At birth all babies are obligate nasal breathers. This is because it would be fatal for them in the womb if they inhaled amniotic fluid. However many of them subsequently develop short or long-term nasal obstruction and are forced to breathe through their mouth. For some this is temporary, but for others it develops into […]
My father taught me the advantages of maxillary expansion which in his day was routine for 5 year olds unless they could place a 2mm coin between each front tooth, but when I graduated 30 years later, I was taught not to expand as it always relapsed. However the research of Skieller in 1964, using […]
As you all know, every patient attending for treatment should be informed about both the advantages and disadvantages of every treatment. This is not as easy as it sounds and we must be careful not to pass our own convictions on to patients without mentioning any drawbacks. For instance almost all orthodontics these days is […]
Precis. Diagnosis for orthotropics is very different from orthodontics. You are measuring the shape of the face and deciding what has caused any unattractive features. An orthotropist needs to learn how to recognise poor development and decide on the best way to correct it which is almost always to encourage forward growth of the Maxilla […]
Facial appearance is hugely important for everyone’s success in life. Mothers often feel their child’s face is God given and should be accepted, however many teenagers are more concerned about their facial appearance than anything else. I have done a lot of research on facial form and in one project I traced the changes that […]
After I had conceived the Tropic Premise’ I started to apply it to many aspects of human development especially of course the face. I found that lay people could usually understand the concept of Growth Guidance quite easily but dentists had more difficulty and I found many orthodontists quite unable to grasp the concept. I […]
Orthotropics 3. Tropic Premise Why do human jaws and teeth often have poor growth when other parts of the body are rarely affected? Occasionally a child will have ‘Club Feet’ or perhaps ‘an extra finger” but in contrast, more than half will have malocclusion. I was much impressed by the research of Horowitz on Identical […]
If we apply the “Cell Volition Theory” to human growth we need to remember the importance of ‘position’ or in its long-term context ‘posture’, as this is what enables the cells to grow naturally to the right place with no pushing or pulling. I was taught that during evolution the genes changed slightly over the […]
Before we talk about the best way to correct malocclusion we should really discuss why it occurs and before even that we should think about what creates a good occlusion. This means looking at growth and how all organisms grow from a single cell. In 1958, I was very interested in John Gurdon’s experiments with […]
