Latest / Motherhood Alliance Podcast / Mouth Breathing: The Quiet Habit Causing Big Problems w/ Amanda LaPean | Chin Up Myo Therapy
Transcript
- Britney Suttner: Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. We are super excited to have Amanda sitting here with us. Welcome Amanda. Amanda: Good morning. Thank you. Super excited to be here. Britney Suttner: We are super excited to have you because we are going to be talking about having four different episodes with you. They're all going to be kind of related, but they are actually all pretty unique. In this episode, we're starting out talking about mouth breathing. And for those of you who have been following us for a while, we have had a couple episodes about mouth breathing, but I think this is going to be like even deeper than what we've covered in the past regarding what are the detriments to mouth breathing? And then guess what? Episode two, ⁓ going to be bringing like the hope back into your life as we're talking about nose breathing. And so Hi, we are Britt Andrea from motherhoodalliance.com and we are excited to welcome you to a new four episode series with Amanda Lapine, a myofunctional therapist, massage therapist with advanced training in facial work, dental hygienist, wife and mom of two teen boys. She's also the founder of Chin Up, where she helps kids and adults get to the root cause of issues like poor sleep, snoring, crowded teeth, mouth breathing, jaw pain and chronic muscle tension. What sets Amanda apart is that she even goes beyond the mouth, integrating massage and fascial work to create deeper, longer lasting results. Through her virtual and in-person practice, she's known for her fun, simplified and positive approach and her ability to connect the dots in a way that finally makes sense for families. And we are excited to introduce her to you now. Let's get started with today's episode. The way that we have these episodes structured, I think we're going to be getting a little bit deeper than in the past. So I think this, I'm really excited to have another episode or series that's dedicated to talking about this because still not that many families know about it. Before we jump into our topic though, we always love to get to know our new guest a little bit. And Amanda, you shared with us that you are a beekeeper. You love making sourdough and you enjoy fly fishing. So these are all kind of unique and fun. Tell us about how you found these hobbies. Amanda: Yeah, so beekeeping is probably my latest passion. I got into beekeeping. I had a friend who couldn't work her hives herself. So a people don't know when you look at bee hives, a single square box can weigh up to 70 or 80 pounds. And so as people age, it gets to be a challenge of how do you actually take your hives apart? So I offered to help somebody with their hive and after about two or three times going out there helping them, I thought this is so cool. I've always loved bees, love honey, and I thought it was so intriguing. It's kind of like playing a game of chess with bees. They're incredibly smart. It's trying to stay ahead of where they're at to keep them happy and in their hive. So that's why I started beekeeping. Yeah. Britney Suttner: So fun. Our dad does bees as well. we have not helped him. Well, we've, yeah, we've helped him, process the honey at the end, but we have not gone out and helped him move the actual hives, but our kids have gotten some education from him. So that's really fun. All right. What about Sourdough? When did you get into this? ⁓ Andrea Renkas: They're fascinating. Amanda: You know, I just love baking. have always baked. If I want to procrastinate or if I'm stressed, I will be in the kitchen baking something. And I thought sourdough is a pretty healthy option compared to making a lot of desserts. And I just find it so therapeutic doing hands on work. So I typically bake probably two to four loaves of bread every single week. So friends and neighbors are really lucky. They always just get bread arriving on their doorstep. Yeah. Andrea Renkas: ⁓ man, they are lucky. Britney Suttner: Where do you live again? No, I'm kidding. You don't have to say that, but we all, we all would love a loaf. All right. And then fly fishing. feel like this is the most unique one. How did you get into it and how often do you actually get to do it? Amanda: Yeah. You know, we have a cabin up north. So I grew up on Inland Lakes, mostly pan fishing. I have a husband, two teenage boys, and mothers follow their kids hobbies to stay involved in their lives. So I found myself on the water fishing a lot. My younger son loves to northern and muskie fish. So I am not big on northern and muskie fishing. It's not my jam, but I thought hey if I can be on the lake let me do my own style of fishing. If you can tell from beekeeping, sourdough bread making, I'm a hobbyist. I love to figure out things that are really difficult and intricate and that's what fly fishing is. It's just a really fun challenge. I love nature. I love being outside. I love rivers, the big rocks, moss, walking by fern. Like the whole nature bathing piece that's getting real trendy. I always knew like that's what calms me and that's what fly fishing is to me. It's really taking a walk on a river and if you catch a fish that's just about us. Britney Suttner: That's so fun. You're inspiring me because my son is obsessed with fishing and he wants the big fighters. He's only gone muskie fishing once, I'm like, ⁓ it's just, fishing's not my favorite necessarily, but I'm like you, I love to be out in nature. Maybe I should take up fly fishing. You might have to teach me. ⁓ Andrea Renkas: Yeah, I was going to say teach me too. Interesting. Yeah. Yep. Amanda: Absolutely, we'll hang out. Britney Suttner: All right, well, let's learn a little bit about your story, Amanda. How did you get started in myofunctional therapy in the first place? Amanda: Yeah, so it's kind of a long crazy journey and I think it's one of those things at some point in time you take all your skills and hobby and put them together in one thing. So initially I was or still am a massage therapist. That's what I went to school for first. Physical therapy always intrigued me. I listened to a guidance counselor when I graduated from high school who said, hey, it's not a great time to enter the profession. It's not stable. And I followed their advice and show something else. So knowing I loved muscle and the body and how it all works, I thought, you know, you can't go wrong with massage. You're learning all the fundamental pieces. So when I was working as a massage therapist, I was young and I had no health insurance. So I started to work actually as a CNA. And in the facility I was at, I always hung out with a physical therapist, my role models. And they all said, you know what, if we would go back to school, we would all be dental hygienists. They make similar pay, they have better hours. And I thought, hey, if this is what all my role models want to do, why would I not? So I became a dental hygienist. So I spent over 20 years in the dental field. And it was one of the best experiences actually. I, looking back, I didn't realize it then, but one of the first dentists I worked for is out on Ripon. He really was an early centric dentist. ⁓ it wasn't common, and you didn't call him that. But I can remember over 20 years ago, him talking about lip taping with patients ⁓ the importance of how we breathe at night. ⁓ And I did not understand the ramifications or what he was doing at that time because I didn't have the education. And it wasn't talked about in hygiene and hygiene education. So being a dental hygienist, you see a lot of things that you know aren't right and you don't always have the solution and you don't always have the resources or the knowledge or someone to say, hey, this isn't right. This is what we can do about or go see this person. And so you don't say anything, but you know, like it's just not right or normal. And working with different dentists and learning more and the sharing of information, I learned about myofunctional therapy and I thought this is the missing piece. And so having a massage background, loving the body, it's It's basically putting that all together in my expertise area of oral care. So that's how I became a myofunctional therapist. I really just use my skills and follow my passion. I absolutely love it. Britney Suttner: I love that because you're talking about, well, with my functional therapy, understanding muscles and fascia and stuff like that is one aspect that you're going to need to learn. And then the other aspect is understanding the mouth and like the shape of the mouth. You learn that through like, just brought these all together for you into this career. So that's so perfect. All right, well, let's jump into today's topic of mouth breathing. I think by now a lot of people know mouth breathing is not the best, but we want to talk about why and have an understanding of Why so many people are doing it? What, what are the, like, how urgent is this? So I guess to start out, what, can you just go over kind of the role of the mouth and the role of the nose? And then why do you feel like mouth breathing is so common today? Amanda: So, mean, our mouths, they're made for eating. Our noses, they're made for breathing. And it sounds so simple. And if you ask anyone that, they know that fact. But when you stop to think about it, a lot of people don't realize they're not using these pieces as they're designed to be. You hear us talking about the symptoms and the problems a lot. You hear us talking about, well, whether it's my child or myself or my sleeping partner, ⁓ it's the symptoms. Are they snoring? Are they pausing when they're breathing? If you're seeing these things at night, well, definitely we need to look at daytime also. And I think biggest piece when we look at how the nose and the mouth work and how we're using them, it's going down to the root cause of it, and that is mouth breathing. And so that's where I want to pause right here and just have everyone just assess because the biggest piece is people always don't realize it. So if you're just sitting still, like just stop and freeze and think, are my lips gently touching each other? Where's my tongue? Is it? gently up on the roof of my mouth is the tip right behind my front teeth and where's where's the rest of my tongue is the middle and the back of the tongue also up on the roof of my mouth and then how's the air coming in and out of my nose is it a struggle right now did i quickly close my mouth thinking ⁓ let's get my lips attached like is it hard to breathe through our nose right now I ask people all the time, are you a mouth breather? Do you think ear comes in and out through your mouth more than your nose? And I see people actively sitting there with their mouths open breathing and they say, no, I don't think so. And I think a big piece is just self-awareness to realize how are we using how our body is made to and how does that fit together? Britney Suttner: so why do you think people, so many people, are mouth breathing these Is it because of structural challenges that makes it hard to breathe through their nose or is it because of habits that we've just had since we were young? Amanda: I really think it's compensation. Our bodies are intelligent. Our bodies are made for survival. So if you think of how long can our bodies go without food or water? I mean, fasting is really trendy right now. We know people can go up to three days without eating food, ⁓ trying to get health benefits. We can go a long time without food. What about movement? We can go a long time without movement. Think of a car ride. Yeah, we can get sore going for long car rides. we can go a long time without moving. But think about breathing. How long can you actually sit here and hold your breath? Not very long. So to me, when you look at breath, it's one of the most important survival pieces. And our body will do anything to make sure in some format, we're breathing. And one of the ways we do that is you'll see people instantly if our noses aren't working, our mouths will drop. And in order to get the proper amount in and out through our mouth, our head will start to come forward and our tongue will start to drop. And that's just a survival mechanism. And unfortunately, it becomes our habit then. Our body just starts to function differently to support this new habit just for survival. Britney Suttner: Okay, so as we're creating this habit, let's talk about why it matters. You just talked about your head coming forward in order to get the proper air in. So is that changing our posture? Let's start with your mouth. What does mouth breathing actually do and how does it impact the health of your mouth? Amanda: Yeah, so this is one of my strengths because working as a dental hygienist over the past years, one of the common things I had parents come with always is, my kid's getting cavities. Like, why are we still getting cavities? And a big piece of that is having a dry mouth. We don't have the proper saliva in our mouth that we should have when we're mouth breathing. Saliva does more good than what people realize in our mouths. It's a really good protectant. So our tooth is always in either a breaking down or rebuilding stage and saliva helps us in that rebuilding stage. We have calcium, we have phosphate. Those are the pieces that prevent cavities that are found in our saliva that rebuild our tooth. So if it's not there, we're getting cavities. It throws out throws off the peach balance in our mouth. So when our pH is off and our mouth is dry, we get bad breath. I see a lot of people who think they have gum disease and it's really just from severe dryness. Their gums bleed from how dry their tissues actually are in their mouth. You'll see lips start to crack. ⁓ You know, when you start to look outside of the mouth, you'll start to see really dark areas underneath your eyes. how we breathe ends up shaping our faces. Mouth breathers and especially young kids as we develop it for breathing through our mouths, we get a very long face and we get a very tucked chin. So it changes how we look when we mouth breathe. Britney Suttner: Hmm. Wow. That is so much. So even these are even symptoms that people could like recognize you're talking about bad breath and dry mouth feeling. And these could be symptoms to show them, Hey, you're mouth breathing. ⁓ And when don't even realize it, like you said, awareness, right? As you're talking about the different changes that happen in the mouth, it kind of comes to mind, like, can mouth breathing actually affect our taste buds and like our food preferences and with kids specifically, like picky eating, can that be related or is that kind of unrelated? Amanda: No, it's very related. You'll see when your mouth is more dry, your tissues are delicate, they're sensitive. So people will avoid strong flavors. Spicy food is one of those things. Spicy foods can burn a lot more inside of our mouth. avoid really crunchy or hard foods. ⁓ hard to chew and swallow when our mouth is really dry. So you'll see choking increase when this happens. we do get really selective on our food choices. Citrus things can burn, tomato things can cause sores right away because they're so acidic. And I think the biggest thing is when our mouth is dry and we try to stay away from spicy foods, strong flavors, textures, acidic foods, we're missing out on a lot of nutrients that we could get from eating a wide variety of these foods. And when you start to see kids be really selective, even adults with textures, this could be one of the reasons of why you would choose softer textures. Because of this, people will default to choosing sweet, salty, or really moist foods who are mouth breathers. And you look at how much we spend in staying healthy, our health care, our supplements, ⁓ how many things we invest in to stay healthy. And I always think if we can just breathe properly and improve our mouth breathing, this is a free way to stay healthy is being able to have a wide variety of things to eat that are good for us. Britney Suttner: Yeah. Well, that's, that's pretty interesting because I think a lot of people are struggling with picky eating with their kids. And at the same time, I also feel like kids these days are mouth breathing a lot. see so many kids that are mouth breathing and we're going to talk about, don't worry you guys, we're kind of talking about like the hard, the hard pieces, kind of the doom and gloom piece of what mouth bringing, mouth breathing can do to our bodies. But we are going to be wrapping this up throughout our four episodes of like, well, now what do you do about it? Right. talking about the positive things too. But I do want to stay on this because mouth breathing can have so many detrimental effects where it's not just where your air is going in and out. But this can actually affect not just your mouth area, like into your body. So how does this affect your ears, your gut, your brain, your body? What are some other ways that over time with this habit, mouth breathing affects us? Amanda: Yeah, so ears is a common one. People really struggle with having ear pressure, sinus infections, ear infections. It's one of those things you really have to look around and figure out why is this happening and it's so individualized. But when we mouth breathe, we miss out on a really good swallow. When we swallow, just swallow right now, you'll feel the pressure change through your ears and through your face. And so you see a lot more issues with mouth breathers because you don't have that pressure change. We can't regulate the inflammation. It's not flushing the fluid that gets built up and can be really painful. And so it can be a trigger for sinus infections, ear infections, and just ⁓ pain in general. Our ⁓ changes. So when you look, you know, it's really common to hear about babies if they're not latching well and they get really gassy. Well it doesn't end as an infant. As an adult if we're mouth breathing while we're eating we're swallowing a lot more air and we can get stomach aches as an adult because of that. We can get a lot more acid reflex as our bodies try to deal with this extra air in there. So those are some pieces that mouth breathing it's not just due to an age, it goes through our lifestyle that way. Britney Suttner: Yeah. And as you're talking about all these different things, I also think about, you talked about the head coming forward and just how much like neck tension and muscle tension that can create in your neck and shoulders and things like that. Andrea Renkas: I yeah this reminds me of the book Breathe by James Nestor too. Have you read I mean I assume that you've read that. ⁓ Amanda: ⁓ that's... It is a fantastic book. I think everyone should read it. It is such good knowledge. Andrea Renkas: Yeah. Yeah, well, and not only that, it's not just like droning at you about this, you know, how to breathe or whatever. He actually does studies on himself and like, you know, he, he does mouth breathing tests and things like that. It was just, it's a fascinating story. It really is. So definitely recommend that as well. ⁓ especially with sleep too, you know, and that's, I, when, and when you're talking about like, ear infections and things like that. So many parents see that with their kids. Just pay attention to how they're breathing. Like this is basic stuff and that could really trigger some understanding about how they're getting these kinds of issues. Amanda: Absolutely. I think it's always good just to stop and pause and think, how am I feeling? Whether it's daytime, whether it's nighttime, I think we naturally are good assessing that when we wake up because a lot of us wake up really tired. And that's a piece I always like to look at is how are we sleeping? Like, how do feel when you wake up in the morning? If you're not feeling well rested and energetic and ready for the day, It could be what happened while we were trying to sleep. So when we don't sleep good, it follows through during the daytime. We can get brain fogs. We can have low alertness. We can have a really hard time focusing. When kids are tired, they actually get very hyperactive. They get impulsive. We know we all get emotional when we're tired. We just don't handle our feelings very well. And so I think a big piece, especially with kids that I've worked with, is it's not always a behavior problem. Sometimes it's a breathing problem when you see these pieces coming through. If you look at ADHD, the symptoms, a lot of time poor sleep can check the same box and it overlaps with mouth breathing too. So... This is one the most fascinating pieces. And I love sharing this with teachers because they'll shake their head and they'll be like, yeah, I see this. So I'll tell teachers, like, watch the kiddo in the classroom. What kiddo fidgets the most? What kiddo moves around the most? What kiddo has the hardest time following direction? And they'll tell you. And I'll ask them, like, are they a mouth breather? And they'll be like, yeah. And I find that so interesting and teachers who don't realize it. I'm like it's not always a behavior. It's not this kid trying to be naughty. It's them trying to stay stay alert because when we're not breathing well and that's where mouth breathing is. We wake a lot to stimulate our nervous system just to increase our alertness. ⁓ ⁓ a huge piece that I have found working with kids. as they go through my functional therapy, mothers and even adults in the workplace. Anyone will tell me once I started to improve working through my exercises, I realized I can focus better. My brain fog is gone. I can work on multiple tasks in a row without forgetting what I'm doing. And I think that's one of the neatest pieces that people will report back as one of the wins. is that calmness that comes because we're getting the proper amount of oxygen that our body wants us to have. Britney Suttner: It's just crazy how breathing through your mouth can cause this just like ricochet of everything you're talking about. And I'm also thinking about how the long-term effects, you're talking about sleep here, less quality of sleep and all of these different areas. If you're doing this your whole life, this has to like shorten your life expectancy or create other long-term issues like heart health or brain health. can this ultimately be a cause of Alzheimer's down the road or cardiac stuff down the road. like, these are all things that I think people should be thinking about, especially if their kids are mouth breathers, like to be able to do something now to help prevent some of this stuff. And then the point you were just making about basically ADD, ADHD, it's so, it's diagnosed so much these days. What if it really comes down to mouth breathing? so you mentioned myofunctional therapy. You are myofunctional therapist, plus you have massage macron, like you talked about. Can you kind of define what is myofunctional therapy and how does it relate to this entire conversation? Amanda: Absolutely. So myofunctal therapy, my goal is to improve oral rest posture. So the first thing I always want to do is make sure somebody can breathe through their nose for at least a minute. If you cannot struggle through and breathe through your nose for at least a minute, I would say go see an ENT. Typically there's something very structural that until we actually get the structure of your nose proper, we're not going to be able to retrain the habits around that. So what I do is I work at first get in the lip seal, get the lips to come together. When the lips are together, the tongue naturally starts to go up. When the tongue's up, it creates the proper pressure that we need for stability in our mouth. It helps keep our teeth aligned. It helps give the floor of our nasal cavity the space that it needs. and we can properly breathe in and out through our nose. And that's when our next session we'll get into the nose and all the great things of why we want to use it. But that's really the fundamentals of a manual functional therapy is its movement patterns. It's retraining our nervous system so we can automatically properly breathe because we're going to breathe regardless. We might as well do it in the proper way so our body skin, the health benefits from it. Britney Suttner: Yeah. So just like if somebody injured their knee, they would go see a physical therapist. If you or somebody you know, is mouth breathing, go see Amanda. Right. Because that you're the therapist that's going to help take care of that so that you're remediating all of these symptoms and all of these effects that long-term mouth breathing can have. Right. Wow. That is so, so crazy how all of this is connected. I'm excited for our next three episodes as well. If here's, here's something we always like to leave our listeners with some, like something tangible that they can do. Amanda: Absolutely. Britney Suttner: If they're discovering that they're a mouth breather, obviously they should get in contact with you. But what is something else that they can do starting today that's going to even just like kickstart their journey or help them start to breathe through their nose? Amanda: I think it's just awareness. All of us, if we think about something, our body follows what we think about. And I think it's just that awareness piece. And if it's even for small pieces of time to get our lips to come together and rest a tongue up on the roof of the mouth, even if it's a few seconds, 30 seconds, we're going to get more benefit from never doing it at all. And it starts to remind our body how it properly functions. Britney Suttner: I'm guessing this can be pretty uncomfortable for people who are used to mouth breathing. So even, even if they don't have structural issues, if they've been mouth breathing their whole life and you're like, okay, close, close your lips and breathe through your nose. They're like 10 seconds in and they're like, I just want to breathe through my mouth again. So even if there's no structural issues, this might be a process that takes time and it might feel uncomfortable at first. Is that right? Amanda: Absolutely, yeah. Sometimes we have to lean into the discomforts in life. You know, if we chose every path that was comfortable and joyous, man, I would be eating donuts all day long and probably laying out in the sunshine and I'd be pretty happy choosing that comfort of life. Britney Suttner: Okay. Well, for our listeners, I do want you to know that Amanda wrote a blog on the motherhood Alliance website under her profile. It's called why mouth breathing makes kids sick in winter and how my functional therapy can help. So if you are interested in doing a little reading on this topic, you can head on over to that. We'll, link to it in the show notes. ⁓ but Amanda, you offer a 15 minute complimentary. Andrea Renkas: Mm-hmm. Yep. Britney Suttner: Complimentary consult. that right? So if somebody is listening to this and they're like, I just need to ask some questions. I think this might be me. I want to just be able to connect with you. that how would they do that? How would they get in contact with you? Amanda: Yep, they can go to my website, it'll be in the links chinupsmile.com and they can just click right there. I do it over the phone or virtual. I love to see people face to face because when we talk about breathing and posture, it helps me to see them. And it's an awesome connection. But yeah, it's no cost to jump on and talk for about 15 minutes and just explore to see if it's the right fit for you. Britney Suttner: Perfect. That's so great. Well, again, this episode, you know, we're talking about, I think the point is to get it, make it look a little scary, right? Like this is a big deal. This isn't just like a, which outlet or inlet is your air coming in? This is a big deal, but we're going to talk about the proper way of breathing in our next episode and why. So I like to get a little bit sciency here and helping people understand not just the what, but the why behind it. in nose breathing. And then in our third episode, we're going to be talking about fascia, which I know this is like your specialty. You go deeper than a lot of people do in fascia. And it's really crazy because our tongue is all the way connected to our toes. So what's happening in our mouth is like ricocheting through our whole body. I'm really excited for that episode. And then our fourth episode, we're going to be diving a little bit more into the common topic of braces. She kind of described what is malfunctional therapy. Can we actually avoid braces if we're being proactive? in this arena. So we're excited for the rest of these. They're coming up next.