Talking about the real cause of breathing problems the things we can take into account may be sleep apnea, snoring, and also all sorts of sinus problems. There’s a really interesting book called “Breath: The new science of a lost Art” by James Nestor.
If you combine the data in this book with the data from Weston Price’s book you will come up with a really good solution for breathing problems. The author did some really interesting research from all over the world on indigenous cultures. Being a dentist he looked at the teeth and found some fascinating data.
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Huge difference in our teeth
If you compare older cultures, who actually ate a lot healthier versus the modern civilized culture that we live in today, there will be a huge difference in our teeth.
For instance, when you start studying ancient skulls, you can see that they had their wisdom teeth. But nowadays people just remove their wisdom teeth. In addition to this, they had really good straight teeth, good facial bones, a wider face, and good bone structure. But nowadays our face is becoming thinner, people are having nasal septum deviation which they need surgery for.
Braces are also normal. It’s kind of weird that we need them because our teeth are crooked. This fact may be the reason that people are having sleep apnea and snoring.
Talking about the difference between what we used to do and what we do now James Nestor focuses more on the lack of chewing. Nowadays everything is soft foods like soups, guacamole, hummus, dips. Our steak has to be very tender. We don’t consume a lot of vegetables. We don’t chew a lot, especially young kids, where the only thing they chew is probably bubble gum.
So James Nestor is focusing on the lack of chewing, but Weston Price is focusing more on nutrition. If you look at the indigenous cultures they’re doing a lot of whole foods to be nutritionally dense (learn more about The 2 BEST Foods for Your Teeth and Gums). And it’s the trace minerals that activate the proteins that help to build our bones as well as the vitamins and activate the minerals that make our bones structurally sound.
If you have a nutritional deficiency, the actual structure the size of the bones will not fully develop. In other words, if you never chew well and are constantly being fed soft foods, you don’t activate the muscles to make the bones structurally sound like the rest of your body.
If you want to build a strong back you can’t do it without activating the muscles right. So you have to do certain exercises to strengthen the muscles and bones, because they’re attached through ligaments.
The real cause of breathing problems
As far as the face goes the main muscle is the articulation in your jaw. And if you’re not chewing enough you’re not going to activate the muscles around your face.
That’s why the real problem boils down to one thing – our mouth is too small for our teeth. If there’s not enough space for the teeth to grow, it comes out sideways, forward, and back. So we don’t have room for these extra teeth, called the wisdom teeth. And if our mouth is smaller, our airway passages are also going to be smaller and that is going to restrict our breathing. That means people will need to make the airways more open surgically. Although wild animals don’t have crooked teeth and don’t need braces at all. That’s because they do a lot of chewing and eat food that their bodies were meant to eat.
What you can do
These are some recommendations to help the breathing:
- Get your kids off the refined foods and get them to start chewing foods more.
- To help you breathe better start to do nose breathing, which is a lot better than mouth breathing it will help you to force your body to get more oxygen.
- Start chewing your food longer. For example, consuming salad in large quantities like seven to ten cups. It’s much useful chewing vegetables without blending into a green drink. Start chewing your food, because if you’re going to chew seven to ten cups of salad and just take the time to chew it, you will develop your jaw muscles. When you spend your time chewing a steak, for example, you’re strengthening your muscles and remodeling your jaw muscles, face muscles and that’s going to create more oxygen and you’re going to have more of an opening through your mouth. Eating celery and carrots may also be helpful.
- Fat-soluble vitamins like Vitamin D, and Vitamin K2 are both crucial for the fat cycle and control calcium. You need plenty of calcium in the right places to form teeth in your jaw. In other words, don’t go on a low-fat diet so this includes eggs, egg yolk, cheese (not the low-fat cheese), fatty fish, fatty meat, and grass-fed butter.
- Avoid processed food and refined carbohydrates. People are deficient in trace minerals, like nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous, and the safest way to get them is by eating seafood.
Learn more
How to have strong and healthy teeth: Easy tips for a flawless smile
My personal observation with my husband who started snoring within the last 10 or so years ( I also suspect sleep apnea). Every time his weight drops the snoring and sinus issues resolve. When he gains over a certain threshold the symptoms start again.