2.2 Key Factors for Facial Growth
This is Chapter 2.2 of the JawHacks ebook. See the full Table of Contents here.
If facial growth is epigenetic, then what specific mechanical factors can be optimized to grow jaws to their full genetic potential?
The following factors make up the environmental component of the gene-environment dance that produces facial phenotype. Understanding them will provide context for our Mewing practice, and will therefore contribute to our own jaw expansion.
Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding is nature’s way of teaching infants proper tongue posture and giving them the intraoral stimulation they need to begin growing their jaws.
In Breath, Nestor captures the role of breastfeeding nicely:
“It starts at infancy. The chewing and sucking stress required for breastfeeding exercises the masseter and other facial muscles and stimulates more stem cell growth, stronger bones and more pronounced airways.
Until a few hundred years ago, mothers would breastfeed infants up to two to four years of age, and sometimes to adolescence. The more time infants spent chewing and sucking, the more developed their faces and airways would become, and the better they’d breathe later in life. Dozens of studies in the past two decades have supported this claim. They’ve shown lower incidence of crooked teeth and snoring and sleep apnea in infants who were breastfed longer over those who were bottle-fed.”
It’s worth noting that Michael Jordan was breastfed until age three. A coincidence? His own mother doesn’t think so. She credits much of Michael’s success to it, saying, “I feel this is why he is the athlete he is.”
In Mongolia, there is an adage that “the best wrestlers are breastfed for at least six years.”
Tongue-Tie Release and Breastfeeding
An unresolved tongue-tie during infancy will hinder proper facial development.