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 physical therapist Elizabeth Morel.
Elizabeth has a master's in physical therapy from the University of Scranton and is the
owner of Little Movers PT.
Her background includes special education preschool-based PT services, outpatient pediatric services,
and craniosacral therapy.
You can find out more about Elizabeth at littlemovespt.com.
And now, let's jump into my interview with today's guest, Elizabeth Morel.
Hi, thank you so much for being here, Elizabeth.
I really appreciate it.
I'm happy to be here.
Thank you for having me.
Of course, of course.
Okay, so let's jump in because one of the things that your website mentions is physical
therapy for mom and baby.
And I hadn't seen that before.
So for our pregnant mommy listeners, let's talk about how does this work and what are
the benefits both for mom and baby?
So it's a little bit twofold.
One is that I am specifically trained in a technique called low pressure fitness, which
is a postural control technique that basically works from head to toe.
That it is, the method is around really pelvic floor lifting.
And it's very different than traditional pelvic floor therapy, meaning the breathing
is very diaphragmatic, but actually using your diaphragm versus most people think diaphragmatic
and then go to belly breathing.
This is not.
But again, it's all based on posture, breathing, poses.
So you can start that during pregnancy and post.
So I treat parents, moms, and I also perform craniosacral therapy.
That's one of my manual techniques.
So a mom typically wouldn't find me for craniosacral unless they knew me beforehand, unless they
specifically heard that they need to seek it out for X, Y, and Z reason, right?
Prefertility purposes for a traumatic birth before or whatever that that is the other
hand.
So I see families.
I see whole families together.
I had one, two, three, four and kids and a mom in my office all together about a week
ago.
And so, you know, we're all treated as kind of a family unit in craniosacral therapy,
but then I also do this pelvic floor technique.
And the really interesting thing about that is that it's postural control, right?
And what starts your postural control system is that you're telling on the roof of your
mouth that starts your postural control system.
So my two worlds kind of collided there and almost accidentally because I got into that
technique also kind of accidentally after I had already been working, you know, in pediatric
surgery, which is my entire career.
So it's really fun to meld the two together.
And another funny note about treating moms is that all these moms come in with these
tight pelvic floors and urinary incontinence or painful intercourse.
And guess what?
The floor of their mouth is the tightest part of their body and that's directly related
to their pelvis.
So by working in their mouth, I release the pelvis and it's like night and day right there.
These ladies leave like, wait a minute.
I don't know what just happened, but I'm already a new person.
We haven't done anything yet, which is very funny and very cool.
It's very cool.
Yeah.
Well, and you mentioned cranial sacral and I'll put a link for people because Dr. Stephen
Hall, we've had him on before and he's talked a little bit about it.
But let's talk about, you know, specifically two categories with babies, just, you know,
what you can do with them.
And then, all right, if you've missed the baby, how does cranial sacral work on an older
child?
So cranial sacral therapy can be done at any moment, at any day of any, you know, kind
of point in the life.
You can actually palpate rhythm, the rhythm, the cranial sacral rhythm, which is the CSF
flow in utero from about that time of like 13, 14, 15 weeks in utero, which is, yeah,
it's amazing.
It's really cool.
So you can actually differentiate like, oh, this is the mom's rhythm.
And then there's this like tiny super fast rhythm inside.
And you're like, oh, there's your baby found him, which is, it's super incredible.
But you cranial sacral therapy is basically a tech manual technique that is used to release
tension patterns, facial patterns that also hold trauma within the body.
So it's kind of twofold.
Some people use it just as a manual technique.
If they're kind of early in their coursework, where you're just releasing those tension
patterns, which make the ebb and flow a lot better.
And then some people use it for the somato emotional release part of it, where fascia
holds memories.
So you're releasing those memories out of the tension pattern, which allows it to not
come back.
And that's like the bigger thing.
So you know, what our teachers kind of have taught us over time is that you can actually
release the trauma out of a person in one session, what they've been talking to their
talk therapist about, you know, for years, because, you know, in talk therapy, you're
working through it, you're working through it.
But if the trauma is really actually held in the tissue, then you need to like manually
release that out.
And I've seen it done, you know, live in person to where, you know, someone is telling like,
in this case, it was, you know, an abusive father, like, you can no longer control my
life.
But, and four days later, they were like, my life is completely changed.
So it's, it's incredible.
But what you're, you know, in craniosacral therapy, you can be working on the parents
trauma on the baby and vice versa.
So maybe you feel like you had infertility and you're feeling really guilty about it
or you lost a child and that child is kind of still there in the memory and you're thinking
of it and this next child takes on that, that mom stress.
So you can work on the mom and you can work on the baby or you can work on them together
and release kind of that trauma like babies holding really mom's trauma.
And so you release those together or it could be something as simple as, hey, they're just
stuck in utero.
There is a pretty big kink in their, in their body and you have to physically like manually
work that out as well.
And so that trauma can manifest very much.
So as like a physical restriction versus an emotional restriction.
Okay.
All right.
I have several questions on this because I just, I just kind of opens up the gates and
we were talking a little bit before we started recording that everything you do relates to
airway.
That's right.
Because it all comes back to airway.
So, you know, how does the craniosacral impact that?
So, I mean, you can use the craniosacral therapy to actually ebb and flow the bones quite easily,
especially on a young child.
The palate is always impacted, right?
When we are working with babies, especially babies who are stuck in utero, which is almost
all of our babies at this point, right?
There is some sort of in utero constraint happening.
We just sit more, we work more, we're at our computers more, and that leads to less movement
than we had a hundred years ago.
So all of our babies kind of experience in utero constraint at some level.
And so they come out a little bit more stuck.
When you add things like tongue ties and vacuum bursts and all that stuff, it impacts it even
more.
But craniosacral therapy is really using bones as a handle to manipulate the body and have
the flow around all of these be smooth and ebb and flow like flushing your toilet, right?
You're always getting that clean water, clean water.
You use craniosacral therapy in that way.
So, physically, manually, you can widen the palate just with craniosacral therapy and
you can take the bone that's above it, which is the vomer that's up and down, right?
The vomer is often twisted, right?
And that is going to have an impact on the succcellar breathe pattern.
And that's going to have an impact on how wide that palate gets.
And so very simply put, you're manipulating the hyoid, you're manipulating the palate,
you're manipulating the vomer.
And that has an obvious direct relationship with airway specifically.
Yeah, but our partial control system, right, starting with the tongue being on the roof
of the mouth is impacted from head to toe, which we all know tongue, neck, diaphragm,
hips, the pelvic floor, enter thighs, calves, feet, right?
That's our piece.
So, the whole thing has to work in conjunction or else, you know, we fall apart at some level.
So it all starts there.
It all starts day one.
It all starts 10 weeks in utero when that tongue is formed and you get what you get,
right?
And that's what we have and trying to make it as best as we can.
And you mentioned vacuum and I've actually heard you speak to this before, but I want
to talk in a little bit about that.
What kind of impact can that have on a baby?
I mean, the vacuum itself causes forces that pull upward.
So it pulls on the membrane, which is called the tentorium.
The tentorium is like a circus tent that is below the bones and the skull.
So right beneath all these little tectonic plates, right, which are very loose in babies,
there is a circus tent and that's your tentorium.
And when you vacuum a baby out, you're kind of like taking that tentorium and kinking
it.
And, you know, you can compare that to like a sheet, right?
If you, you can have your bed sheet and it gets like a little wrinkled and then it gets
stuck in between and that can be kind of uncomfortable.
Well those bones aren't going to lay flat on each other and ebb and flow as smooth when
there's wrinkles in the sheets.
So it pulls on the tentorium, which also can, you know, like you kick the brain a little
bit and it pulls on everything else that's below.
It really does also directly pull down through and then go to that vomer as well, which pulls
on the palate.
So specifically in babies with vacuum deliveries, we see a lot of pork of the palate itself.
Wow.
So as a mom, I mean, how do you, and I ask this because, you know, I had no idea and
my oldest got stuck and so we had to use vacuum to get her out.
How does, how do you even ask for that?
How do you, you know, if you want cranial sacral done, can you do it in the hospital?
Or is this something that you do with your baby afterwards or?
So cranial psychotherapy is becoming much more widely used.
It is, it is used in hospitals.
It is not used in a lot of hospitals and there's not routine practice, but in California, yeah,
I mean, one of my teachers, that was kind of her job was like implementing cranial
psychotherapy into the hospital, into the, you know, mom and baby ward.
So that basically every baby got treatment and just got like a fresh start, right?
I mean, all babies are born with kinks.
They're, they were stuck or their head was tilted or there's a utero constraint and so
many, so many, so many babies and people have tongue ties.
And so there's always going to be kinks in the system and it would be wonderful if every
single baby was able to get an adjustment, just like chiropractors will say the same
thing, right?
You got to realign that nervous system and they would love for every baby to get a chiropractic
adjustment at birth.
They would love for every baby to get a cranial psychotherapy adjustment at birth.
So some hospitals have it, but most don't and you would have to know that cranial
psychotherapy exists and what are the benefits of cranial psychotherapy to go seek it out.
It's more, it's more recommended when there is a difficulty, difficulty latching, difficulty
with tension in the jaw.
A lot of these babies have these really tight shallow latches that could be from other things
like tongue ties or low tone or the like small airway, right?
Luring Malaysia causing these like sex swallow patterns being off, but it could also just
be that the baby was so stinking stuck in utero that they need their postural control
systems all sideways.
There's a crooked, right?
So we just need to kind of realign them and give them a little bit of a fresh start and
a good go.
And you know, I'm not one to say that tongue ties don't exist or it's like a mild tongue
tie.
No, I think like anyone who has a tight short phrenulum that causes so many compensatory
patterns in the long run that we should be treating that, but there's an occasion where
it could look like this baby is tongue tied.
But in fact, that tension pattern that goes like head to toe is just so tight because
of the way that they sat or the way that they were born or maybe the cord was wrapped
around their neck, which like jacked up the highway bone.
So there are some cases that a baby hits checks all the boxes of having a tongue tie, but
when you do the physical oral examination, you're like, something else is going on here,
right?
And those or those, you know, those check those boxes that you check or the mom comes
to you and she says, Oh, I have intense nipple pain and my baby's mouth that's open and their
tongue is white and they're crying all the time and they're super gassy.
They're like, Oh, my God, this baby's a tongue tie.
This baby's a tongue tie.
Ding, ding, ding.
I know what I'm going to find.
And you go inside and you're like, Oh, wait a minute.
Okay.
And these are all just, you know, myofascial and kind of kinks in the partial control
system that are causing those issues.
But I would say it's more rare for that to happen.
These like quote unquote, pho ties.
Okay.
And you just touched on it there too.
I've heard you explain things like super gassy baby or or collicky.
You know, and again, I go back to my experience, you know, I had, I had a collicky child.
It didn't last real well.
And I was told by my pediatrician again, they didn't know what they didn't know.
So let's just say that.
I thought my pediatrician was amazing, but I was told it was just a latching issue and
I need to learn how to latch and everything was fine.
Well, you know, come to find out later and now she's older and we had to step in and say,
no, we're not doing retractive braces, expand her because we know now what's going on.
So you know, as a mom, when you come in and they're super gassy or they're collicking,
I heard you mentioned that when you see these things look deeper.
A hundred percent.
Like how do you explain that to your pediatrician?
That's, that's the hard part, right?
I mean, again, they don't know what they don't know.
However, they are invited to sit in all of the same symposiums that we go to.
We have lactation consultants, doctors, dentists, ENTs, area professionals, OMTs, RDH, like
everybody.
We all sit in the same dang symposiums and if they, they are invited and they are more
than welcome to come and learn and join and be part of it and most choose not to.
So I think the bigger part is just to get like a simple like broad based knowledge that
hey, when your baby is colicky, that there's usually some gas pain, there's usually some
tension and there's some poor or a function that's causing this.
You don't have to know why I eat.
You don't, you just have to know that you need to refer them out, like refer them to
lactation, refer them to therapy and, and let them, you know, make their professional
opinion, but we are still very, very, very much so fighting that battle of the opposing
opinion.
Oh yeah, go to physical therapy, see what they say and then I come in here and I'm like,
oh, well, this side is tighter and this side is weaker and you know, it does appear that
they have tethered oral tissues and this is why and here's, you can tell that the airway
is compromised and do you hear that sound?
It's called strider and like all these things and they go back to the pediatrician and they'll
just say like, oh, well, your therapist, therapist is full of it.
And so it's definitely an uphill battle, but it's not one that I'm not willing to fight
because the, this research studies are there, right?
At this point, there is so much evidence to back it up that I don't even care.
Like you can say that to my face and I can just say, okay, well, here's 10 studies.
So if you still don't want to believe it, then that's on you, but you know, we're not
at the point anymore where we're just coming out with anecdotal evidence.
Oh, the last five babies that I treated did well.
So this one must do well too.
Now there's research to back up all aspects of it.
I mean, I wish there was a little more research to back up the whole body, right?
Like what I see with toddlers, how these kids who are super tied and super tight in the
mouth to walk like, oh my God, I would die for that stuff to come out and be real aware
of a real double blind study because that would be such an aha moment for our field.
But I don't foresee that happening in the future.
And I, I'm not one to like dive in to do the research studies myself.
So someone would have to help me out with that.
Well, you know, and Dr. Liao has found some of that too.
He was on, I don't know, a month or so ago and that was the first time I had ever seen
it.
And he had some examples where one toe was turned in and, you know, did the work made
and it just released everything and the posture came up, the toes came out.
That's right.
I mean, it's, it's all night and day.
It's night and day.
I just said to a client the other day yesterday, I don't know, the other day, it was this morning
actually, it was this morning.
And they said, you know, okay, so what happens if we choose not to get a frenectomy?
And I said, you know, the body will compensate in whatever way that it possibly can.
So whatever that means for that baby, that, that could be that the child has difficulty
with speech.
That could be the child has difficulty with eating, chewing solid food.
That could be that the, the child comes out with airway difficulties in life or TMJ dysfunction
or migrants or whatever.
Like we don't, we don't know we're going to get, but the body is going to compensate.
And the one, yeah.
The one thing was that the baby was super turned to the side.
And I said, I'll tell you one thing.
Like I know as soon as this baby, if, if they do perform a frenectomy, you're not going
to have to fight to do all these other exercises.
Every single baby that I treat that I get pre-op, which is the, the best thing in the
world.
I always, we need pre-op therapy is that they never, like they just, as soon as they get
that frenectomy at that time, it goes like, and then you're like, Oh, okay, they're straight.
Let's go.
Let's move on now.
Yeah.
You just have to strengthen what they have at that point, you know, they, they, they
don't comb super strong because even when they are, um, when you're working with them
pre-frenectomy, they're not going to be as strong as they're going to be after because
they're still tied down, right?
You're fighting against the compensator patterns that they've already made, especially because
the tongue is, you know, formed at 10 weeks in a year or by 20 weeks, they're, they're
stuck, swell breathing.
So they have these patterns that they thought were correct this whole time.
And now we have to fight them.
But once it's free, that's when you actually see the true weakness.
They don't have the, the, that anchoring to help them stabilize, right?
To help them stabilize a job, help them stabilize a feed.
And now this tongue is just like, Oh, wet noodle.
Somebody help me.
So you really have to start.
You have to work with that.
Start over.
And then why do you want them pre-op?
What's the benefit if you can get ahold of them?
Oh my God, it's, it's literally the best.
So when you start to unwind some of these tension patterns that they have, right?
So that immutable constraint where they are turned to one side and one hip is usually
hiked, that just happens, right?
A baby has to fit inside the belly.
So, you know, if you sit away, head down, but on your left feet kicking you in those
right ribs, then the pattern is typically that they're going to come out a little shrimpy
on the left.
So like left ear to left shoulder, left hip hiked up and then vice versa on the other
side.
So you're going to start working on those patterns.
And then you're going to, which is going to release some of the tension in the floor
of the mouth.
Remember the floor of the mouth is directly connected to the neck.
Like those are the start of the neck muscles there.
So you want to work on them in tandem and you want to start that first because if, when
you get a frenectomy and you're still tight, that side of the floor of the mouth is going
to pull down on that diamond tighter than the other side is.
Whereas if you had already started loosening that tension pattern, that diamond has that
a less of a tendency to pull more on that one side, right?
Stay more in alignment.
Right.
So you're staying more in alignment.
It also starts to differentiate the frenulum from the floor of the mouth because in these
babies, they're just so shoulder to ear, so tight that everything below the tongue just
looks like a sea of pink.
How deep does the dentist or the ENT go?
Well, I don't know.
They're just going to like do their best, use their little silver tool and go for it.
But when you start working on it and you start separating and you do, you know, tongue resting,
hold posture and separating those away and try to start to create these tunnels.
When you create these tunnels and you turn to the side, you're going to see exactly how
deep the fascia is, how thick it is, and then where the, those muscles start.
So you're really separating those out.
And you say like, ah, it's actually way deeper than I thought it was going to be.
And you give that doctor a way better view, vantage and chance of performing a complete
frenectomy.
Sometimes the babies are just so tight and their ears are literally like in, shoulders
are literally like in their baby's mouth at that point that it's hard to get that deep,
you know, deep full release when needed because you, they can't, you know, differentiate just
because the baby, the baby's still so tight.
Right.
Um, and then, you know, in terms of, of wound care as well, you want the baby to be used
to you being in their mouth, right?
You're going to, you know, unwind, you know, work on massage and work on those cranial
nerves and get that cranial nerve to function to be a lot better.
Glassel for a G on hypoglossal that move the tongue and the throat and like, we want
all these things better.
The eyes need to converge a sense of smell, the facial nerve.
Like these things have to all work in tandem.
So when you're working on them prior, then you release it.
Yeah.
That, well, like I just said, the tongue, you see how weak it really is, but at least
they don't have to fight the weakness of the tongue with the pinch of nerves with, you
know, the next tide altogether.
Like let's weed some of this stuff out so that they can kind of focus on just strengthening
the mouth as well.
So so many different things like their sensory system.
You don't want them to get this oral inversion that they could possibly get because you've
never been in their mouth and all of a sudden they have all this pain, right?
They're used to you being in there.
They're used to lateralization.
They know what phasic bite is.
They know that you're not hurting them when you go in there and you're making it fun and
playful.
And so that two seconds at the end, when you do a little stretch, you know, they're, they're
going to be okay with it versus.
I've never been in here before.
Yeah.
I've never been here before.
And so this pain I associate you coming at me, especially upside down with pain, like
no, let's get the baby used to it.
You, you used to doing that stretch as well so that you know what the heck you're doing.
So you're not fumbling through it.
So I mean, so many, so many, so many reasons why pre for anectomy care is necessary.
And the older the baby is, the more patterns that they've developed, the more, the more
things you kind of want to unwind before getting them ready, especially if this child has low
tone, which a lot of children do.
And you know, tone is tone is tone, tone is neurological.
You get what you get in that regard.
And so if the child has this widely open mouth posture with the tongue resting down and we're
not working extra hard to make those lips work, to make the cheeks work, to get that
tongue lifted and you perform a for anectomy, the tongue is still going to be like a floppy
little fish at the, at the floor of the mouth.
And you're not going to see those same drastic results within that week or two after you're
going to be like, Oh, I did nothing.
Oh, this, you know, and that's how we get the whole this business is a scam situation.
It's because no, there are too many layers going on here and they need to have been addressed
first, that baby that has lower muscle tone needs more pre-op work than the baby who was
just tight or the baby that had a head turning preference or, you know, the baby that was
kind of stuck in that fight or flight state, right?
Everybody's got their own thing.
Or you could be the packaged baby and you can have all of it.
You can have a ton.
You could be stuck in fight or flight.
You can be super tight, stuck in utero.
You could have had the cord raptor on your neck and a vacuum delivery and you arrive and
you're like, here, my baby is a hot mess.
Let's cut their tongue open.
Like, no, they're the ones that need tender loving care.
Nice.
A couple of good sessions.
Yeah.
To get them, you know, back to a state of neutral before we come at them with a laser
or a scissor.
Right.
You're listening to Airway First with today's guest, Elizabeth Morel.
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.
The CAF website offers tons of great resources for parents in medical professionals, including
videos, blogs, recommended reading lists, comprehensive medical research, podcasts, and so much more.
Parents are 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.
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Shoot us a note via the contacts page on our website, or send us an email directly at info
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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, Elizabeth Morrell.
Elizabeth Morrell
All right, so chin growth.
You talk a lot about this on Instagram, and I will put a link to everything in the show
note so that moms can check you out.
One of the things you talk about is proper chin growth and to watch for it.
So what exactly are we looking for as moms?
Elizabeth Morrell
I mean, so specifically with either, okay, wolf's law is muscle pulls on bone and grows
bone, right?
Like that.
So they need a force to pull on the bone to physically make it larger and babies who
who either have very low muscle tone or where their tongue is tied down, they don't get
a lot of that the correct muscle stimulation.
And so their jaws are smaller.
And additionally, in utero, the head grows like back to front, like kind of over the
top.
And the tongue is super tied and it's held down in utero.
The head keeps growing and growing and the chin is kind of held back by that by that
tie.
Okay.
And so the chin isn't growing as forward as fast because it's it's being held down.
Yeah.
And so babies do typically come out with these small or very recessed, even if they're
the right size, but they're just held back from the tie.
So they're very recessed jaws.
And so we want to start, you know, right from day one, again, muscle pulls on bone and grows
bone.
So you want to stimulate those muscles.
Easiest way to do it is through phasic bite, which is when you put your finger on their
back molar, there is a biting reflex that happens where they chew.
And so what, what's better than chewing?
Nothing is better than chewing.
It is the same from day one of birth to getting an OMTE val at, you know, seven years old,
they're going to check how strong the jaws are and, and how, you know, how well the child
chews and holds and whatever.
So when you chew, you physically grow the masseter, the medial lateral pteragoid, you're
going to, you're going to grow all these stabilizing structures of the TMJ and those muscles pull
on bone and grow bone and the bigger the jaw and the more forward the jaw, the bigger
the airway.
And these, these are the things that start day one and continue lifelong and that get
overlooked a lot, right?
And especially in orthodontics, like, Oh yeah, we'll just pull that jaw forward.
Okay.
Well, I mean, it was there for a reason.
It was probably also stabilizing their airway.
So let's make sure that we have all the pieces together, but it is those tiny recessed jaws
are directly impacting the size and the space of the airway.
So it's one of the biggest things and easiest things to treat to like stick your finger
in there.
That's it.
It's so easy.
If you, if you don't do it now and your child has a, is a picky eater or has feeding difficulty
at two years old, there's a first thing that the, the therapist is going to do is go back
there and say, Oh, we got to start chewing.
Like let's get those teethers in there.
Let's get straws or let's get, you know, food back there.
And so it's either you're going to do it now and you're going to start for forever or you're,
you're going to wait.
But you're going to still have to fix it regardless.
Exactly.
And when you talk about going into the palette, one of the things I've heard you say is you
check them when they're sleeping.
So I just always check where the tongue is resting on their palate when they're sleeping.
So ideally lips, clothes, you know, jaws are slightly apart and the tongue is resting on
their palate.
And first you got to look out what's happening.
The baby falls asleep or the child falls asleep.
What are they doing?
You know, is their mouth open?
Is their mouth closed?
Is their head pulled back?
Right?
Are they, are they searching for an airway?
Are they snoring?
Yeah.
Is it turned all the way to one side?
Do they look like the exorcist?
I mean, that's very, very common.
Their head is like sideways all the way back.
Their body is in a shrimp but reverse, right?
Their belly button's like touching the sky.
That's just a baby who's trying to breathe, right?
Trying to get oxygen to the brain.
And so you want to look at the positioning and the head positioning just as much as you
want to look at where the tongue is.
But ideally if their mouth is closed, you still have to kind of go in there and lower
that chin a little bit and see where the tongue is in the mouth.
And where the tongue is in the mouth matters just as much as whether it was up or down,
meaning the tongue might be sort of up, like quote unquote up, but the tip of the tongue
might be sitting in the middle of the palate directly straight up like vertical, right?
Or you might pull that chin down and you notice that just the tip of the tongue is touching
the roof of the mouth.
But in order to fully open our airway, we need the entire tongue from tip to back to
be resting on the palate, resting on the roof of the mouth, tip to back.
That whole thing, that's what gives us max oxygen to the brain, which means deep restful
sleep, which means everything.
Right, healthier all around.
Healthier every, like every single system is affected by getting the most amount of
oxygen to the brain and the deepest restful sleep that we can do.
And that's the whole, that is literally the whole point, right?
Because you can start from now from day one of life fixing it.
We can't fix anything in your door.
We can start from day one of life getting that tongue to the roof of the mouth, which
is going to shape the palate for the next three to five years of life.
And that's going to affect, you know, how much that brain grows.
Brain growth is what, 75% from zero to three years old and 95% by zero to five years old.
So you're directly impacting it.
Like if you work on this, you will directly make the brain grow.
If you don't work on it, not that, you know, that's said to make people feel bad, but you
don't know what you don't know as well.
But if you know that, Hey, this impacts brain growth, then yeah, let's go for it.
We need the best sleep that we can, you know, for example, my children were two and a half
and four and a half when I got them their first airway done to eval, you know, and they
took them to Lenny Cundell in Stanford and he, you know, does treat super young and
he's like, okay, so you've already done the tongue tie release.
Like you've been working on them since, since they're born.
Why do you think that they need an ounce, you know, your son's two and a half years
old.
And I was like, because the brain grows 75% of the way by zero to three and 95% by zero
to five.
So I got to give them, you know, the best chance I can.
And he was like, okay, good point.
Let's, let's go.
You know, let's look.
Yeah.
And they did, I mean, both of my children, there is definitely a limitation to how much
you can physically manipulate the, the growth of the palate, right?
My son has super low muscle tone, clinically diagnosed.
So even though his tongue would be up, it wasn't creating like a suction seal that was
really widening his palate enough.
And I knew that and he had the smallest little mouth and the smallest little chin and he's
had that since that 20 weeks scan.
Right.
I look up at the screen and I was like, Oh God, like, this is a small chin.
Yeah.
I was like, Oh, we're in trouble.
I didn't know that it was going to have super low tone, but, uh, you know, we had to mechanically
widen that palate.
And the great thing about alphas of palate expander is that, you know, it does work
hand in hand with craniolecyclerotherapy because it allows the bones to move.
And that's the biggest thing.
You know, a lot of palate expanders kind of grab too hard.
And so they kind of stop that ebb and flow and we want that constant ebb and flow and
that movement.
And so, um, I was like, yeah, let's, let's go.
We got to artificially do it.
I want him to sleep better.
And yeah, he got his mouth closed.
He got his tongue to the roof of his mouth a lot easier than my daughter did.
Um, her, she was four and a half and she was my rolly-poly kicking, screaming in the night,
night terror kind of kid where she would sleep many hours, but it was a, the extreme
only restless sleeper.
Um, and at her age, once she got her palate expander at four and a half, within the first
week, she was a different child.
She was actually like still, literally within the first week, she was a different child.
It was pretty crazy.
Again, you still have to go back and work on the oral motor skills, right?
They still have my own and they still need to do it and they still need to do the rubber
bands and all that stuff.
And it's a constant, constant work, but the mechanical expansion for them was a million
percent the way to go to really get oxygen.
Like that's all I think is deep, breast, will say deep, breast, will say deep, breast,
will say like, I don't want the anxiety.
I don't want the depression.
I don't want the ADHD, like symptoms, negative dysfunction.
Um, and you can't win them all either.
Like we're still working on a lot of those things, even though their airway are basically
as good as we can, which is also a reminder that our environment and epigenetics, our
environment extremely impacts those other parts of it, right?
It's not just about airway.
It is about the foods you eat and your genes and, um, you know, like going to like, you
know, Ben Lynch's dirty jeans book, like all that kind of stuff, right?
That all very much impacts that your gut health, all of these things impact those other
behavior, those ADHD, like behaviors or, you know, executive functioning, all those things
that goes hand in hand.
It's not just about airway.
Um, and, you know, for better or for worse, they're my teachers too.
Cause every year that goes by, I learned something new about how epigenetics has influenced them,
how I have influenced them.
I just learned today, I just got my own test result back today and found out that I have
something that I have, you know, probably, um, passed on to my kids and I was like, oh
Jesus, like you just can't win.
Honestly, you just can't.
But the more you know, um, knowledge is power and it's great because we can treat it and
we can kind of move forward.
But, uh, yes, I'm here to be the airway advocate and the tongue tie advocate and let's get
the tongue to the roof of the mouth.
Let's get this special control system moving and all that kind of stuff.
But there is definitely a time and a place for, to work on those environmental factors
as well.
Cause it's again, all that's connected.
It's all connected.
Right.
And one of the things you said that I just want to make sure that people heard, um, when
you went to Stanford and you met with the airway subject in test, you actually had to,
or at least you said, this is why I want it.
And you advocated for your kids and we're always saying, Hey moms, trust your gut, advocate.
Yeah.
I mean, he was kind of like, what are the things that have you done so far?
Like, okay, you've kind of done them all.
And I was like, yeah, but here's where's the butt?
Like, oh, he still has chapped lips.
You know, he still has bags under his eyes, which is Venus pooling.
That's likely airway related.
Um, ye, there's still the low tone there that we can't just undo, right?
Strength is different than tone.
And she's an extremely restless sleeper.
He has a massive night terrors.
Um, she is perpetually stuck in that fighter flight state.
So that's why I want this.
And you know, of course I had to advocate for myself.
He didn't, he didn't fight me over it at all.
You know, my story begins with being a pediatric physical therapist working with babies and
having to advocate for myself for my daughter's tongue time.
I mean, nobody believed me.
And I was only in 2015, but nobody believed me there.
Like, oh, it's just, she's just gassy and she's just bloated and maybe you have a dairy intolerance
and this and that.
I'm like, I know what anatomy is and this is not anatomy and my nipple shouldn't be
bleeding, you know, I'm on things wrong.
And I think she has a tie.
I have to have four lactation consultants, two specialists.
I had everyone, right?
So I even working in this field and I was just a baby physical therapist at that time,
just a baby physical therapist at time.
I really had to push extremely hard for that diagnosis.
I had to push extremely hard, you know, not as hard to, you know, get their politics
benders, but I, I've definitely had to push extremely hard to get their genes tested and
to get their blood test results and to find out what's the other missing piece in this
other factor, the environmental factors.
I literally, I just went through this last year.
I had, you know, four or five doctors, basically, Pukumi that like, I'm a crazy person.
Nope, not crazy in the end.
I found the right one and I know exactly what's going on, but really, really, really
have to advocate for ourselves, but also be willing to like be a little uncomfortable
and learn about things that you don't want to learn about, you know, learn about, learn
about Lyme and co-infections and how, how your genes can be affected and things you
can pass on or mold in school or moldy houses.
Like those are uncomfortable subjects that are all like addressed in, you know, say that
those dirty genes books, right?
Those are the kinds of books that you would want to look at.
And we definitely don't, you know, there's this tie to the MTHFR that's like, this is
like the all mysterious thing, right?
Because we haven't proven it, right?
It hasn't come out as our double one research study, though I've heard there is possibility
that it has in Germany and it's kind of being blacklisted about, I don't think like, I really
don't know that like, you know, is MTHFR the cause of these midline disorders and is this
the cause of these children not being able to detox well and is this the cause that these
kids are also the kids who have difficulty with vaccines and all that?
Like, oh, if that research comes out, that's going to really change people's perspectives
on, on looking more into those environmental factors because they are going to go hand
in hand.
But again, until we really have that definitive research, it's all just speculation and you
can't just live your life on speculation.
I mean, me, I'm a crazy person.
I definitely live my life on speculation and definitely read piece by piece, but I don't
expect a regular mom to start reading random books and being like, oh, it's possible that
my child was affected by the pesticides of blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, like, that's
that's all it's all kind of crazy talk.
So I can't wait for all of those genetic mutations to kind of come to light of which
are the exact ones that have caused these issues and what else do they cause when they
do because that's really going to be a dramatic realization and page turner for, for all of
us, right?
For the providers and the parents to say, okay.
And now what do I do?
Yeah.
And now, and also, you know, if that is your first child and you're learning about it,
well, is there something that it can do also to prevent this from happening or to try to
prevent this from happening?
And your second or third.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
On your website and I will put a link to that in the show notes.
You have a course called baby's bellies and bubbles, which is super cute.
Fun to say anyway.
And if I understand it's an online at home course, it's for optimizing infant physical
development and feeding.
That's right.
Kind of a mouthful to say.
So how does this help moms, but especially around feeding?
So basically, these are the most simple exercises that I've kind of put together throughout my
career as a baby physical therapist since 2008 that do all kind of go that head to toe,
telling neck diaphragm, hips to pelvic floor, and your thighs, calf's feet, right?
We're going to address all of those things in a way that is really easy to digest, regular
movements that every parent should learn and be doing with every baby.
So there's not necessarily a reason not to be doing these with your child, right?
Because it's about unwinding, unpinching those cranial nerves, like every baby's cranial
nerves are pinched.
And those are the nerves that control your eyes, which need to converge to drink in the
sense of smell that you need to smell it and then the movement of the tongue and the affect
of the face and the swallowing, like all these babies need to eat, right?
And all these babies' nerves are pinched in uterus, so let's work them out.
How what is tummy time?
What's tummy time really supposed to look like, right?
And are we supposed to just leave them there to cry, no pain, no gain?
I mean, that's 100% the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish here.
Your vagus nerve, which is in your palate, your diaphragm and your gut.
It's like hitting lucky sevens when you're on your tummy and that nerve is the nerve
that controls your person, but then it's nervous and that takes you out of fight or flight.
So if we're putting our babies in tummy time and they're freaking out, you're kind of doing
the opposite of what it's supposed to do, yeah, which is strengthen them, strengthen
their vagus nerve.
And realistically, the nervous system becomes before any of these things.
So the calmer the nervous system is, the more put together the nervous system is, the more
that their brain can then make those connections to do those regular gross motor, fine motor
things, oral motor things, right?
Which makes sense.
It's all about like you need to control the nervous system first.
So at any point, your baby's freaking out during any of these exercises, you know, pick
them up, walk them around, calm them down, abort the mission, come back later or change
it up.
There's no reason for your baby to be upset in any of them.
But you know, we don't, I live in Northern New Jersey, which is like the Mecca right
by New York City of we have such a dense population of providers.
You can like spit and hit an OMT or an airway dentist.
And I understand that people don't have that, you know, if you live in Oklahoma, there's
probably one person, it's a chiropractor and you know, you get what you get, right?
Yeah, they're great for body work and renalyne the nervous system and they might be allowed
to work in their mouth.
Some chiropractor, but you're still missing a piece.
I can't.
Right.
So this is like the gross motor and the nervous system piece that every parent can do at home.
That will benefit every baby.
And guess what?
You just learn about oral motor skills and airway health and what should I look at in
my kid's future that you never knew.
So when you take this course, even though you're like, Oh, I think I'm going to learn
how to do tummy time.
You leave going, Oh shoot, this baby's time should be on the roof of their mouth to get
deep breathable sleep.
Like how was I supposed to know that?
You just leave knowing all these other things.
So that was kind of the point of that course and I made it accessible.
I used to teach it in person and then I made it accessible online when the pandemic hit
when everybody was, you know, nobody was going out.
So it kind of just stuck and I've made advancements on that.
Like the, there's a crabby baby's course, which is that next step, right?
Your child might still have a tight hit from that same in utero constraint pattern that
just hasn't been addressed yet.
And that, so A, let's go back to what are the oral motor skills look like?
What does the floor of the mouth look like?
And B, how can we, how can we address this?
Because remember it's like tongue to toes.
It's all connected.
So we got to do them, you know, simultaneously and a crab crawl is when they crawl with one
knee down and one foot up and usually that's usually the foot is the foot of the side that
had been tighter or, you know, in utero and early on.
And so, you know, we, we want to be crawling symmetrically and you want those knees underneath
them and you want this strong core.
And so the, you know, there's the advancement of that.
And then, you know, I have a breathing course and where you just learn about all these things.
What's learned from Malaysia?
What is Strider?
You know, what is the tongue of the palate?
How do food allergies affect your baby?
Like all the things together.
So at this point of kind of just have a whole bunch of course.
So a reflex.
So a reflex little intro to reflexes course two of how to like, how does the moral reflex
affect feeding?
How does the moral reflex affect your six year old who is highly distracted in class who
looks like they have ADHD, but they're just getting distracted because a moral reflex
keeps getting turned on by the child next to them tapping on their desk or the fluorescent
lights flashing in front of their eyes or, you know, getting upset when their neighbor
bumps into them by accident and sees it as a threat.
Like these are things that you can look into the future and kind of say, you know, oh,
my kid still has this.
So let's not get to that point.
So yeah, a lot of a lot of different home exercises to really just get parents thinking
simple things to do and kind of teach them about what the future might look like.
And so let's, you know, let's try to get ahead of the game, I guess.
Preemptive.
Let's try to fix it.
I love that.
So at the end of every podcast, I always turn it back over to the guests because you all
are the experts and it's completely up to you at this point.
Anything you want to share with moms or medical providers or, you know, anything you want to
emphasize a little bit more that we didn't cover.
You know, I think we covered a lot and I talk all over the place.
No, I know.
That's my fault.
You know, I guess I'll just reemphasize the fact that this all starts, you know, in utero
and you can work on it from day one.
The tongue resting on the palate opening up the airway is the end result.
Like this is the Holy Grail that we're all trying to achieve us as parents.
I'll try to speak for all of us as humans is that we are all battling that whole sleep
apnea epidemic, right?
Even if you don't feel like you need it, deep restful sleep is like haunting all of us,
essentially, right?
I don't snore.
I sleep with my mouth closed.
I sleep with my teeth apart, my mouth closed and my tongue on the roof of my mouth.
Well, I just got my own sleep study done and read by Dr. Zaggy in California and I have
my sleep apnea, I stop breathing six times every hour, right?
And you had no idea.
And I'm not the person who looks like I had an idea because I, like I said, I'm an insane
person and I study airway for a living because I wake up and I'm like, I'm too tired.
I have, you know, my palate isn't wide enough, my this, my that, my husband is ready to shoot
me, you know, if I talk about airway one more moment in my life.
But, you know, which is how I ended up meeting all these airway people, right?
Online and how I ended up connecting with Dr. Elmore about getting a soma.
And that's my palate expander, right?
And the cool thing about the soma is it's very similar to the alpha and the fact that
it allows the cranial bones to ebb and flow.
And Dr. DeCruz, the creator of the soma talks really a lot about how occlusion, how your
teeth biting together is the, is the starting point of kind of what triggers your nervous
system to go into that sympathetic fight or flight.
So basically the way he describes it is if your teeth don't occlude exactly correctly,
if your teeth don't bite down in alignment, then your muscles are going to be thrown off
and that's going to pull on your nervous system and you go into this sympathetic state.
So occlusion is kind of the key, I don't know, the key to that fight or flight kind of state.
So the soma fixes the bite, expands the palate, but very slowly.
It's like one turn every three to six months.
So very slow.
Very slowly.
Yeah.
It also relaxes the TMJ almost immediately by getting the bite even on both back teeth
and then no bite along the front.
So it relaxes all those muscles kind of in that correct way versus more of those night
splints where they sometimes they will bite down just in the front and that will kind
of turn off some muscles, but then you don't occlude and you're not really supposed to
be biting down on the front, you're supposed to be biting down on the back.
So anyway, it is a jaw tension relaxation and sympathetic nervous system to parasympathetic
nervous system and expansion at the same time.
So that has led me down this path, which I think is kind of the coolest thing.
So a really good book to read about that is called the dental distress syndrome.
Dental distress syndrome, maybe?
Dental distress something.
Dr. Aho would kill me if she was like, stop butchering these things.
Anyway, I'm so infinitely, you know, I have so much gratitude for her for teaching me
this part of that because I knew I wanted to palate expand her and that I love the
elf for my kids because it allowed the craniosacral system and the cerebral spinal fluid to ebb
and flow.
And she's like, girl, I got the solution.
So here we are.
So I just started on my own airway journey.
When did I do that?
January.
So like, I've probably been in it for just coming up this weekend will be one, no, tomorrow.
No, today, the 13th.
That's right.
That's one month.
That's a one month today that I've been in it and already my jaw, which my gait was very,
very small.
I forget what I had 36 maybe, you know, within the office when they start doing the adjustments
on the soma, I already had gotten to like a 56 or 57, just like literally putting into
my mouth and getting that.
Wow.
Correct.
Yeah.
And now I couldn't protrude at all.
My jaw was so tight and so stuck, especially on the left side.
And now I can get my bottom teeth, like literally in front of my top teeth when I, when I try,
when I try hard.
So it's amazing.
It's been one month and I'm already seeing all these changes and I'm so, so grateful.
So, you know, the journey is in, in reach for everyone, everyone, no matter who you
are, like, um, if that's what you put your time and energy into, right?
And my kids are six and eight this month.
So it wasn't like I learned they had tongue ties and all this stuff and then jumped in
the next day.
No, I, you know, I had them.
I raised them for a while and then said, okay, what about me?
So here we are.
So I guess, so that's, I guess my, you know, my kind of ending point is that it's okay
to put your time and energy into your kids, but the genes run strong.
So you probably are at least 50% of the reason that, you know, that you're listening to yourself
is exactly 1000% and, and there's, you know, there's progress to be made.
So thank you so much for being on and for sharing.
I mean, we did, we covered a lot and it was great information and just thank you for being
here today.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks again to today's guest, Elizabeth Morel for sharing her medical insight into each
of you for listening to today's episode.
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