lot of other kids who aren't that simple to solve, of course,
but there is definitely a lot of them in the community that that's the primary piece they
missed early on was getting enough upregulation in the system to hold the airway open at night.
That's what it needs.
It needs your level of tone in the world.
And these kids, it's just hard work.
They're tired.
They fatigue easily because their level of tone isn't great.
So everything's just a bit hard work.
We're also being fully wired the other way.
They're a different kettle of fish.
But the low tone ones are definitely ones we can work with quite well.
And once you're upregulated early, you can keep it there.
You can keep that.
If you get it into the system early enough, it becomes part of the wiring in the brain.
This is what we've got to do is get in early because it's really hard to treat and fix
later on because it's very hard to get into.
I was going to say we can do it later.
It's just so much more complex.
Yes.
And really hard to get it to hold.
Whereas if we get it early, we can get it to hold.
We can get it to be part of their nervous system the way they function.
That's what's really exciting.
If you get it early enough, it becomes hard because they're not fully grown.
You can get it in.
And each time they hit a new milestone, you might have to revisit and just get it re-activated.
It will get to the point where it holds.
Okay.
So you showed a Myo Munchie a moment ago.
You did.
So I'd like to talk a little bit about those.
It's my understanding.
This is an invention of your dad's.
And you've taken it and run with it.
So for people that don't know what the Myo Munchie is, I'd love to show them, tell them
a little bit about it.
Let's talk about how it fits into what we've been discussing so far.
Yeah, great.
This is a Myo Munchie.
It's like a little mouth guard.
It's flexible and it's got all these little prongs on there and you chew it.
So the idea is you put it in your mouth, lips together, nasal breathing and you chew.
And these little prongs, they massage along the gums and the teeth.
They create a lot of fantastic neurosensory awareness.
And you also produce a lot of saliva when you chew a Munchie.
And that means you've got to then practice that swallow we were talking about.
So this is a great way to practice the swallow.
When you can swallow with a Munchie in your mouth, you're retraining the back part of
the tongue and the pharyngeal walls.
So that's pretty cool because, yeah, so you get the saliva reproduction and then you've
got to then work to go, okay, I've got to swallow back here.
And so the kids, it's a great way of doing that because to try and teach your child to
swallow using the back of the tongue of the pharyngeal walls is a complex task.
So this is perfect two to four year olds.
You can use this with little kids.
And we've even got a baby one.
I haven't got this with me this morning, but slightly smaller one that we bring in with
the babies at around four or five, six months of age, up to about 18 months of age.
And it's fantastic because they're oral in their engagement at that age, they put everything
in their mouth and they love it.
They put it in and they, oh, that feels really great.
It's great for teething.
It's fantastic stimulation, great dummy replacement or pacifier replacement for parents.
Something to give your child when you're out and about in the parame in the car, when they
get to that six month in gate point, they love it.
They're much more interesting for them to have something that's stimulating the right
oral function rather than continuing to give them a pacifier and use the pacifier when they
need pacifier.
Don't give it to them if they're happy, keep it for if they're really worked up or sad
or going to sleep and you just put it in, use it as a tool.
It's a tool.
Right.
And get out.
But this is another tool that you can give them during the day that they will enjoy engaging
with and it has positive impacts.
How often do they use it?
Well, with a baby, they can use it any time just in and out.
It's because it's sensory.
We're trying to get that sensory awareness and mapping for an old child.
We want to activate the chewing responses.
So we really want them to chew it for about three to five minutes.
Ideally really working with getting good chewing and that'll get the lip competence, the chewing
activation stability for the jaw stability.
And then it also encourages that hung function and the nasal breathing.
So it's a great little tool.
And it also tells us stuff.
If a child won't engage with a munchie, is there a behavioural thing?
Is there some reason why they won't?
Can they not breathe when they put it in?
It starts to tell us things.
Right.
If you can't get a child to engage with it, that, yeah, we can use it as a dog.
There's something going on.
Yeah.
There's something going on.
Because, and definitely with babies, because babies will happily engage with it all the
time.
But if they never get to the point where they put it all in, that's telling us they're not
comfortable breathing through their nose.
Because it can be a great tool to help them retrain around breathing through their nose
if you're fine resting with their mouth open.
Just this is a great way to get some engagement.
But if you're going along and you're going, okay, this baby's not comfortable with it in
there.
They always pull it out.
Okay, let's investigate.
What else is going on there?
So it's a great little tool that can help us decide who needs to get further investigation.
Who's a good one for us to work with?
And some of the other times that it'll tell us things too is around behavioural stuff,
whether we're going to need a therapist to work with them.
Or maybe you need to pet, because ideally you want a parent to be the one working with
this.
And just when they're reading books or in the bath and how there's different times
in the day.
But if the child won't engage, then sometimes they need to work with someone who's really
specialised in that.
And that can be your OTs in your speeches and things who really have got great skill
sets around getting that level of engagement.
Because it's really important.
It's not negotiable.
If you're getting that airway, getting in the nasal breathing working and working out
what is interfering early on is really important.
So I need to give you a little bit of a history about my dad and how he's...
Yes, please do.
So he died in 2016 and that's when I took this on.
But it's been around for a very long time.
1966 was the very first patent for the Maya Munchi.
So it's been around a really long time.
And his original premise, he was a dentist and he originally developed it to... and why
it has a little prongs on it, because he developed a periodontal condition for adults.
So he originally developed it to help with periodontal condition for the teeth and the
gums.
And so we know it's great for adults as well.
You and I are talking children, but it's a fantastic tool for adults for maintaining
and keeping good oral function and teeth, all that stuff.
And then over the years, he got really interested in early developmental work and he developed
a children's one in conjunction with the Saka Denil University over in Japan in the 1970s.
And they developed a children's one and they did research at a Saka Denil University and
they found that chewing a Maya Munchi for 20 minutes, this was for children three to six
years of age, they found that...
So this was two lots of 10 minutes a day, I think.
And they found that every child who cheated improved their obicularis auras strength of
the lips.
And what they started to see was, this is when my dad got really interested, that the
bites start to change.
So cross bites and open bites will correct quite well by chewing.
If we can get the right chewing forces in there, we can get really much better jaw stability
and really help get the growth back on track.
Because if you've got a cross bite or an open bite in there early on, that's the way the
Bony architecture is going to grow around that occlusion.
So it's a really fantastic tool for early intervention when people in the dental space
are seeing those dental malocclusion.
And so, yeah, he got really interested in early interceptive orthodontics and that's
what he spent a lot of his career doing.
And he did put this out into the world years ago, back in the 1980s, he...
And people who've been around a long time knew about it back then.
And he went into partnership with a guy called Chris Farrell, who I don't know if you know
who Chris is, but he developed MyoBrace.
So my father and Chris Farrell formed a company back in the late 1980s.
And that didn't last long.
But MyoMunchie was the very first MRC product that MyoBrace has now come out of.
So there's a combined history there back in Australia, they're both Australian products.
And this was the original version of, and a lot of dad's work was involved in the development.
That's pretty cool.
And so then I picked it up in 2016.
And of course with my chiropractic background and understanding, I was really keen to look
at the Myo function.
I knew a bit, I started to learn about Myo functional therapy and I thought, ah, they're
the people who'll be interested in the MyoMunchie.
So that's when I did...
I'd done some training in that a little bit before dad died, but I could see that that
was the way forward.
So I started going to America a bit and meeting with some of these people and people were
super keen.
So that was been great.
Because a few people knew about it early on, like people like Kim Benkert who's been around
a long time.
She was a well-known early munchie ad kids and joined my father.
I thought that was great.
I knew a lot about it.
And yeah, it's gone from there.
And I've done so much research on it.
I absolutely love it.
And I know we're talking babies, teeny-tiny's here, you know, zero to three mostly, but
it can be used on older children, teenagers and adults as well.
I mean, it's not too late at this point, right?
Definitely not.
No, it's just setting your expectations around what you'll achieve.
That's what changes.
If we get in really early, we can actually change the way the growth is occurring.
Later on, it's a great tool to work for the benefits of nasal breathing, correct swallow,
temperament, dibular joint issues.
It's fantastic for that.
Keeping the teeth and the gums healthy and strong, because that's something I really
see now as I'm getting to those older years in my life.
A lot of people cracking teeth and root canals and all sorts of passive teeth issues, super
expensive.
It's keeping the jaw stability there.
Once again, chewing is a foundational movement to keep our airway functioning.
This is what we need to realise as well.
It's not just children.
This is really important for our pharyngeal wall activation.
Keep our own spine mechanism working.
We sponsored research with the speech pathology department here in Newcastle in looking at
aged care because very strong correlation with when you stop being able to eat foods,
they put you on purées when you start to choke.
That's the same mechanism.
Stronger correlates with death.
You don't stick around long once you can't swallow very well.
We're really interested in looking at this tool as a really useful tool to keep that
faculty of swallowed dysphagia.
Working with dysphagia patients.
This has got so much application across so many different avenues.
I don't know what to call them.
The little prongy things inside.
Does it have some sort of benefit?
I mean, obviously it makes sense for the little ones, especially before teething and all of
that.
What does it do for teenagers and early 20s and adults?
Does it still have that brain impact?
Is there any other action there?
Well, it's interesting.
Chewing is a neuro-calmative.
The action of chewing is neuro-calmative.
The OTs, occupational therapists who work with munchies, they call it heavy work.
Heavy work, sensory, a lot of sensory sort of stuff.
There was someone, and I must track her down and have more of a chat to her about it, but
she did some work with some self-harming teenagers.
She gave them a munchie and they stopped their need to do that.
Oh, you're kidding.
Just interesting.
Oh, wow.
Chewing is one of these movements that it helps process the world.
I just think we need to get chewing back on the table because it's not just about getting
the food in.
The nutrition, that's the other really interesting thing too, because the smoothies, all the
good things, you can get it packed into a smoothie, which is great.
You're missing the chewing.
That you're not chewing.
It's not only the delivery of the food, it's the chewing.
Chewing does all these profound things.
There was an amazing paper written by Leetja Paske, which was published in 2016-17, I think.
Leetja is a speech pathologist and a dental hygienist and myofunctional therapist, so
she's very knowledgeable in this space.
She looked at all the research around the benefits of chewing.
It's just phenomenal that when you chew, you activate the enzymes for digestion.
You think about all the chronic digestive issues we've got.
Like a chewing has to be involved in that.
Chewing is involved with memory retention, for hippocampal function, for neuro-calmative
sensory stuff, for jaw stability, for swallowing, for airway.
It is such a foundational, phenomenally important movement.
That's why I'm so passionate about it.
Wow.
All right.
I may be completely off the mark, but listening to you talk, I'm wondering, is that why, for
some of us, I'm not going to say names, but when we were in college or high school, chewing
gum helped us concentrate when we were in college.
Yeah, there's papers on chewing gum.
Yes, there are papers that exist around the benefits of chewing gum for a living.
Wow.
Yeah.
Who knew?
That's crazy.
Yeah.
So there's lots and lots of benefits to chewing.
So it's, yes, we need to get it back into action for so many reasons, because it's another
obesity, and obesity is another part of that whole thing where we're not getting enough
activation into the chewing.
And yeah, for the senses in the brain to know how much we're...
Like it's just...
When the physiology works, it's profoundly clever.
Like I'm just blown away all the things I learned along the way about all the people
who think, oh, wow, what else are we missing?
Because we all have lost chewing.
And I will tell you, every time I do a podcast, I learn something else, and this is going
to be one of those where I walk away just kind of overwhelmed because I finally understand
the concept around tongue placement and why that is so important.
And especially around depression and ear, if you're in constant fight or flight and why
little kids put their fingers in their mouth and they're, okay, I got that connection now.
But I never would have put two and two together on chewing, just how impactful it is.
I knew about jaw development, but that was really about it.
Yeah.
And those two together, the...
If your jaw stability, if you're basically, if you're nasal breathing and you're swallowing
aren't working well, your two hemispheres, like every time you swallow, the tongue should
go to the palate and the two hemispheres reset and your pituitary stimulation, all the feel-good
stuff that...
And if that's not working and you're mouth breathing, so nasal breathing, those two things,
I just think that's such a big deal for people who are going through life with an incorrect
pattern of mouth breathing.
You're so far behind the eight bolusos as far as your self-regulate, your ability to
easily self-regulate those.
And I think about those kids and I think we've got to work with them.
We've got to give them back those two things because that's...
They need that to go through life.
This is a complex world we're living in and we need to have a few things on our side.
Right.
Absolutely agree.
And ensuring your stability enables both those things, that's how that fits in.
Yeah.
And so at the end of every podcast, I always hand it back, the final thought to the guests
because, yeah, because you're the experts and you're the ones that know this best.
So what would your final thought be for our parents that are listening?
Small things make a massive difference early on.
So don't feel overwhelmed if you go, oh, my child's got these issues.
You can shift that trajectory very early on.
Definitely worthwhile doing.
The more we do in the first three years of life to help establish them well in the way
their brain functions and how they are in the world, immune system, nasal breathing,
corrects while I sleep, those foundational pieces sets that little human up for life.
They will reap the rewards so much down the track.
So it's really about understanding and sort of...
And if you're thinking, oh, I think there might be something here with my child, talk
to someone.
Don't just go, they'll grow out of it because they won't.
They'll grow into it.
They'll grow into it and we don't want them to.
We want them to have the best opportunity for their optimal genetic expression.
So that's what I would say.
Little things make a massive difference.
I'm not sure which one I want to put on a shirt.
Little things make a massive difference or they won't grow out of it.
They'll grow into it.
It's so true.
Absolutely.
Don't let someone say that's normal.
Mouth breathing is never normal.
Let's get through the bites there.
Let's find out what's going on.
And malocclusion, the same thing.
If you're spotting your teet's kids, your kids' teeth aren't...
If you can see there's what we call a malocclusion there, find someone who will tell you what's
going on because that's telling you something straight up.
Something's happening.
Yeah, something's happening.
Really early, the primary dentition, man, we can change things really well.
Yeah, don't wait until it gets locked into the secondary dentition and then you've got
to work with the teeth.
Let's work with the environment that the teeth are landing in so that they land in a better
environment than the right position.
Yeah, and relationship torture.
Yeah.
That was perfect.
Well, thank you so much for being on and all of this.
I mean, you packed quite a bit in at a short time, so thank you so much.
Really enjoyed catching up with you, Rebecca.
Thanks for reaching out.
Thanks again to today's guest, Mary Burke, for sharing her medical insight into each of
you for listening to today's episode.
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