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Permalink Reply by Mike on September 28, 2010 at 10:31pm

i listened in on tonight's interview with Dr. Silkman, and thought it was so compelling and thought provoking that i wanted to jot down before i forgot some things i learned:

This girl is NOT a healthy, normal looking child:

Nor is this boy:

The girl's long face, open mouth, exaggerated lips and narrow nostrils indicate that she has a great deal of trouble breathing through her nose, relying instead on her mouth to breathe.

On the other hand, the boy has an improperly developed lower mandible that recedes inward instead of jutting outward. this crowds his airway and makes it hard for him to breathe properly.

This gentleman needs to hunch forward and jut his neck forward to expand the volume of his airway -- his body has compensated in this way for a narrow airway:

Contrast this to native americans pictured below:

The Native Americans look like they breathe fine through their noses. You see their lips are closed. They don't rely on their mouths to breathe. They have wide lower mandibles that are fully developed and protrude forward. Their eyes and ears are on the same axis (i.e., their features are symmetrical whereas the girl and boy depicted above have asymmetrical features.

The reason for the difference in anatomical features is diet. We modern humans in wealthy countries rely on a diet of processed foods instead of the whole foods eaten historically.

Some other provocative statements raised by Dr. Silkman:

- flouride isn't good for us because it blocks production of a beneficial enzyme -- he doesn't recommend use of flouride
- the frenulum is the little string of tissue that connects the tongue to the base of the mouth. in times past, doctors would routinely clip it at birth on newborns. then they stopped doing it for unprincipled liability reasons. the result is that we deprive our children of the ability to breast-feed because newborns can have trouble latching on if they have frenulums attached -- it's called being "tongue-tied" -- and we have to give our infants bottles, which then cause us to have the facial features depicted above (i.e., underdeveloped jaws). intact frenulums are also associated with anxiety later in life

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