Is mouthbreathing the horrible thing people make it out to be?

No it isn't. It is a function of these biomechanics and not a driver of them.

Lots of people go out of their way to not mouthbreathe.

It has been cast as this evil thing that will have massively destructive effects on your facial structure.

People love to say that if you mouthbreathe it will cause you to have an elongated face and downswing of the jaw.

I mostly disagree with all of this and think its mostly BS.

And today i will tell you why.

First, why has mouthbreathing been made out to be evil?

There are numerous parties that have made mouthbreathing out to be evil over the years.

There are the Mews and their Orthotropics followers.

There are books like Breathe by James Nestor.

There are loads of myofunctional therapists and dentists that repeat this mantra.

And of course our most recent entrant into this game is all the mouth taping brands like Hostage Tape, which is making $millions selling this belief.

First, why they make this conclusion

Well everyone correctly observes that some people that mouthbreathe have lots of unattractive facial changes.

Dentists like to call this ‘adenoid face’ and it consists of these features that are tagged in the picture of this boy above.

So they assume cause & effect.

Whereas I do not view there to be direct cause & effect.

For me it’s more like when you drop a bomb on someone’s house and you consistently see that the roof has collapsed in. So you conclude that the damage to the house is because of this faulty roof.

Whereas you logically know that it is of course because of the bomb.

Mouthbreathing is a symptom of structural collapse and the driver of almost nothing

By this I mean that mouthbreathing is a result of the airways narrowing due to structural issues that are occurring to the skull.

But they did not cause these structural issues.

Rather these structural issues were caused because of lack of proper extrusion of the teeth and arch development.

So you might then retort…”But Ken…. if the person was nose breathing instead of mouthbreathing than their teeth would have extruded correctly and they would not have had these structural issues.”

To which i would respond that I completely disagree.

Logic test one: Can a person fix their structure by nose breathing?

Show me the person that forced themselves to nose breathe and were able to improve their curve of spee as a result and improve their structure?

I have not seen a clear example of this in all my years.

And i literally tested this hypothesis on my son for a couple of years between 2015- 2017. Taping his mouth shut or forcing him to wear appliances that tried to discourage mouthbreathing. It did absolutely nothing.

I also tested it on myself and would tape my mouth shut for awhile back around 2016 or so. Zero effect.

Compare that to wearing a rubber guard or putting composite where the effect on my son was almost immediate and massive.

Because of fixing the biomechanics, he stopped mouthbreathing. And not vice versa.

Logic test two: Can a person ruin their structure by mouthbreathing

The answer to this one is obviously no.

And the perfect example is Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer with 28 gold medals. Who even as an adult is known for mouthbreathing.

Which has sparked many articles over the years over how this is possible.

But what you can logically conclude from his example is that… no, mouthbreathing definitely does not ruin your structure.

Even to this day the guy looks great.

Why doesn’t mouthbreathing ruin your structure?

Because as i’ve said many times… these biomechanics are almost completely a function of soft tissue.

To ‘deflate’ the balloon of soft tissue that covers the skull you need to either reduce vertical or you need to lock the wrong occlusion.

This then flattens the curve of spee.

Mouthbreathing does not do this.

Closing thoughts

A number of folks have asked me whether it causes any problems that they are able to mouthbreathe while wearing the Reviv (it has some air holes).

And my answer is always no.

I, myself, still mouthbreathe occasionally and I just don’t care. I know that i am recovering on a daily basis regardless. And that it plays absolutely zero role.

And for all the folks that are saying otherwise and saying that you MUST nosebreathe… just ask them to explain why Michael Phelps has more gold medals than any other athlete in the history of the Olympics.

Logic is how you untangle the web of misinformation that clouds this entire domain.

Merry Christmas to you all!