Empowering Women in Chiropractic - Tongue Ties Beyond Breastfeeding and Speech!

Hello, me and Elizabeth wanna thank ChiroSecure for always having our backs and for giving us this opportunity to share this amazing information with you. For now, Elizabeth is gonna take a nap while we continue to hang out with some amazing information that you've gotta know. So hold on. Okay, Elizabeth, your time, her time for bedtime.

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Hi, I'm Monika Buerger and I cannot wait to bring you this amazing information. Today we're gonna talk everything tots, tethered, oral tissue from head to toe and everything in between. How's that? So tethered oral tissue, tongue ties, that's often known as ankle glossier, tongue ties. It's not just about breastfeeding and speech.

Although the literature out there really tends to focus on breastfeeding and speech, and the literature is all over the place with regards to breastfeeding, in particularly, in fact, I have, ooh, over 225 papers that I've gathered over the last, just the last couple years because this is becoming such an explosive topic.

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Looking at the literature and there is a lot of conflict. With regards to breastfeeding and tongue ties and ectomies out there in the literature. But what I wanna talk about is something different. I want to expand your reach, so to speak, on any fascial restrictions. So the tongue is a, has a fascial component that it can be.

Anchored or tethered to the bottom, the floor of the mouth. And there's a lack of functional movement of the tongue. So just recently this week, a couple days ago, as a matter of fact I scored a new paper with regard to children and sleep disordered breathing and ob obstructive sleep apnea in kiddos with.

It was a systemic, a systematic review, which is one considered in research, one of the higher standards of research, where they looked at all the literature. They went out there and explored all the literature with regard to tongue ties and sleep apnea or sleep disordered breathing in kiddos. So what it boiled down to, because there isn't a lot of.

Literature yet on things outside of the realm of breastfeeding and speech. With regard to tongue ties, it boiled down to six reviews and their conclusion. They the found, they basically found that tongue ties have an association with sleep disorder breathing in kiddos. So what's the big deal? There's a couple things to think about here.

One, oftentimes those kid, as you'll see, have a open mouth breathing presentation. So they're, rather than breathing the nose, they breathe with the mouth. We, that is known to be associated with enlarged tonsils. Because the tonsils are there to catch all the bugs coming in and try to trap 'em from getting down into actually the digestive system because the airway starts your digestive system.

So we know that the microbiome is huge in its role in the immune system. The microbiome accounts for about 70 to 80% of the immune system. So the tonsils are like the gatekeepers there to catch the germs, catch the bugs from getting into your digest sys system. So you can get a large tonsils. But the other thing that is so vital, especially in the critical window of neurodevelopment, that's the first thousand days of life fetal development.

The first two years postnatally. If we have that disrupted breathing in those first two years, it can very much be associated with neurodevelopmental challenges learning, attention, behavior, brain development. All those can be potential long-term sequela from an obstructed airway. So that's one to think of, thing to think about in the pediatric population, but what's starting to happen in this field, which is super exciting.

About over a decade ago I organized a course regard around the neural fascial consequences of oral restrictions. Things to think about from a neural development dis a neural developmental paradigm from a sensory motor modulation paradigm. Because what can happen is the muscles, the supra hyoid muscles, the muscles above the hyoid can pull the cervical spine into kind of a.

Forward head posture, forward flexion, and just that one thing alone. And there's, it is much more complicated than this, but I'm just gonna take this one Case in point, just that altered forward head posture pros presentation can alter critical sensory input into the developing brain or into the adult brain.

Because there's a lot of vestibular and proprioceptive information that can be skewed from that forward head posture. And we have that in our profe in the chiropractic profession already looking at altered head posture, forward head posture and sensory processing and anxiety and various disorders.

Okay. Deed Harrison has done a lot of this work, so it stands to reason if you have a little fiddle fart. That during the developmental years has that abnormal structure, that altered sensory input. And again, I'm just gonna stick with two sensory systems, vestibular and proprioceptive. It's more complex than that, but those are key, two key vital sensory systems or input that are critical for the developing brain.

So fast forward to our adult years. A very fun study came out I believe it was September, October of 2025, maybe earlier than that, but they looked at adults with tongue ties. And basically their postural disorganization or disorganized posture and disorganized proprioception and their perceived dizziness.

And they found those that with tongue ties had an increase in perceived dizziness, increase in postural disorganization. They didn't their body doesn't, their brain doesn't know where their body is in space. And so it, their posture and their ability to move through space with ease is disorganized.

Again, that's gonna lead to skewed. Sensory input into the brain, into the cerebellum, which flips its way into the sensory part of the thalamus, which that's where it gets tricky and crazy because if it's disorganized information, the brain doesn't know where the body is in space, and it is scary for the brain, so to speak.

That portion of the thalamus, there's a portion of the thalamus that regulates the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. AKA can flip us into stress mode, into cortisol drive, so all from the deranged posture, from potentially from tethered oral restrictions. Another recent paper that just came out, they looked at Ectomies and the increase in scapular in a to P movement of the shoulders post-release because of the release from that tethering.

So what I'd like you to focus on today, my, the moral of my story is, yes, we can work with these little fiddle farts. When they're, when they're infants and they have disorganized breastfeeding, and we get them under care and we see these phenomenal changes, which is so exciting. They're feeding better, they're latching better, they're sleeping better, their digestion's better.

And we'll come back to that in a minute as to why potentially digestion changes. So all that great stuff happens. But what I want you to think about is if you have a little fiddle fart that as they grow, as they get older, they still have a lot of developmental delays. Red flags, disorganized posture, disorganized sensory motor patterns, A-D-D-A-D-H-D, trouble sitting, learning, paying attention, all those things.

Is this tethered restriction potentially a part of an excessive total load on the nervous system that might benefit from removal of that particular stressor for them to get over the hurdle and be able to better have a organized nervous system. So it's taking a keen eye and removing the lens of just breastfeeding and speech into a bigger paradigm.

Now, back to why digestion might get better. Couple reasons actually. One, there's some evidence that where the vagal nerve lies that the SCM muscles, if the tone of the scms are too taut, too tight, and it's compressing in that area, it can alter vagal tone. So yes, ties are often associated with torticollis, plagiocephaly, abnormal cervical curves, that whole paradigm.

So that's one potential. But if you go back to our talk. Last month on the suck, swallow, breathe reflex. That will give you a lot more information because the diaphragm, the oral diaphragm, the floor of the mouth has fascial inserts into the respiratory diaphragm. Which if that is restricted and not moving, can alter vagal tone function.

So I know it's a mouthful. Okay. Literally, so to speak. But hopefully this just expands your reach. It just gets you thinking about that little fiddle fart or older fiddle fart or adult. That still has so many chronic disorders. They've got chronic subluxation patterns. It's like, why is that subluxation pattern not clearing?

Why do, why am I always having to, to see them more frequently? Why are they still having a disorganized nervous system? Maybe take a peek into what's holding it up or tying it up, and that can be the oral diaphragm connected to the thoracic diaphragm. Connected to the respiratory diaphragm, connected to the pelvic diaphragm, all from tethered oral restrictions.

So there you have it. If you'd like to learn more about this information, scroll down, take a peek, scroll down, dive in to my six pillars. Of found foundations of Neurodevelopment six Pillars course. Phenomenal information that literally ties all this together, pun intended, so that you can better serve your community.

Once again, Elizabeth is awake and we wanna thank ChiroSecure for having our backs and giving us this opportunity to share this incredible information with the world and with all of you pediatric chiropractors out there. Until then, we will see you in February.

Today's pediatric show. To the children was brought to you by.

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