Omar's story

When I was 11 years old in 1989, my mother brought me to an orthodontist at the referral of our dentist, because he thought I had an over-bite.

My mother and I had the initial consultation with the orthodontist, and in that meeting, he told me that I had an overbite and crowding in my upper teeth. He said that my upper jaw had grown too far forward, and that he needed to restrict its growth so that the lower jaw could catch up.  He said that I needed cervical headgear or extractions, headgear being the better option.  He also told me that not only would the headgear allow my lower jaw to catch up to my upper jaw, but that it would create room for my crowded upper arch by pulling teeth back.  I asked him if there were any alternatives to headgear and he said there were none.  I asked him if there were any side-effects to headgear, and he said there were none, except that in extremely rare cases, the lower jaw continues to grow forward uncontrollably and that the remedy for this is a quick surgery where we cut a nerve under the neck at the side of the jaw, which stops the forward growth.

As a child, I never had trouble sleeping or waking up.  I always ate breakfast with my family in the mornings, and had time to do things that a kid did, like watch cartoons, or run around and play while my mom made us breakfast.  The short version of the story is that a few months after wearing headgear, those morning rituals gradually faded away and were replaced with the struggle of waking up more fatigued than when I went to bed.  Fatigue eventually mapped out a large portion of my life, and it was something that I battled with on a daily basis.  Finally, in March of 2013, at the age of 35, I was diagnosed with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea.  The cause:  A maxilla and mandible that had not grown forward enough, causing an upper airway obstruction. 

I have since learned that by 1989, many orthodontists had stopped using cervical headgear due what studies call "disastrous" side effects on craniofacial growth, namely a backwardly grown or underdeveloped maxilla and mandible causing a flattened and vertically grown face, and that these abnormal effects were not yet understood at the time.  The side effects have been published in peer-reviewed journals countless times since the 1950’s.  I have also learned that since the early 1900’s, orthodontists, otolaryngologists and other doctors have identified an underdeveloped maxilla as being a major cause of upper airway obstruction, which, according the literature, wreaks havoc on a person’s health.  The part that baffles me the most, is that orthodontists have identified that without orthodontic treatment, a child’s face tends to grow more forward than with treatment, and in untreated cases, the lower jaw tends to catch up to the upper jaw during adolescence.

After reading the research, I had no doubt that headgear can cause sleep apnea.  And I am not alone in that conclusion.  Between 1999 and 2012, there have been at least six peer-reviewed, published studies done which state that cervical headgear impacts the patency of the airway, that it reduces the volume of the airway, that it puts a patient at risk for obstructive sleep apnea, and that it has been clinically observed to cause sleep apnea in children while they wear it.

Despite the published evidence to the contrary, there are orthodontists today who still restrict natural growth using cervical headgear or other means, also without disclosure of the known risks to their patients.  I believe this is unacceptable and needs to stop.

If you’re interested in learning about the consequences that growth restriction of the airway by way of hindering the growth of the upper jaw can have on a person’s life, I invite you to read on.  I've also included some before and after pictures at the end of this write up so that you can understand the types of growth changes that the public has allowed the orthodontic industry to get away with.

As I mentioned, at the age of 11, things changed when I started to wear headgear.  I started waking up fatigued on a daily basis, literally within months of wearing the headgear but never in my wildest dreams as a kid did I connect the two.  The fatigue crept up on me gradually enough such that I could never notice that something was drastically wrong.  As I started to wake up tired, I also started to wake up later too.  Gone were the days of eating breakfast with the family.  I would be out of bed long after breakfast was made and I’d be in a rush getting ready for school while my mom and my little sister were in the car, waiting for me and late for their destinations.  Since then, I became known as the person who made everybody late.  At the age of 11, my mornings had become rushed and this is something that would never change for 25 years.  I’d eat breakfast in the car as fast as I could, and on many days, I’d be so late in the morning that I washed my face at school. 

As the years went by, my fatigue increased and coping with it had become a way of life for me.  I learned to sleep in almost any situation, and to take almost any opportunity to close my eyes and nap.  I learned how to take tiny 30 second naps to get me through the next 15 minutes if I was particularly tired, and I could even do this while playing sports.  Sports became a particular challenge for me because I never thought I was any more or less fatigued than other kids, which made me wonder why keeping up with them put me in so much physical distress, and why I’d be out of breath so fast. When my braces came off, I was put in a fixed upper and lower retainer designed to limit the effects of natural lateral growth during my growth spurt years, and my fatigue became worse.  In my final year of high school, I napped during almost every recess in the school nurse’s room because it had a bed, and I napped during most of every lunch break.  On rare occasions, I was so tired that I slept through the entire lunch break without eating and on those days, concentrating in some afternoon classes became a challenge because I was hungry, but it beat being exhausted from a lack of sleep which caused my body to twitch in fatigue if I waited too long before taking a nap.  Having a social life for me was not much of an option.  I had to work twice as hard as most kids to maintain my grades, and at night on the weekends while other kids were partying, I needed to sleep.

Fatigue followed me everywhere.  College was a particular challenge, as after doing my best to listen intently to a professor, I would find myself being woken up by the student next to me at the beginning of the next lecture. I would go to the library to study, and after twenty minutes of reading, I would always need to take a short nap. I cannot count how many times I have woken up from those short naps, only to realize that I had been asleep for hours.  However, I managed to finish an engineering degree with dreams of one day starting a desalination company.

After college I started to work, and again, fatigue followed me there. The issue with work is that I had to be on time at a desk, the entire day, and there was no nurse’s room to get me through the morning, so finding places to nap became quite a challenge.  Finding time to eat also became a challenge because if I had any break, lunch included, I would use it to sleep, otherwise, I could not function. It was always a choice between fatigue or hunger. Fatigue usually won the battle, and I would skip breakfast or lunch to get that extra sleep.  Hunger, however, can be as debilitating as fatigue.  Sometimes one can feel like the other, and I maintained a constant balancing act between the two.  If I could, I used to eat in work meetings.  I carried food with me everywhere I went, eating small amounts here and there during work, doing the best I could to have energy.  I was like a car with only enough gas to go the next half mile, where I had to refill, and could only refill enough for another half mile.  If I could summarize a typical day for me, it looked like this: Micro nap, bite of food, work for twenty minutes, micro nap, micro nap, too much pain, twitching from fatigue is starting and head is starting to fall, go the bathroom and sleep while I pretend to be sick, pain lessened, work for an hour, sleep at lunch time, back to work, stomach is starving, eat a little bit, work twenty minutes, in pain again and need micro nap, need food, in pain from hunger, work for twenty minutes, too hungry to concentrate, eat a little bit on the way to a meeting, close my eyes for five seconds while the person I’m meeting with looks away, stomach is hurting during meeting but cannot eat in this meeting, meeting is finally over and I couldn’t even think about what was being said but did a good job pretending, go to the bathroom and eat there, back to work.  And the day was done. 

After work, the first thing I would do is go home, eat a meal right away while exhausted and then sleep for an hour.  The sleep would get rid of my headache and stabbing pain in my eyes, and the fact that I had eaten an hour ago allowed me to have my workout without a full stomach.  After my one hour nap, nearly every day, I forced myself to go for a run or do some type of workout.  My father was an athlete – a distance runner – and my mother, a health nut who raised us on a very healthy diet, came from a family of sportsmen so the importance of being in healthy physical shape was instilled in me as a child.  So I ran, and if I could sum up the effects of running in one word, it would be “depression.” My parents would always tell me about the “runner’s high” and how happy running used to make them, and I never understood it.  Running and exercise in general depressed me.  However, I still ran and worked out regularly, in addition to keeping a healthy diet, because not only did those values from my childhood never leave me, but I also found that running, if done in the right amount and at the right time, helped me to fall asleep faster.  After my run, it would be 8pm and that’s when I’d have my dinner.  By 9pm the dishes were done and I had an hour or two in my day to buy groceries, meet a friend, run any errands I needed to run, make any phone calls I needed to make, prepare food for the next day, shower, do some reading and be in bed.  I tried my best to make 11pm my curfew. If I didn’t touch my pillow by around 11pm, it made a huge difference in my fatigue the next day. There was no time for television, no time for extended socializing, because if anything interfered with me getting enough sleep, enough food and my workout, there was no room for it.

The next day, I’d wake up in the morning at 8am or as early as I could, ritualistically more fatigued than when I went to bed, and as usual, there would be no time for breakfast.  I’d put my clothes on as fast as I could with my eyes closed, grab my razor so that I could be on time at work and shave there in a bathroom on another floor, grab my pre-packed breakfast, run as fast as I could to catch the bus and grab a few bites on the way, button up my shirt while on the bus, do my tie on the bus, tuck my shirt in, do up my belt with people oddly watching, eat a few bites of my breakfast and save the rest for later because I had to be at work on time. I also learned to eat and run at the same time. If I was running to catch the bus to work, that was an opportunity to eat. If I had any spare still time on the bus after getting ready, that was my time to close my eyes. If I was late for anything in the morning, it was always because I was struggling to get more sleep and if I could scrounge an extra minute or two in the morning for a little more sleep, I would. That was my formula.  And it rarely worked.  I have been fired from almost every job I have ever had. Bosses and colleagues wondered why I would come to work late, why I was always nibbling, why I spent so much time in the bathroom, why I made so many mistakes, why simple things would take me so long, and in all fairness to them, why they hired me.

Maintaining a career and earning an income were probably the most difficult parts of living with sleep apnea.  As entrepreneurial and motivated as one can be , careers and businesses cannot thrive when a person cannot breathe.  My first job out of college was in California working for a residential designer as a engineering draftsman.  I lost that job after less than a year due to fatigue at work.  My next job was working as an engineering technologist for a buildings assessment company and after six weeks, I was let go for fatigue again.  This was a reflection of all the summer jobs and internships I took while in school, in which I could never be both alert and on time; it was one or the other and rarely either.  After losing the technologist job, I remembered the fatigue throughout all of those summer jobs and internships I had and I lost faith in being able to have a career.  With enough money in my pocket for one month's rent and some groceries, I managed to find a job working for an apartment building owner who needed somebody to help him coordinate maintenance and keep his database updated.  He wanted somebody with ten years of experience but I was desperate so I offered to work for him for far less than what it would have cost him to have that ten-year individual, and I got the job.  It was only for four hours per day and it was almost enough to pay the bills.  My day there would start at 9am and would end at 1pm.  From 2pm to 4pm I would nap, and at nights, I telemarketed on commission.  That is how I paid my rent and survived from 2002 to 2005  

In 2006, I decided to go back to school and do a master's in engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.  Because my courses were in the evening, I was able to excel.  I was the top student in my class and in 2007, I met a professor who had a patent-pending desalination technology that I believed could solve a part of the world's water crisis.  He was looking to take to market and I instantly jumped on it.  I found an investor who agreed to fund the initial prototyping, and in the afternoons before class, I would cold call industrial water users who could potentially demo the technology in order to prove it out.  By the time I graduated, I had list of customers, an investor and my dream of a desalination company was close to coming true.  My investor offered me a job and a small partnership stake in his venture fund while we worked on the desalination business and foolishly, I took the job.  The comute was half an hour by car and having to give up that amount of sleep was a sacrifice that I ultimately could not afford to pay.  Not once was I at work on time, and I need both hands to count the number times per day I would go the bathroom pretending to be sick in order to sleep.  Although I believe I performed my job well, managers would notice me coming to work late and I could never sneak in because of the position of my desk relative to theirs.  Relations at work soured with my co-workers due my lateness, people wondered why I spent so much time in the bathroom, and this dried my investor's confidence in working with me.  In the summer of 2008, after investing two years into this new venture, the investment in the desalination company was halted.  Dejected and not knowing how I would earn a living, I decided to move back home to my parents house in Vancouver.  I also vowed never to live more than a few minutes away from a place of work.  Nonetheless, given that my investor's office was in an industrial park, I didn't have much choice in the matter.

In Vancouver at the suggestion of my mom, I started tutoring in the evenings and did this from 2009 to 2011.  I excelled at this job because I could sleep as much as I needed and work in the evenings.  Out of over 1000 tutors in my agency, many of which were licensed teachers, in 2010 I won the teacher-of-the-year award.  During the daytime, for the the three years between 2009 and 2011 I tried to revive the desalination company while volunteer for a housing non-profit I was starting but I would always crash and burn with fatigue.  After three years of tutoring, I ended up working as a consultant for the father of one my students who greatly appreciated how I helped his son learn French.  He was a real estate developer who I had approached to fund a non-profit housing project.  Although he declined the project, he offered to hire me as a consultant on a few of his own projects.  At that time, I did not know I had sleep apnea and although I feared that I would get fired from not being alert or on time, I took the job.  Anytime I had a day job, I always knew that the rainy day, and days, were on their way.  One or two important morning meetings missed because I didn't wake up, and I was out the door.  So, I learned to save my money while I earned, and to live well below my means.  As a result, and to this day, I have not had more than a few hundred dollars of consumer credit card debt, and never more consumer debt than cash in the bank, and regardless of what the future holds, I'll probably maintain that habit.

Despite some valuable habits I learned, fatigue, over the past two and half decades, has been my greatest rival. During that time, I have taken naps in almost every type of location and during almost any activity or event imaginable.  I’ve slept in rock concerts, in lecture halls, during exams, while playing soccer, on the job, during a conversation, on a date, on the bus, in public washrooms, while jogging, under my desk, on my desk, while on hold over the phone, during breakfast, while showering, while brushing my teeth, while shaving.  The list goes on.  I never knew that I might have a tangible health problem.  I simply wondered why everybody else could wake up refreshed, keep a job, and be chipper with time for breakfast and morning activities. I always thought they were just as tired as me, and simply had a better mind to cope with it.

My fatigue was paired with constant depression. Not being able to participate in normal activities, pretending to be awake to maintain politeness and a job, constantly fighting off fatigue and hunger throughout an entire day along with the physical pain and twitching that came alongside took a toll on me personally.  So, when clinicians talk about the correlation between sleep apnea and depression, I know first hand exactly what they are talking about. 

I also feared going to sleep.  Over the years, albeit rare, I have had nightmares of choking.  More than sleep itself, I dreaded the fatigue that sleep would bring the next day, and the physical pains of waking up more exhausted than I was before I went to bed.  I found myself waking up several times a night, panting, sometimes sweating and never knew why. Ironically, sleep became something I did my best to avoid, tried my best to have, and fatigue paired with hunger were my constant enemies. It was a vicious three-dimensional cycle that I knew no way to end.  I thought all of this was normal and never told anybody, because it started when I was so young.

While tutoring in 2010, some sudden changes in my sleep patterns started that alarmed me.  Several nights in a row, while on my side, the feeling of a bead of sweat falling from one arm onto another would wake me up, and I'd try to wipe it off my arm thinking it was just a drop, but my entire hand would end up covered in sweat and I'd wake up only to realize that these were not just beads of sweat, but that my entire body was soaked.  I was so drenched, it was as though I had gone for a swim.  My pajamas, my bed sheet, my blanket and pillow seemed as though somebody had poured a bucket of water on them.  I became concerned that I was losing electrolytes very quickly and I was sluggish, to say the least, if I tried to go for a run or do any type of exercise during the day.  I had experienced night sweats in the past, but never to this intensity and they were rare.  Now, although unpredictable, they were often and I could not avoid them.  So I went and saw my doctor to discuss this and my sleep, and was referred to a sleep specialist in Burnaby.  He put me on an overnight oximetry test and made the conclusion that I was simply restless.  The following year, I started to gain weight rapidly, and no matter how much or how hard I worked out, I had developed a gut.  I went back to my doctor who ordered blood tests, which came back normal.  I still knew something wasn't right, and thought that perhaps it was dietary, even though I was eating a very healthy diet.  So I brought my diet down to a bare bones menu, eating only the most basic foods, cutting out anything that had been the slightest bit refined.  My weight did come under control, and by what I think is a stroke of luck, the night sweats diminished greatly.  Today, I wonder whether sleep apnea impacts digestion, and given its mechanics, I'm sure it would.  However, the next three years were plagued with constant colds, what seemed like incomplete digestion and an overall inability to stay healthy.  

Then, in January of 2013, in one night, my fatigue grew by orders magnitude.  I woke up one morning so exhausted that I literally did not have enough energy to get out of bed.  That morning, I felt as though I was velcroed to my mattress with limbs heavier than I had ever experienced.  I felt as though I had not slept for days.  I was dizzy and my vision was blurred.   I had the sharpest shooting pains in my eyes and head I had experienced thus far and this continued for several days.  I told my older sister about this – who was studying to become an naturopathic doctor (ND) – and she said to me that this sounded like sleep apnea and told me to see a doctor.  I went to a walk-in clinic in New Westminster where I was seen by the first doctor available.  He, too, suggested that I may have sleep apnea and recommended an overnight oximetry test.  I took the test at home on January 17, 2013, which, although not conclusive, indicated that I may have severe sleep apnea.  I then booked an appointment with my regular physician, who referred me to a respirologist, who sent me for an overnight polysomnography (PSG) at Surrey Memorial Hospital, which was taken in March of 2013.  The results of my PSG showed that I had moderate to severe sleep apnea, and the doctor who interpreted the results stated that he suspected my sleep apnea to be more severe than the PSG indicated.  It turned out that I stopped breathing 23 times per hour in my first stage of sleep, and 76 times per hour during REM.  Each time I stopped breathing, the doctor explained, my oxygen levels dropped and that this would cause my body to wake up without me knowing.  He said that as a result of waking up so many times during the night, I never really got much rest, which explained my constant fatigue.  I then went to see an ear, nose and throat doctor about options to treat my sleep apnea. He put a camera down my nose and throat, and told me that my airway was one quarter the size it should be, which explained that my sleep apnea was caused by an upper airway obstruction. He indicated that due to the severity of my upper airway restriction, than an oral appliance would likely be ineffective. I was given surgical options and was told to get on a CPAP machine. I took a second opinion from another ear, nose and throat doctor, and he told me the same thing that the first one did.  He also noted that both my upper and lower jaws were positioned too far back than normal, and that this interfered with my airway.  Two oral surgeons I saw and two dentists told me the same thing, “Omar, your maxilla is pushed too far back.  It is trapping your mandible from coming forward and both your jaws need to come forward to expand your airway.”  25 years ago, in 1990, a backwardly positioned upper and lower jaw were well-known and well-documented side effects of cervical headgear.  The enclosed pictures of me as a child before headgear do not exhibit these traits.

I have been on CPAP therapy for nearly two years now, and I can honestly say, up until January of 2015, these have been the best two years of my life.  Instead of being fatigued and starving all day long at work, every day of the week, this only happened two to three days a week.  I also told bosses, clients and colleagues about my sleep apnea, and that if I came to work late, it is because I needed the sleep.  They understand and I simply work longer hours to get my work done.  And, thanks to CPAP, I've been able to earn a living working as a consultant for five years in a row for the same father of the son I who I taught French in 2010.  

CPAP therapy had literally changed my life and I am eternally grateful to its inventor.  Getting used to a CPAP machine was not easy, and I didn’t tolerate the machine for the first six months.  At certain pressures, CPAP leaves it’s user with an extremely dry mouth, so dry in fact that the inner cheeks become stuck to the gums and have to be peeled off during the night, or sometimes it leaves the user with the feeling of being punched in the nose and it has to come off. Nonetheless, my life had changed for nearly two years after I found CPAP and it became my best friend for a time. I also learned to tape my mouth shut while I sleep, and the Sahara-like dry mouths became a thing of the past. At times during that period, I would wake up to find my CPAP mask mysteriously sitting beside me, and on those days, I knew I had to face fatigue because I didn’t get the oxygen I needed.  But it only happened once in a while and I had no major problems up until January of 2015.

I started the 2015 New Year having just recovered from a cold that started in mid-December.  (Having a cold that lasts two to three weeks, I've recently learned, is normal for someone with obstructive sleep apnea.)  I was looking forward to a new year at work, having kept a job nearly four years in a row.  The problem with CPAP is that it drives an unnaturally high velocity of air down the throat, and over those two years, my airway had become narrower. My doctor doesn’t know the reason for this, however, a dentist who specializes in sleep apnea suggested that muscles in the throat may grow larger due the counter pressure they exert against the CPAP’s inflow air pressure, and that this could explain my further narrowed airway, that my overgrown muscular tissues in my throat were crowding my already narrow airway. From January of 2015, up until the beginning of April of 2015, my health went into rapid decline and CPAP stopped having its positive effect on me. At times, air would go down my stomach or would shoot out of my mouth, and would go anywhere but through my airway. I again started to wake up fatigued, and this time, the fatigue was more painful and debilitating than I had ever experienced prior. I would wake up with headaches that felt as though a worm with a scalpel on its head was crawling through my brain and eyes. I had to sleep 11 to 12 hours a day to be barely functional, and during those months, I would still need one or two hour long naps each day. My productivity at work dropped greatly, and as each week went by, the pain got worse. If I went for a run, I could barely do it and I would be sore for over a week. The pain from my fatigue became so bad one day that I went to the emergency room at St. Paul’s Hospital on the way home from work, because I had so much pain in my head and eyes, and I couldn’t walk in a straight line. There was no conclusion at the hospital, however, my vision became blurrier by the day and in the kitchen at work one day, I tried to open a cabinet door and missed the handle. I became extremely worried and the decline was rapid. I lost hope when I realized that in order to have enough time to keep a job, I had no energy or time in my day to look for ways to help myself. I feared going back to the days of not having an income. In my 20s, it was somewhat acceptable because I could always live with my parents, however, in my mid-30s, I didn’t feel this was an option. I had little time to see doctors, because it took time away from my already compromised work, and when I did find time to see one, there were no conclusions or answers. I tried to increase the pressure on my CPAP machine, but the fatigue was getting worse and worse, and in the downward decline I began to fear for my life. I was living a nightmare and I knew no way to make it stop. By that point, I knew quite a bit about obstructive sleep apnea, and what I feared most was a stroke or heart attack. In constant pain and debilitated most of the day, all I could think about was ending my life.

But I got very lucky. A friend of mine who had a headgear-based orthodontic treatment course similar to mine and who had battled similar issues discovered a dentist in Australia who had invented a bite-plate that freed the lower jaw from being trapped behind the upper jaw. As a last resort and a desperate last hope, I booked a flight to Australia. I arrived on April 4th 2015, and I wore my appliance to sleep for the first time on April 6th. For the first time in my life since I was 11 years old, I woke up naturally. It was a religious and transformative experience for me and I phoned home and wrote to my closest friends. I celebrated that night and took the dentist and his family out for dinner. What I'll never forget is the look on the dentist's face when I gave him the good news.  It was 7am, and I was at house eating breakfast.  He was standing and eating and I was sitting at the dinner table.  When I told him how I had slept, and that I hadn't slept like this since I was a kid, he looked at me blankly, took a bite of his toast and the look on his face said "and the sky is blue...why are you surprised?", as though he's seen this day in and day out.  After he put his toast down, he picked up his coffee and right before his next sip, he mumbled "good, keep it up."  It was truly no big deal for him, just another Tuesday.  I now call him the miracle worker.  By April 9th, I had woken up refreshed three days in a row and the scalpel-sporting worm crawling through my head and eyes was no longer there. I got back to Vancouver on April 14th, and the past two mornings have been nearly painless with 8 hours of straight sleep each night. I regained hope in my life and in my health. I also regained a sense of motivation at work, because waking up earlier and not being fatigued means that I have more hours in the day to be productive. For the first time in my adult life, I now understand how a person can have time for a workout, to eat breakfast and to read the paper in the morning. By the way, the dentist's name is Dr. Joseph Da Cruz.  I want to give him credit and thank him not just for putting me up in his home the entire week, but for saving my life.

Dr. Da Cruz explained to me the dangers of stunting the growth of any part of the skull.  He explained that with headgear, the maxilla cannot come forward to it's genetically-intended position and that with retainers, a child's jaws cannot widen while they sleep.  He explained that during growth, the nerves, arteries, veins and soft tissues of the skull need room because they are expanding.  A headgear will push the maxilla back, using the spine as a fixation point.  He pointed that first of all, the spine is not fixed, it moves.  Therefore, headgear can in fact displace the vertebra that it pushes against in a growing child.  Secondly, he pointed out that not only is the spine impacted, but when the maxilla is held back, other bones in the skull are also held back, and this includes every bone between the spine and the maxilla, which all hold the brain.  These bones include the sphenoid and the occiput.  He looked at my CT scan and showed me how certain points in my skull were too far back from their correct anatomical positions, and explained how backwards forces in there areas exert compression on nerves, arteries and veins.  The problem with this, he said, is that we don't know the degree to which this affects blood flow and neural signaling, but he said that these are essential for good sleep, which is essential for growth and healing, which is why he doesn't dare restrict any growth in a child.  One of the problems, he said, is that when growth is stunted and the jaws are smaller, the airway becomes smaller.  Because the tongue grows to it's normal size during the headgear phase of orthodontic treatment, it then appears large, and is too large for the airway when the mouth is closed during sleep.  To compensate, the person starts to breathe through their mouth, and the muscles that facilitate breathing have to work unnaturally in order to keep the mouth open.  This unnatural muscular pattern further retrudes the jaws because when the mouth opens, the lower jaw comes down and back.  He explained to me that we needed to release the muscular stain pattern I had, which would allow the lower jaw to be released forward.  This, he said, would decompress my TMJ, and may reduce pressure on nerves, veins and arteries.  He said that the light maxillary expansion created by his appliance would expand my capacity to breathe through my nose, because the base of the maxilla forms the base of the nasal airway, and this expansion, also in the forward direction, would also help bring my lower jaw forward, untrapping it from my backwardly positioned maxilla, helping me to breathe better at night.

Two years ago in April of 2013, when I was told that my airway was one quarter the size it should have been, and that this was so because my maxilla and mandible were not far forward enough, I immediately recalled the first appointment I had with the orthodontist, during which he told me that my upper jaw was overgrown, and that we would have to restrict its growth with headgear.  I recalled his statement that there were no alternatives other than extractions, and no side-effects other than an overgrowing lower jaw which could easily be corrected and happened rarely.  After recalling that, I began searching scholarly journals for the negative effects of headgear and growth restriction and I discovered that since the mid 1900s, cervical headgear was under controversy due its ability to cause the maxilla and mandible to grow downward and backwards, unpredictably.  I found journals that were decades old, in which orthodontists stated that cervical headgear did more harm than good, and referred to the side effects as "disastrous."  I then learned that the orthodontic profession was divided into camps, those who favored headgear and those who did not, and that there were alternatives to headgear at the time that did not rely on growth restriction as a means of alleviating crowded teeth and undergrown mandibles. I also discovered orthodontic journals dating back to the early 1900’s, in which the practitioner and writer states that a poorly or backwardly grown maxilla can cause an upper airway obstruction, and that this could both change the shape of a person’s face for the worse by forcing them to be an oral breather, and wreak havoc on their health through poor breathing during sleep and constant fatigue.  More alarming, I found a 1986 paper published out of the University of British Columbia by an orthodontist named Dr. Allan Lowe, who is now the head of the UBC Orthodontic Division.  In his paper, he states that a tell-tale sign of sleep apnea is a backwardly positioned maxilla and mandible, and a steep occlusal plane, which we know are clinically observed and documented side effects of cervical headgear. 

Dr. Lowe’s paper was a surprise to me.  I thought to myself:

“My orthodontist must to have known about Dr. Lowe’s work.  They worked together.  He also must have known about the controversy of cervical headgear and the observed side effects of a backwardly grown maxilla and mandible and steepened occlusal plane.  He had to have known about some of the papers that connected disordered breathing to a backwardly positioned and constricted maxilla.  Was he concealing this from his patients, or was he not even checking?”

I also thought about his use of fixed-width upper and lower Hawley retainers that adolescents wear during their growth spurt years. I have since learned that they are designed to restrict the lateral growth of the jaws so that the teeth remain where the orthodontist put them.  If the jaws can't widen, what happens to the growing airway?

I also discovered a set of papers that analyzed the craniofacial growth of a child, and the conclusions are that the upper jaw comes out first, followed by the lower jaw that grows roughly one and a half times faster than the upper jaw during adolescence.  In other words, children can be naturally buck-toothed and that this tends to correct itself over time.  If orthodontists know this, why are recommending treatment for a normal part of facial growth? 

I then called a few dentists I knew, and asked about my orthodontist's reputation.  I was told that he was “old school, and definitely a ‘headgear’ man”.  I also discovered that the orthodontic industry is made up of camps - the “headgear" and "no-headgear" camps, and the "expansionist" and “extractionist" camps, among possible others.  I then started contacting orthodontists all over the world, and I discovered that these camps have literally been at war with each other, and I came to the conclusion that those in the "headgear" camp had to have known about the side effects pointed out by the opposing camps, and can only be in deliberate denial towards their patients in order to maintain their methods, otherwise, if they were transparent about the known side effects, no patient would consent to the corresponding treatment.  In regards to those in the "no headgear” camp, the reason they stopped using headgear is exactly because of its observed side effects – a backwardly positioned maxilla and mandible. 

 Little did I know, that there was a war going on in medicine in which children bore the casualties.

Every day, I wonder how many kids have a major portion of their lives mapped out in one meeting with an orthodontist who either isn’t aware of the damage his work can do, or chooses to ignore the calls of his peers, and then hides these calls from patients.  All in the name of what?

I also question why our society deems growth restriction of the jaws to be an acceptable practice.  If a doctor told you that your child’s feet were too big and needed to be restricted with metal foot-gear, how would react  What if a doctor told you that your child’s ribcage was too wide, and needed to be restricted with a metal corset?  I’m almost sure you would understand that this process would destroy a child, because the heart, lungs and other organs within the rib cage are growing.  Is restricting the maxilla by banding it against the back of the neck any different than restricting any other body part?  Just as the ribcage holds vital growing organs, so does the space between the neck and the maxilla. Within that are arteries, veins and nerves connected to the brain, the pituitary gland, the tongue, and most importantly, the airway. I cannot imagine that restricting the space of a growing airway, or any growing part of a child, could ever be healthy.

I believe that an orthodontist’s use of any growth stunting appliance cannot be rooted in common sense.  I also believe the correction of bucked-teeth is based on a myth - that the upper jaw can overgrow.  To convince a patient to receive orthodontic treatment which restricts growth, the practitioner must convince the patient of a lie.  To sell the lie, he must first convince himself of the lie.  Welcome to university.  Not all lies are the same, and this one is particularly dangerous because obstructing a person's airway can kill them.  I believe this practice needs to stop, once and for all.  It's been 100 years too long. 

I have since started Right to Grow. It is an organization with a mission to ban growth restriction on children.

The 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, states in Principle 2: 

The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall be given opportunities and facilities, by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration.”

Does restricting the normal growth of a child’s upper jaw allow him to develop physically in a normal manner?

On November 20th, 1989 the International Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted as a binding treaty by 176 nations at the UN General Assembly.  It was based on the 1959 declaration.  This new document states in Article 6.2:

States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.”

In Article 24.3, it states:

States Parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children.”

How many more children need to suffer as a result of having their natural growth impeded, before we can abolish from our society what needs to be abolished?

If you want to take action, print out the research on this website along with Article 24.3, and feel free to use my story.  Present it to your local government representative.  Get in touch with your local parent-teacher association.  Make live presentations to those groups in school gyms.  Go to community organizations, ask them if you can present to an audience of parents.  You don't have to be a doctor or an orthodontist to have a say here.  The information contained in the "Research" section speaks for itself and you can use it.  The scientific papers it refers to were written by doctors and orthodontists.  Parents, more than anybody, need to know where and when their kids are at risk.

If you know a healthcare professional who stands by what has been said here, get them to write a letter of support.  That will only add more credibility to an effort to change our laws.

If you have a similar story, write in.  If you know of any other people who have similar stories, and I’m sure there are many, get them to write in.  The more stories we have, the more power we have to move forward.

I can be contacted at [email protected]

Sincerely,

Omar Lalani

 

To give you an idea of how dangerous orthodontic growth stunting is, and what vertical and backward growth of the face looks like here is my face the summer before I started wearing headgear.

The next picture is me about two years ago.

 pre_treatment.JPG

omar_face_after_ortho.PNG

Showing 196 reactions

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  • Dawn Turmenne
    commented 2020-09-24 18:35:12 -0700
    I aced my physics as well as anatomy & physiology classes in college while earning my Bachelor of Science degree, so I’m pretty good at visualization in regards to movement, placement and the human body, and what you are saying doesn’t make any physical sense.
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-09-24 18:11:43 -0700
    Dawn, you see their front teeth separating because their posterior teeth are being leaned outward toward the cheeks, not because the bone has been grown wider. There are these sturdy little things called the zygomas, in additional to the fused palatal suture, that makes maxillary expansion possible. Mandible circumference increase is impossible in adults. There are no active growth center in the anterior mandible. The condylar growth centers have long shut down. Can you provide us an article FROM A REFEREED, PEER-REVIEWED SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL proving that maxillary and mandibular growth is possible in human adults?
  • Dawn Turmenne
    commented 2020-09-24 15:07:45 -0700
    By the way, Kim, peoples’ jaws DO expand without surgery when they are adults! Look at all the people who wear expanders where you can SEE their front teeth separating because the bones are separating! Unbelievable how little you know! Also, I don’t know who would bother sending you hate mail when you do a pretty good job of making a fool of yourself right here in front of everyone!
  • Dawn Turmenne
    commented 2020-09-24 14:57:17 -0700
    Kim wrote “There is no better educator than one’s own failures. The amusing thing to me is…” I’m SO GLAD someone ELSE’S failures educated ME in the WORST WAY possible!!!!!! I’m glad this is so amusing to you, Kim, that innocent people get hurt by OTHER’S mistakes!
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-09-16 17:36:25 -0700
    Sam,

    Believe it or not, last time I put my e-mail address on this forum I got some hate mail. Therefore, go to my webpage www.KimHenryDental.com, and send e-mail via the link there. It will be forwarded to me.
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-16 15:52:33 -0700
    Dr Kim,

    Please may I have your email address?

    Best wishes

    Sam E
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-14 19:32:39 -0700
    Dr Kim,

    Perhaps it would be better for other viewers to discuss your case particulars by e-mail, don’t you think?

    Thank you for your time, I agree.
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-09-14 18:34:55 -0700
    Nobody can grow your lower jaw forward, or anyone else’s for that matter. In males, most growth finishes at the condylar growth centers at about age 15. I had a 19 year-old stepdaughter who went through a late growth spurt, during which her mandible grew forward about 2mm. (She also grew half a shoe size.) Such growth is extremely rare.

    So your orthodontist was correct. Your jaw cannot be “grown” in adulthood other than by orthographic surgery, which is pretty traumatic.

    I got personal correspondence from an orthodontist today that said he did lateral expansion of the maxilla in a 30-year-old female. The palatal suture was apparently not fused. She felt severe pressure under her eye sockets. How risky this was. One woman in California died trying this. Apparently this patient’s zygomas were able to flex enough to make it happen. Again, it is very rare.

    To my knowledge, there is no surgery to widen the mandible in adults or children. Even if you could widen the maxilla in an adult, unless the mandible was too wide to start with, you could not make the mandible match.

    Perhaps participants on this forum think that the adult face is a malleable organ than can be reshaped easily. It isn’t. The final dimensions of the upper and lower head are fixed and inalterable without surgery. Even the ancient Inca realized if you wanted to custom shape the cranium, it had to be done as a growing child.

    Perhaps it would be better for other viewers to discuss your case particulars by e-mail, don’t you think?
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-14 08:42:07 -0700
    Dr Kim,

    What I can’t get my head around is that I was told by my previous orthodontist when I came back to ask about why my face had gone so wrong, that he couldn’t grow my jaw forward. But his solution to my problems now is to have jaw surgery to move it forward. How is this not a hustle? I honestly feel like a jackass.
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-13 13:28:10 -0700
    Addressing your first point,

    I never had headgear, they just removed the teeth. Then told me I needed braces to correct my smile. As you have pointed out not all treatments are equal.

    Addressing your second point,

    I’m sorry to hear about your wife, autoimmune issues are really scary. I hope your wife’s condition improves.
    My point was mainly directed at the face, it has been universally established the face is effected by the teeth and jaws so I used feel when I was a bit younger and much more vain..haha. That it makes sense to come to the conclusion that something isn’t right when your tongue is the size of a boogie board, your teeth resemble horses, your zygomatic’s go from being wide and prominent to then being as flat as a frying pan and your nose dwarfs your entire face. Call me crazy if you want but I know for fact there was a time when I didn’t have the issue, and I’ m not entirely convinced that was never supposed to have it either regardless of ‘genetics’ fortunate or not.
    I have heard of those people, I don’t share their views at all. I like women and don’t feel at all entitled to anything from them much less their hearts, minds and bodies. Whereas most of them really don’t like women regardless of whether they have right stuff or not.
    This is personal to me, It will make me happy if I can at least make it better. :)
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-09-13 12:52:37 -0700
    Again you mistake what was probably done in your mouth. In very crowded cases, the 1st premolars were extracted. ANCHORAGE headgear was used to hold the molars were they were, while the anteriors were decrowded. Then the anterior segment + 2nd premolars were united, and the molars brought FORWARD to burn any unwanted space. The jaws are typically never “pushed back” at all!

    As you say, health problems sometimes take years to crop up. My wife’s auto-immune problems did not start to show up until about age 45. Too bad she did not have extraction orthodontics back when she was a child. She could have blamed her auto-immune problems on orthodontics!

    It is rare, but sometimes males have a late growth spurt as old as 20 or even 21. However, the vast majority are done with skeletal growth by age 16 or so.

    When you get done with your orthodontics, post accurate occlusal view photos of your upper and lower arches. Then we can really see how much, if any, arch expansion of palatal bone was achieved.

    Sometimes look up the term “Incel.” It is short for involuntarily celibate males. These socially mal-adept males are always blaming bad looks for their bad luck with females. Many are going to extreme lengths to modify their faces with orthodontics and plastic surgery. Sad thing is, their personalities don’t change, and they still cannot get girls after their surgeries!
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-13 12:32:25 -0700
    The amusing thing to me is that a certain market segment of humans is titillated by quack claims and conspiracy theory, and rush to patronize dentists peddling such nonsense. I guess a fault some humans have is to be inordinately suspicious. If it were not so sad, it would be hilarious reading about so many patients blaming sleep problems, forward tongue posture, sinus infections, nasal blockages, and a variety of unrelated problems on orthodontics performed many years ago.

    From what I have observed degenerative health issues take time surface, if a maladaptive pattern is created and cultivated over time then health issues will appear. E.G (poor nutrition, chronic sedentary behaviour)
    I have observed in my case that removing teeth and then deliberately pushing the jaws back and down shows its full damage in time. (Again only in my case) Going back to my point on remodelling, my face continued to get worse after the age 17, I started my re-treatement at age 27, I’m now 28 and there is some improvement.
    Humans place an enormous amount of identity on their faces. I would imagine that the delicacy of this issue would cause most to become deeply disturbed and desperate for answers. I should continue looking.
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-09-13 11:21:16 -0700
    Sam,

    It is true that businesses exist to make money for the owner(s). It is not for altruistic reasons that most dentists do orthodontics. It is to earn money to feed their families. This is true of myself.

    Bad results will eventually out dentists who use voodoo therapy to straighten teeth. In my lifetime, I have seen better orthodontic results from some dentists than others. (Lately, I have seen catastrophic results from clear aligner therapy by general dentists who only took a weekend course!) After 33 years of straightening teeth, my results are better now than they were at the beginning. Ditto for all the other treatment I perform. There is no better educator than one’s own failures.

    The amusing thing to me is that a certain market segment of humans is titillated by quack claims and conspiracy theory, and rush to patronize dentists peddling such nonsense. I guess a fault some humans have is to be inordinately suspicious. If it were not so sad, it would be hilarious reading about so many patients blaming sleep problems, forward tongue posture, sinus infections, nasal blockages, and a variety of unrelated problems on orthodontics performed many years ago.
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-13 07:37:55 -0700
    Dr Kim,

    I am not trying to shoot the messenger, every industry and business is built around making money.
    Now that I have had the privilege of being alive for this long, it doesn’t surprise me that I ‘’have been had’’ In this life it is what you can do for you, not what others do for you or in this case to you.
    I appreciate your help.
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-13 07:15:49 -0700
    Dr KIm,

    I don’t agree, the treatment I am having now is expanding the jaws. And it is non surgical procedure, using a Damon appliance, oral posture and correct nutrition. Remodelling bone happens throughout your entire lifespan, it stands to reason you could achieve more space , however I agree the results would be limited due to the treatments in past being counter intuitive to my ‘genetics’
    We don’t live in a society that caters for human genetics and so that argument doesn’t have a lot to stand on.
    In regards to the celebrities I have mentioned, the point I was making is that in alot of the cases the treatments work well and are in sync with how everything is supposed to grow. So I am confused as why mine was done so badly and left me in such a pitiful state.
    My previous treatments took my teeth out to reduce space in my overcrowded mouth thus negatively effecting my face and then braces where put on to purposely push my jaws back and down. Please tell me how any of that treatment makes any sense?? None of that is remotely close to how humans are suppose to function. Surely just expanding my jaws when I was diagnosed with overcrowding then growing my jaws forward would have been a better solution?
    The amount of suffering that it has brought me has been very horrible indeed, The worst part is that I payed good money for it all, I trusted these people who have hurt me badly both physically and psychologically, I am not trying to attack you personally Dr Kim. I appreciate you don’t have much to go on other than what I have said.
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-09-13 05:59:32 -0700
    Sam, no matter what you believe, NO ONE can “expand the jaws” in adults once the palatal suture is fused. This usually happens about age 17. NO AMOUNT OF MONEY will make non-surgical palatal expansion happen. Even if some celebrity paid big bucks for the rough surgery of having the palate cracked in two and separated, NO SUCH EQUIVALENT SUGERY EXISTS FOR THE MANDIBLE. Once skeletal growth is completed, the only way to gain space to straighten teeth is:

    1. Extract teeth, usually premolars.
    2. Sand the sides of teeth to make them narrower.
    3. Flare the teeth outward in the arch, which is rarely stable.
    4. Even if you could get a young adult to wear headgear 24 hours a day, you couldn’t gain more than 2-3mm of space in the upper arch.

    The above are why nearly every adult case requires severe compromise. Many child cases require compromise, also! It is hard to get around what we are gifted by genetics.

    These are the FACTS!
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-09-13 01:11:25 -0700
    Yes, celebrities have because NOWADAYS they usually do it RIGHT, especially if you’re paying BIG BUCKS like celebrities can! Now they EXPAND the jaws rather than extracting teeth and pushing the mouth back. People in Omar’s time and mine (before his) were the guinea pigs!

    This is truth Dawn. Our society is built on money, keep the patients coming back.
  • Stephanie Wei
    commented 2020-08-19 15:36:52 -0700
    Thank you so much for sharing Omar. It is very comforting to know that others understand what I have been trying so hard to explain to my doctors…without much luck.

    Has anyone here gotten corrective jaw surgery to fix this? If so, could you please describe the process of finding the right doctor and going through your consultation?
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-08-12 18:01:00 -0700
    AIRWAYS SHOULD Be consider in any type of orthodontic treatment.Bigger the airways better the face and health”

    Even back in 1986 when I began treating orthodontic courses, we assessed airways visually and on the ceph x-ray. Nowadays we can use CAT scans as well. You see, many kids had airway obstructions BEFORE orthodontics that got worse with time, with or without braces. Even back then we often sent kids to ENTs for treatment before ortho. But realistically, even ENTs cannot achieve nasal breathing all the time because of chronic allergies. It may not be practical to remove chronic swollen nasal turbinates in kids.

    I have said it before and I will say it again: orthodontics, extraction or not, exert a trivial effect on airway patency.

    It is simply not true that we dental clinicians have been ignorant about airway problems. We ALWAYS consider airway in treatment in the USA. I cannot speak for British dentistry.
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-08-12 17:54:08 -0700
    “Apologies for my late reply. I have had all of my pre treatment in the united kingdom. The treatment for my recovery is also being done in the united kingdom.
    I assume the implants will be used when I have created enough space in my mouth for them to replace the extracted teeth?”

    Sorry John, the mods locked me out of replying to this forum for awhile. Well, there has to be enough room for implants to place them. A difficult task is figuring out where the rest of the teeth should end up, to know where to place the implant, which can never be moved. Once in the bone, however, the implant can be used to push or pull teeth in the arch. It is the best anchorage an orthodontist could ever have.
  • Kim Henry
    commented 2020-08-12 17:49:47 -0700
    By “reverse swallowing” I guess you mean tongue thrust swallowing. Tongue thrust swallowing is easily diagnosed, but difficult to impossible to correct, unless treated very early.
  • Bjorn
    commented 2020-08-12 01:39:59 -0700
    Extractions and growth restriction of face is the cause of dished up face. Orthodontist should address the cause of crooked teeth like reverse swallowing which i had as a child causing my crooked teeth ,low tongue posture,mouth breathing.Then extraction made it worse.The problem is not crooked teeth,problem is causes of crooked teeth.In regular life i see so many people with crooked teeth but healthy jaw and face . GROWTH RESTRICTION BY EXTRACTIONS AND ANY OTHER RESTRICTIVE METHOD SHOULD BE BANNED.AIRWAYS SHOULD Be consider in any type of orthodontic treatment.Bigger the airways better the face and health.
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-08-12 01:21:24 -0700
    Emma watson is the same age as me and had her braces during childhood.
    Angelina Jolie is over 20 years my senior and had her braces during childhood.

    I think the main variable for this problem is the tooth loss. I can agree think it depends on who treats you. Luck of the draw I guess.
  • Dawn Turmenne
    commented 2020-08-11 15:18:12 -0700
    Yes, celebrities have because NOWADAYS they usually do it RIGHT, especially if you’re paying BIG BUCKS like celebrities can! Now they EXPAND the jaws rather than extracting teeth and pushing the mouth back. People in Omar’s time and mine (before his) were the guinea pigs!
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-08-11 14:03:20 -0700
    There are so many celebrities who have had braces with no negative effect on their face.
  • Dawn Turmenne
    commented 2020-08-03 15:44:00 -0700
    John, I got the extraction/retraction braces shebang when I was 12, and I didn’t know what went wrong back then, but it was a harder life from then on, breathing, sleeping, socializing. I still had friends, just not loads of them, just a few very good and very close friends after that. Luckily, in college, I got to date a good amount of guys, too, so there’s that, and one guy I dated over 5 years that I’ll never forget even though he’s not the guy I married. ANYWAY, specifically, without internet back then I had NO IDEA what happened to me, so I just stuck with working hard and studying hard. I got a B.S. degree, but not in the field I’d started in in college. See, I have a neuropathy WHICH DIDN’T TURN UP UNTIL AFTER THE BRACES AND THE SUBSEQUENT BREATHING/ SLEEPING ISSUES! I NOW believe after all the (late in life research I’ve done that the 2 are inextricably linked; a trauma and a serious lack of sleep CAN exacerbate any illness you may have had a pre-disposition for. I learned this BEFORE I was even thinking of myself; I was studying to become an Occupational Therapist back then, and dreaming of helping others. Meanwhile, I had a serious foot drop due to the neuropathy which would cause me to fall once in a blue 🌙, but I would quickly get up, embarrassed, before too many people saw me. So, even though I ACED classes like Neurology, Anatomy and Physiology, and Biomechanics, when it came to the Field Works after FOUR YEARS of excellent grades, I kept falling. The foot drop gets worse with nervousness and lack of sleep! And when had these sleep issues started? 9 years before after the “wonderful” orthodontics that people like Kim still call harmless!!!
    Anyway, if I get on that track, my whole body shakes with anger or nerves or whatever, so I won’t. Despite that horrible adventure, I took a couple more classes to geta student- initiated major in Health&Wellness, receiving my B.S. with THAT title on it, instead (of O.T.)
    Not to beat a dead 🐎, but I still persevered and got some fairly decent work with(at the tine) health insurance so when I got married and had my son, I was the one who initially provided health insurance for him through my pregnancy and when he was young. Then we all got laid off and our jobs went overseas and I lost the health insurance.
    John, you asked how it was in my 30s and 40s, and because of my son, life was good at times, and I did everything to make him happy, decorating his baby room, reading to him daily until grade school, home schooling him for 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 1pth, but the hardest thing is I have TONS of pictures of hi., but a large amount WITHOUT me in them because I was embarrassed of how I looked because of what happened to me with the extractions, etc. That, and having small parties for him because I didn’t trust too many people not to mock my looks, yes, all these years later. Those things make life hard, and despite how hard I tried to make things fun for my son, taking him on trips around the country, my lack of confidence in my looks makes things difficult, to say the least. I’d been telecommuting for 5 years before this whole COVID thing started, and all my customers love me, but if I were face to face with them like when I was a Home Health Aide while in college, I would be so uncomfortable. I love telecommuting for that reason.
    Well, I’ve talked your ear off. I’ve had some really great times, especially while in college, but I had to be a really thin, active girl to get the fun I wanted. So, I guess people have to make up for what happened to them even if it wasn’t their fault, and it helped me have fun! Okay, I’ll let you go. Have a good night.
  • Bjorn
    commented 2020-08-02 21:45:44 -0700
    Dawn you can use any orthodontic appliance to get proper sleep.Remember one thing in the end noone remembers the face,they remember the person you have became,the work you have done here.When i was 18 i was so wrong and innocent but then my face changed in 2 years ,then i came to know about extraction and mouth breathing,i went in depression,but believe me that phase changed and evolved me.And now i am healing little by little.The problem with us is that our problems are visible to others that damaged face and we care about that way to much.
    And Dawn can you tell me how it feels with that orthodontic treatment in 30s and 40s .
  • Dawn Turmenne
    commented 2020-08-02 19:31:59 -0700
    John, You’re right. I started suffering difficulty breathing while sleeping at age 12 ONLY AFTER the extraction and retraction orthodontics. I’m 50 now and it’s only gotten worse with time!!! I can’t believe your name is the same as Dr. John Mew, founder of Orthotropics! Is that just your alias? Either way, YES; you are right; it affects you your whole life, and if you live in the U.S., like I do, it’s VERY HARD to get health insurance to cover the necessary treatment to reopen your airway. That’s why I haven’t been able to get any relief other than my own breathing exercises and other exercises I prescribe myself. I can’t afford to even see a doctor, and haven’t for years.
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-08-02 14:12:19 -0700
    John mew

    I can agree with you, I have been through some terrible things in my life. Nothing comes close to this.
  • Sam Elsmore
    commented 2020-07-31 09:02:42 -0700
    Dr Kim,

    Apologies for my late reply. I have had all of my pre treatment in the united kingdom. The treatment for my recovery is also being done in the united kingdom.
    I assume the implants will be used when I have created enough space in my mouth for them to replace the extracted teeth?

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