Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Airway First, the podcast from the Children's
Airway First Foundation.
I'm your host, Rebecca Downing.
My guest today is Carice Laguerre, a registered dental hygienist and myofunctional therapist.
Carice is the founder of the MyoSpot, a practice aimed at amplifying oral wellness to whole
body wellness.
Through teletherapy, she helps clients of all ages overcome tongue ties, TMJ disorders,
sleep apnea, grinding, anxiety, and a variety of other breathing and oral facial dysfunctions.
She's passionate about education and self-help, and she's also the published author of Accomplished,
How to Sleep Better, Eliminate Burnout, and Execute Goals.
When not working with clients globally, she spends time with her husband and her four
children.
It was truly a pleasure and an honor to get to spend time with Carice earlier this month.
I hope you'll find this session as informative and enjoyable as I did.
And now, here's my interview with Carice Laguerre.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Carice.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
I'm very excited to be here.
We're thrilled that you're here.
Thank you.
Before we get started, what exactly is a myofunctional therapist?
And tell everybody a little bit about what it is and what you focus on.
So myofunctional therapy is kind of like, I like to liken it to personal training, but
it's personal training only for the muscles below the eyes and above the shoulders.
So we're really in like a hyper-focused area, and it's an area that's often neglected.
So why would we even care about those muscles there and why is myofunctional therapy important?
It's really all about function.
So everything starts here, right?
So when we're working with myofunctional therapy, we're thinking about health and wellness.
A lot of what's happening between our breathing and our eating and so forth is all in this
section.
So when we're thinking about myofunctional therapy, it's really optimizing the way your
body is doing some of these essential tasks, breathing, chewing, swallowing, and so forth.
So it's kind of personal training.
Okay, that makes sense.
All right.
And as far as the personal training, so when would you see, well, I guess let me rephrase
that, do you work mainly with children?
Do you work with adults?
Is myofunctional therapy something that's for everyone?
Myofunctional therapy can be for everyone.
I will say that it is kind of like personal training where there's a lot of personal accountability
and responsibility involved, right?
So we like to say that age five and up is a good time for myofunctional therapy because
you have to be able to cooperate, to do the task and to perform all the exercises adequately,
right?
And so those under five, not quite ready yet.
And they get it from some of the stuff probably, but will they progress through it?
Most likely not.
Okay.
So that, I guess that kind of answers one of the questions that I was going to discuss
with you, which is about tongue ties, because on your website, Airway Matters, which I will
put a link to that in our show notes, you talk a great deal about tongue ties.
So I guess it's kind of a two-part question as far as that goes.
Really help us understand what tongue ties are.
And if you wouldn't mind expanding a little bit on that, because I didn't realize until
recently there was something called a cheek tie.
I had no idea.
And if you're working with a younger child, you know, is this something that, if it were
to happen to an infant, could impact something like breastfeeding?
Absolutely.
So when we're talking about ties, and especially in the oral cavity, so in the mouth, we're
looking at the tongue as one.
If you're looking at your tongue, there is a natural soft tissue connection that everybody
has.
It connects the base of the tongue to the floor of the mouth.
Now some people have one that is short or very restrictive, so they can't get a lot
of movement from it.
It's very tight, or it's just very short in length.
And so they can't get optimal function from their tongue.
And our tongue has a lot of different functions that it has to perform.
So our tongue can elevate, it can protrude, it can lateralize, it can cut, it can retract.
It does all these different things, but if you've got a short connection or a tight connection,
that's a phrenum that is going to be impeding you from making a lot of those movements or
from doing so optimally, that's when we would consider you tongue tied.
And very good.
Function over appearance.
So just because something looks like a tie doesn't necessarily means it is one, and that's
a whole another podcast for another day.
Okay.
So when we're looking at our cheeks, because you just discovered cheek ties, and there's
also lip ties, top and bottom, there are little phrenums.
And if you've ever like done a scary face or you've ever flipped your lip up at somebody
for whatever reason, why wouldn't you do something like that?
You probably see that connection.
It goes from the lip to the ridge where the gum line of the teeth.
And it goes from the cheeks on the inside, if you ever take your tongue and you rub around.
So sometimes those are also tight and restrictive, and those can impede a lot of different actions.
So it's going to impair for children when we're talking about babies specifically actually,
when we're talking about the tongue tied, the tongue has to be able to come over the
gum ridge, that lower gum ridge in order to get and compress against the nipple appropriately
to get a great pumping action for breastfeeding because it's got to win a lot of that tissue
and they've got to extract that milk.
It's that liquid gold, right?
Right.
You can't get it if they are unable to move that tongue forward to that spot or unable
to compress or lift up adequately against the breast tissue.
So sometimes you'll find that it's painful because they're using just that ridge as they're
trying to compress that tissue against the breast and a lot of mothers are suffering
with that.
Sometimes they can't get an open enough gait of the mouth and so that's a flange when they're
breastfeeding.
They can't get that opening of the mouth because it's tight on the lips.
Their lips just can't expand to go up and over to really grab a lot of that nipple tissue
or our sucking pads on babies are very prominent and important because that's what they do.
That's how they gain nutrition when they're little.
They have to suck.
Either it's a breast or a bottle, but they're sucking in that motion to gather the liquid.
So those sucking pads, you might not be able to suck as adequately your buckle ties or
those cheek ties, name key that.
So that's our babies.
But then as you get older, let's say we don't catch it when you're a baby, you get a little
older and your child, all of these can impact speech, feeding, breathing, sleeping in numerous
ways and it just compounds as you get older and older.
So get through childhood into adulthood.
It's really going to be our high risk people for acid reflux, different digestive diseases.
A lot of them with obstructive sleep apnea or just several sleep breathing disorders
that we could go on and on about the different manifestations.
They manifest so differently in everybody, but it is very important to be aware of.
So it actually impacts acid reflux?
Yes.
And I will say, I can't give you a study that's going to prove that, but absolutely every
patient I have seen clinically that has acid reflux is also tongue tied.
Wow.
I need to write a paper one day on it.
We do need to write a paper on that.
That's fascinating to me.
So as a parent then, so not as a baby, let's just talk about the little, so 5, 6, 7, 8.
How would I, I guess not really how would I know, but what would be some of the signs
I would see?
I know, Lispine is potentially one.
What are some things that as a parent, if you see it over and over, might be something
that gives you pause.
Say, hey, let me ask about this.
So what I would say with children, a lot of times that we don't even look for is what's
their normal rest posture.
A lot of times they might have an open mouth, rest posture.
Sometimes their upper lip, they call it a cupid's bow.
So if you imagine the lower lip as a straight, like if you had a bow and arrow, right?
So you imagine the lower lip as the straight of that bow and arrow, and then the upper
lip is kind of pulled up a little.
It's like the bow part.
And then essentially what you're looking at there is potentially a tie on the upper lip
because that's going to be impeding them from being able to keep a good lip seal.
So you might be concerned.
A lot of times where there is a lip tie, there's also a tongue tie.
And so that would be my first indicator if I'm just looking to say, hey, let me get
this checked out by somebody.
Sleeping with open mouth, having the tongue low in the mouth.
A lot of times if you don't really see the child elevating the tongue for any reason,
any reason whatsoever, you just don't see them elevating it.
You've asked them to do something particular.
Like if they have something on their teeth and you're just just lick it off and they
have difficulty doing that, that I would say is a big red flag.
Okay.
So I'm going to get that checked out.
Okay.
Would they have trouble swallowing or eating or anything like that?
You're not going to notice the swallow.
I think that's a very refined thing that we professionals have really gotten that down.
Right?
Yeah.
I don't think a common character is going to notice the swallow.
Yes.
Okay.
You might notice some messy eating.
You might notice that they can't quite keep food in the mouth.
That sometimes comes out.
So it's messy eating.
Eating with the mouth open.
Okay.
Got it.
So if a tongue tie is discovered, I know that it can be released at birth if I'm not mistaken.
So if it was, what's the process?
If it's not discovered at birth, let's say it's five, six, seven again, or even later,
what is that process like?
So it's kind of similar to anything else in life.
When you are at your youngest, you are able to recover and heal the fastest and the best
you will ever in your life.
Every day you get older, it makes it a day more difficult for you to recover.
Right?
Right.
So your infants are going to heal a lot faster than your five and six year olds and your
five and six year olds are going to heal a lot faster than a 15 year old who would
heal faster than a 40 year old.
But the process is somewhat similar.
It's just the healing time and the recovery that becomes more difficult as you age.
One, we have the functional aspect of it.
So when you're young, you can functionally retrain, you'll learn how to breastfeed.
You'll get your IV CLC or your lactation consultant involved and you'll be able to gain that
sucking mechanism and learn how to do that rather quickly.
But after you've been five and you've been eating and sleeping and chewing and using
your tongue a certain kind of way, these are your patterns.
And so after your release, it becomes a little bit more difficult to repatter a lot of those
things.
Okay.
And so forth because it compounds as you age.
Right.
So the procedure can really entail a myriad of things, but let's talk about it from just
a dental perspective.
There's a lot of dentists that do releases are going to do them with a laser.
Okay.
An in-office kind of thing.
An in-office surgical procedure.
It is a minor surgery, but still a surgery.
And so we want to make sure that everybody goes in prepared.
So initially the first things that you have to do prior to even getting to that surgical
position would be to do myofunctional therapy because we're going to work and exercise all
of those muscles of the tongue to make sure that everything is opening and able to get
optimal functional healing afterwards.
Okay.
Kind of imagine it like any other part of your body, right?
So if your arm was tethered to your side and somebody said, Hey, that's not supposed to
be like that.
And they released it.
Your triceps and biceps, they wouldn't be strong enough to allow you to raise your hand,
throw a ball or do anything that you need to our tongue.
Everybody considers it one muscle, but that's a common misconception.
It's comprised of eight different muscles that actually are in pairs.
So there's 16 different muscles that are innovating.
I'm going to do all those motions I referenced earlier.
Myofunctional therapy is the first part just to kind of get those muscles.
And that way you're able to utilize them after your release.
Okay.
Once you're in the procedure, it's relatively simple.
They use a local anesthetic.
So you would be numb, not put to sleep, but like just numb in that one local area.
And then they're going to surgically use the laser to remove some of that frenulum or
tight restrictive tissue.
And then from there, you're just keeping that wound open and clean and you're managing
it as a, you know, active person looking to keep that wound from closing in on itself.
Because that's what all wounds want to do.
We get to part tissue, everything's looking to kind of heal back together, but we don't
want everything to close down.
Right.
Because you'd be right back where you were.
Exactly.
So when we're looking at it, we're looking at myo laser release.
If you're going with a dental provider and then myo again for function.
Okay.
And you caveated that with, if you're going with a dental provider.
So I always assume that's who would do it.
Who else would do this?
ENTs.
There are ENTs, your nose throat doctors or otolaryngologists that would be able to do
the procedure.
Now there are some of them, yes, that do do lasers.
And there are others that would do the procedure when they're going to do something else because
then it's more likely than not going to involve some level of local anesthesia, general anesthesia,
I'm sorry, you'll be put under to go to sleep for it.
And then it's a lot of times a scowl and not necessarily a laser.
So a scissor or a scowl technique for removal.
So when we're talking specifically about mouth breathing or sleep disorder breathing, again,
I mean, it's not quite as well known as it should be.
I personally don't believe with parents.
I mean, that's part of what children's airway first is focused on.
But I still think even the parents that are becoming a little more aware about mouth breathing
is bad.
We want to be nasal breathers.
Really aren't still totally in tune with snoring or the fact that little kids can have
sleep disorder breathing or some kind of obstructive airway.
So I want to talk a little bit about that as far as how you would identify this with
a parent and what kind of tips or guidance and therapies could a myofunctional therapist
provide to help with all of that.
Fantastic question.
Okay.
So when it comes to just dispelling the myth that snoring is normal and or Q, it going
back to the root of just physiology.
When we're thinking about our bodies, I always have to explain that we can go for a few days
without water.
We can survive weeks without food, but we cannot live but for a few minutes without air.
Air is our primary, right?
So when thinking about snoring, we have to think back to what is that sound coming from.
And it's the sound of air meeting resistance as it's going through your upper respiratory
tract.
Now, do we want air to meet resistance as it's coming into our bodies when it's our primary?
Absolutely not.
Right.
There's no reason why anybody would want that resistance.
So now it's a little less cute.
It's a little less adorable that little Jane or little John is snoring like dad.
It's not as cute because now you say, oh my gosh, they're struggling to breathe.
That's air not being able to reach their bodies the way that it needs to.
Correct.
So that's my big, you know, aha moment with a lot of parents when it comes to dispelling
that.
That's a very important thing to always discuss.
Yes, agreed.
So how do you start working towards not achieving that snoring?
Well, we're going to have to do certain things like one, first we need to make sure that
there's no physiological blocks in there.
And that's always, I always send to ENT first.
So myopunctional therapy for a lot of families is not the first step.
First step is an ENT.
We want to know that there's nothing in the nose, enlarged turbinates, deviated septum,
enlarged adenoids, anything that could be obstructing or preventing nasal breathing.
That resistance that they are is meeting might be something that physiologically needs to
be addressed, medically needs to be addressed.
There might need to be a procedure where the adenoids are removed, the tonsils reduced,
you know, whatever is going on with that child.
So that's the first step.
But after that, then we're looking at, or once there's clearance for that, there's nothing
that can be found by the ENT.
Then we start working on nasal hygiene.
Well, how do we keep a nice, clean, open nasal passageway?
Because our nose is for breathing, our mouth is for eating.
So if our nose isn't working the way that it should, and physiologically there's nothing
preventing that from happening, well, then maybe we need to start working on keeping
it clear.
So using a nasal rinse, a nasal saline rinse is typically a really great tool.
You want to make sure that if you can diffuse some sort of aromatherapy, or if you're using
something like VIXX is always a really great option.
If people use VIXX in their rooms and in the households to kind of keep that airway nice
and open.
That way they're able to use their nose the way that we want them to.
Then myofunctional therapy comes in because it's like personal training.
So what we're going to do is we're going to get all of those muscles nice and tight.
We're going to get those soft tissues that are in the throat.
We're going to start working on them.
We're working on the soft palate, which is the back of the roof of the mouth where we
have our uvula that hangs down.
A lot of people, sometimes they open their mouths, they can't even see their uvula.
And that in and of itself is a problem.
They call that like a long droopy soft palate, but we don't want anything droopy.
So we get in there and we try to get our, you know, what would be six pack abs, but
for the mouth.
Six pack comes.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I guess it would be an eight pack, right?
Because they're in sets of two.
Exactly.
So then that's going to help to keep everything nice and open.
That way they're able to respirate appropriately so that we can at least, if nothing else,
reduce the snoring.
Sometimes we get elimination, but in many cases it's a great reduction of snoring.
Okay.
So, and that's spawned two different questions.
So when you were talking about saline, are you talking about something like the neti
pot, that kind of thing or?
Yes.
Now, neti pot always comes up.
I was going to say, I wish they could see your face right now.
I guess the look.
Oh no, I said it.
What was that?
That's my favorite.
I love the neti pot, but when we're thinking about the neti pot, it is literally taking
it up one nostril and allowing it to run out and drain down another.
Now it cleans out spectacularly.
I love it.
But like convincing a parent to convince their five, six, seven, eight.
It's never going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
So I usually say like a clear X L E A R. It's spelled with an X, but it's still pronounced
clear.
Nasal spray is a really good one to use.
So the clear spray, you would use like a, it has a mist.
So it's a two finger spray and you just spray it up the nostril and then you spray it up
the other nostril and blow the nose and you're golden.
Wow.
Okay.
Less invasive than our neti pot.
But if you, if you've got a superstar five year old that will use a neti pot, please use
the neti pot.
If you've got a superstar five year old that will use a neti pot, I would like to mate
said five year old.
I don't think I could have, I couldn't have brought that in the room with my children.
It just, that would have been it would have been over.
So I hope put a link to the clear nasal spray in here as well, just so people have it.
You're listening to airway first with today's guest, Karise Laguerre.
You can find out more about the children's airway first foundation and our mission to
ensure that every child has access to screening, evaluation and treatment of all children's
airway disorders before the age of six on our website at children'sairwayfirst.org.
You can also find a ton of great resources for parents on our website, including videos,
blogs, recommended reading, comprehensive medical research and more.
And 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 the second half of our interview with Karise Laguerre.
The other question was you mentioned in the back of the throat and I apologize, I can't
remember exactly the term you used, but it was the term is what caught my attention where
you can't see the back.
You heal up?
Yeah.
But the term for that, did you say it was lax or?
Oh, long droopy.
Droopy, okay, that's what threw me off.
So the tongue in the back to be called droopy, that kind of threw me off a little bit.
Yeah.
So when you open your mouth, you want to be able to see your you heal up.
So that's that dangly ball that comes off of the top, right?
If you can't see that, it's hanging too far down.
Like we've got it behind the tongue.
It's somewhere in that pharyngeal space.
It's somewhere in your throat.
We can't have that there.
That's got to come up.
It's got to come out.
We have a lot of issues with, you know, hyperactive gag reflexes.
There are some people who are very, very sensitive.
We don't like certain textures because it's so droopy.
Like your whole airway is essentially kind of locked off.
You've got that back there, your tongue's back there and our tongue's really long.
Our tongue can go down if you think about your cervical spine down to C5 or 6.
That's down there.
Yeah, that is far down.
It's the tongue's hanging low and the ufula is hanging low.
Where is the room for the air to breathe?
So we've got to get it up.
And that's a lot of our exercises.
We're working on getting that thing to hang up where it's supposed to be.
Okay.
See, I didn't realize that that could be adjusted.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
All of the muscles in the body work exactly the same.
It's so weird that we as a society have like separated things as if they're not together.
Like medical and dental.
I mean, you can't take your teeth and like put them on the side and go hand them off
to somebody.
Medical is dental.
Right.
You know what I'm saying?
Like all of this stuff is together.
So all the muscles work exactly the same.
If you can work out your abs to get six pack abs, you can absolutely work out your muscles
in your mouth.
So muscles don't operate differently because they're in a different part of the body.
Right.
I mean, it's just so logical, but you don't think about it that way.
Seriously.
I love this.
Okay.
So on the website, MyoSpot, which I will put a link for that as well, just so people
can check that out.
Great website, by the way, for parents to check out.
You talk about holistic methods.
Yeah.
So when you're talking holistically is what are you referring to there?
It's a big thing for me.
I like to use a more natural approach, especially when we're dealing with growing children.
I do incorporate a lot of natural methods and techniques into my programs.
So when I'm talking about that, I see, so here's where I'm going to like walk a weird
line because I like to do a lot of biohacking things.
I like to monitor the electromagnetic field.
We need a certain level of our own bodies, electricity, because we know that our body
is electric.
Right.
I think that's right.
Very high school stuff.
We've learned that we have those electronic impulses that are going from nerve to nerve
and our brain is sending signals all throughout our bodies.
What's happening at these fast rates?
It's electric.
Sure.
Electricity within the body.
So when we have all this technology around us, okay, so we're surrounded by technology
right now talking to each other.
Right.
So this technology has its own field and how does that impact our body and our body's
fields?
And then how does that impact us when it comes to healing, when it comes to learning new
things?
So when we're trying to do repatterning of our muscles or trying to learn how to do new
functional skills, how much does that impact us?
So I like to deal with different methods of biohacking.
So it comes into play all the electromagnetic fields that are around us.
It's always a big thing and being able to make sure that you're having a diet that is
going to age you to go into the direction that you want to go into.
I am not a dietitian, but we all know what's good and what's not good.
Right.
Process bad.
Good, whole food.
Everything else is good.
Good.
Yeah.
Right.
So I don't have to do too much recommendations.
It's like, let's just make sure we're making those smart choices.
I like to use a vibration.
I like to use all sorts of just interesting techniques to kind of get the body to a state
of acceptance of all these new patterns that I'm trying to achieve in addition to the
myofunctional therapy.
So, and this is back to what you mentioned earlier, that it's not just one muscle standing
on its own.
It's everything connected.
So you really are looking at, for example, this five-year-old child holistically from
head to toe.
The entirety, exactly.
And that's what I feel like we have to do.
We can't achieve these fine motor functions unless we've addressed the gross motor and
what's going on with this child as a whole.
Okay.
So does this even segue into parts of their life, such as their sleep patterns?
Oh, significantly so.
Definitely.
Really?
Yes, absolutely.
So sleep is a very delicate thing.
And we have our circadian rhythms and we can throw that off in no time.
I mean, it really takes nothing to throw you off.
And once you're thrown off, we never catch up on sleep.
We can't catch up on sleep.
You are driving yourself into a long pattern of sleep deprivation that it's very difficult
to come out from.
So yes, everything is all connected.
It is very much all connected.
I love that.
I absolutely love that.
So if I'm a parent and I notice that my child is a mouth breather, what are some steps that
I as a parent can take to help kind of guide them, I guess, not force them, but guide them
towards nasal breathing?
Yeah.
First step, I would say, is to not panic and to not blame yourself.
I think that's the first thing that comes up for everybody.
So first step, doesn't matter what happened in the past.
We don't care how they got there.
All that matters is all the steps that you take going forward.
Okay.
So don't blame yourself and don't panic.
Everything can be corrected.
It's just a matter of time.
So step one, move forward.
Step two is to then make decisions as to how you're going to approach this.
You can take a very medical route.
You can go to an ENT and either get your clearance or you can get the surgical route done and
so forth.
You can try to do something where you're going to just use mouth tape or have some other
way of getting the child to keep their mouth closed at night.
Now those I find can be helpful methods and some people, it works very well for them,
but I really like a more functional approach.
Let's try to retrain, right?
Okay.
So definitely we need the clearance from the ENT that we can breathe.
Once we know that we can breathe, I never jump to mouth tape.
At that point, I want to start working on some exercises.
Let's work on the lip.
Let's make sure that we can keep our lips closed.
Maybe play some games with your kids.
See who can keep their lips closed the longest and whoever does gets a little extra dessert
or whatever it is.
You make it fun and try to be playful and try to see what's going on.
If you're struggling trying to achieve lip seal on your own, then it's time to contact
myopunctional therapist because you're going to need some help in retraining.
It's probably something a little bit deeper than just the mouth is open.
You probably need to work on the tongue and the tongue's tone or the soft tissue pressures
that are going on in the oral cavity itself.
Something might need to be relieved in order for something else to activate.
If you make it fun and see how far you can get on your own nasal hygiene, fun activities
and exercises, and when that all fails, contact myopunctional therapist.
Before I want to make sure that this really is emphasized because you mentioned it twice,
start with your airway dentist or your ENT to make sure that there's not a blockage first
because I think that's another thing that parents think, oh, well, your mouth breather,
let's just teach you to close it.
Well, why are they a mouth breather?
This goes back to your holistic.
Let's get back to make sure that we're okay first.
I really want to reemphasize that.
But with regard to mouth tape, you said you don't want to start there.
I will tell you, as a parent and somebody working with children's airway first, and I've
done a lot of research on it, I will be very honest.
I have very mixed feelings about mouth tape.
That's why I want to talk about it because you're the first person that has ever said
anything on our podcast that made me wait.
It's not just me.
I see more as an adult if you know that you're clear and everything is okay.
Again, ENT, airway dentist, that maybe for snoring, I can see it.
I totally understand it.
I tried it because I thought, well, let's see what it feels like.
I have a hard time looking at my children and saying, and now I'm going to tape you.
Hesitations, possible issues, because as a parent, I see that, you know, is that going
to traumatize them in some way?
Do you see that or do you see other issues that arise from that?
I'm not necessarily concerned about trauma.
I'm more concerned about function.
Just taping the lips closed doesn't teach you how to keep your lips closed and it doesn't
help with the other aspects that come along.
This is what we see on the outside, right?
But there's so much going on behind our lips and there's so much more going on within.
What's going on with that tongue that extends all the way down to C6?
Is that up and out of the airway?
Because closing the mouth might actually be doing more harm than good.
And you won't know that for sure because that's not something the ENT is able to tell you.
The ENT is looking up the nose and looking through and making sure that all that is good.
But what goes on in the mouth that also can close that airway, that long, droopy palate.
Is that something that's of concern?
I mean, there's a whole lot of factors that other people aren't looking at.
It's only the external lips are open.
Let's close them.
But in some cases, it can do more harm than good.
Right.
If they don't understand where you're supposed to put your tongue when your mouth is closed,
for example.
Yes.
Something as simple as that.
Why is that not happening?
Because that in and of itself leads to more questions.
Where's the tongue supposed to be?
Why is it not where it's supposed to be?
Is something off somewhere?
And so closing the mouth doesn't necessarily cure all the problems.
Okay.
Got it.
Would you advise or do you see any issue with, again, everything is clear.
And as a parent, you look over and you see their mouth is open to just politely nudge
them.
You remind them, hey, let's close your mouth.
Or I understand along with the games and things like that, which totally makes sense.
Or is that if they're, especially if they're going through myofunctional therapy, you want
to remind them of a couple other cues besides just close your mouth.
I think it's important that if you're going to do it on your own as a parent that you
make it fun.
Because otherwise it seems more like nagging and badgering.
Gotcha.
And as a parent, I've found that that never worked.
That you know where, right?
Absolutely never a time where I've been like, no, no, no, don't do that.
And then listen, and then it never happens again.
That doesn't happen.
I don't know.
Could just be my home.
But, you know, I feel like the nudging or the subtle suggestions or the repeated suggestions
wind up being more of a barrier to it actually working out.
So at least if you have like a third person who could be the bad guy, myofunctional therapist,
I'm usually the bad guy.
Like, hey, Miss Karee said that you were supposed to have your lips closed.
Your lips aren't closed right now.
What's going on?
Create a conversation around it.
But when it becomes more of like a mom said, it becomes an annoyance.
And then just turn you up.
The more you push, the more they pull.
I understood.
So as a parent, you know, I have a five year old, six year old, seven year old.
I've been through working with the ENT or the airway dentist.
We know everything is clear, but we're still snoring or we're still mouth breathing.
Something else is going on.
And I know now, okay, it's time for a myofunctional therapist.
First of all, where do you start?
How do you find one?
And then what's the process like to get going?
All things.
I think Google.
Honestly.
Really?
Okay.
You would just Google.
There are directories, but I find more often than not that people will find you off of
just searching like myofunctional therapist near me or myofunctional therapy near me
or whatever the keywords are.
Google is always everybody's first.
Right.
That's why it's a verb now.
That's where we go.
We Google.
We Google it.
That's how we start.
So I would say honestly, that's your first step.
A lot of times of myofunctional therapists have their business listed on Google, my business.
And so it'll come up for your local listings.
If you don't have anything local, well, then you're looking through and seeing who does
teletherapy.
So teletherapy would be virtual.
So it would be on a platform similar to zoom, but for many people not zoom, it would be
a HIPAA private one.
Private encrypted line.
So it wouldn't be zoom, but it's similar.
So you'd be teletherapy.
If you have somebody who's in your local area, call them up.
Most often they're going to want to do a full evaluation.
So that evaluation is going to look at all of the oral facial function, what's going
on with all the muscles below the eyes, but above the shoulders.
They'll probably ask you to do a bunch of different things.
It's going to activate different muscle groups or activate different things that should be
activated.
So you're fine tuning and watching and seeing what's going on for your oral facial function.
And then from there, you typically would get the plan.
So they develop a plan as to how they're going to proceed forward.
What is it that you specifically need?
Because we're all different, right?
So muscle functions doesn't technically fall in groups.
It's individualized.
So we would be cherry picking and figuring out how we're going to get to your plan of
action.
And then we meet up weekly or bi-weekly or whatever the plan is for that specific person
to start attacking the plan of action and getting into exercises, activities.
It's a lot of commitment.
That's a big, you know, it's a commitment because just like personal training, right?
You have to practice.
Yep.
You want those six pack abs.
You got to work out.
Yeah.
You don't face when you're not with your trainer.
So you have to work out and do those exercises, especially on the days that you're not with
your multifunctional therapist two to three times a day.
So it could take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes out of your day.
And we're all so busy.
Everybody's so busy, especially children now, right?
They have school, they have homework, they have extracurriculars.
There are things going on.
And so it's difficult to get it into the lifestyle.
But if you're committed, you can easily just kind of slide it in where you can fit it in
the car on the ride home from school to school, from practice, back home, right before bed,
you'll find a way to get it in.
That's great.
That's a great idea.
I love that.
All right.
So for parents, I just would like to open this up for you right now, just to talk to
parents.
What are things that, you know, I message is that you would want to leave them with this
with regards to breathing and really just, you know, making sure everything is okay with
your child.
You know, as we're watching the, you know, from here to here.
Yes.
As you're watching your child and you're seeing them grow, if something seems off, whether
it's that they have crooked teeth or they're not speaking appropriately or you're hearing
them breathe or the snoring is louder or they're messy eaters or something's off and
you're not getting the attention for it that you feel it deserves because I've been there
too, I've been kind of dismissed by the pediatrician.
Don't worry about that.
That's not a thing.
They'll grow out of this.
They'll grow out of it.
Yep.
Yeah.
Don't, don't accept that.
Advocate for yourself, advocate for your child and make sure that you get to where you need
to be.
Anything that doesn't feel right, most likely is not right.
And you can get yourself to a good path.
It's just a matter of being your own best advocate and never giving up.
Google is the world's greatest invention.
You can Google nasal hygiene tips, saline sprays for kids, best aromatherapy for kids,
how to find a myofunctional therapist.
You can Google all wonderful things to try to get to where you think you need to be,
but never give up because that's where, you know, my journey, I think, that's where my
journey went off the rails where I just sort of gave up.
And I think that it's a big regret, but like I said, don't be yourself up.
Don't feel bad.
Always work towards moving forward.
I am in such a phenomenal place now.
I wish I had advocated earlier.
I didn't.
And my biggest thing for all parents is to always advocate.
As soon as you notice something's off, you can get to where you need to be.
Yep.
And trust your gut.
And just to reiterate what you said, mouth breathing, snoring, you don't grow out of
it.
It's not okay.
Yeah.
You don't grow out of it at all.
In fact, it gets worse.
It gets worse and worse.
That it does.
I want to thank you so much for joining us on our podcast today and for sharing so much
wonderful information.
Thank you for having me.
This has been so fun.
I've loved it.
Glad.
Yay, I'm glad.
I've really enjoyed it.
I mean, seriously, there's been great information.
I'll make sure there's links.
I've been taking notes.
I'll put as much as I can in the show notes.
And please, we'd love to have you back anytime.
Oh, yeah, I'd love that.
Just let me know when.
All right.
Thanks.
All righty.
Thanks again to today's guest, Karee Slaguer, for sharing her medical insight and to each
of you for listening to today's episode.
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And finally, thanks to all the parents and medical professionals out there that are
working hard to help make their lives of kids around the globe just a little bit better.
Take care, stay safe, and happy breathing, everyone.