Sleep and Sensory Issues, Breathing & Misbehavior: What’s your mouth got to do with it? Special Guest: Sheree Wertz

Hey, welcome back No Problem Parents. Today's episode is so good. You are definitely going to want to listen to this thing all the way through. It is all about sleep and sensory issues, breathing and misbehavior. What's your mouth got to do with it? Well, my special guest Cherie Wertz is going to tell us all that and more. Is your child getting enough sleep? Are you getting enough sleep? Can you breathe through your nose? Can you touch the roof of your mouth with your tongue? Does your child sleep with their mouth open or their butt in the air? Do your kids have a hard time swallowing pills? Are they still wetting the bed?

When you go to the doctor with all these things, have you been told your child is just going to grow out of it? Well, my guest today is going to give us so much information about how all of these things in our mouth, how important our mouth is to behavior and even preventing disease. So Cherie Wurtz is a mom, a registered dental hygienist, an oral health coach, an independent oral facial myofunctional therapist, author, and speaker. Her own challenges with her daughter's sleeping, sensory issues, oral habits, bedwetting, and mouth breathing led her to the field of myofunctional therapy and opened her eyes to how our health, sleep, and overall well-being is directly impacted by the tongue, by our breathing, our airway, and our facial development. It is so interesting. So Cherie has always been passionate about the little known link between our mouth and our overall health. After learning about myofunctional disorders and the wide-reaching effects that they have on the body, she knew she needed to take the leap from traditional dentistry to a more holistic and functional approach. So she's excited to be able to help parents improve their quality of life by supporting healthy breathing, jaw and airway development in kids, and by helping adults resolve symptoms and conditions related to these disorders. And we've at an event on May 30th. Join us for a one hour training where Sheree's going to get into more

depth about the signs and symptoms. You'll hear in the episode today where I was like, okay, there is so much here and Sheree talks really fast, faster than I do. So we are going to do this event. When you register, even if you can't make the one o'clock PM central time, you're going to get the recording. You are not going to want to miss this episode. And in fact, leave us a comment or a review of what you thought of the episode at the end. We'd appreciate that so much.

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All right, so welcome to the show, Cherie. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. We are going to talk today about what's your mouth got to do with it.

Yes, yes, absolutely. That is correct. Yes. When I met you, I was like, you've got to come on the show.

I saw there was a post that you had, and I think I'll even put a link to that post in the show notes, where it was a picture of a little guy sleeping with his mouth closed and then a picture of him sleeping with his mouth open. And I was like, oh my gosh, that has so much to do with behavior. Yeah. That how they're sleeping and how they're breathing at night. So I just couldn't wait to have you on so much that we can, that we can teach parents today. That's really going to help benefit their kiddos overall behavior and the relationship between the parent and the kiddo.

So why don't you just give us a little bit of background and how you got into this niched field of oral care, sleep hygiene? Yeah, it's crazy. When we talked a few years ago, I was trying, I was on the crusade to prevent cavities. Cavities are the number one preventable childhood disease.

And I have gone down this huge rabbit hole and never thought I'd end up where I am today. A lot of people say that. And it started out with my daughter not being able to sleep, being cranky, actually. And one of the teachers saying that she was acting out at school and having a behavioral issue.

And I was like, OK. And they wanted to put her on ADHD medications. And I went to the doctor and, you know, everyone's quick to do medications and I'm not a medication mom. And I said she only behaves this way when she's tired.

And, you know, everyone's like, well, sleep doesn't have anything to do with it. And I've been a dental hygienist for 30 years, right? I never knew to look in your mouth. So this is all new to me, which is why I'm sharing it because I'm like, oh, my gosh, why are they not teaching this at school?

Why did I not know this? But what happens when she was getting dark circles under her eyes, her pillows and her sheets were ending up on the floor at night. So she was tossing and turning. And when I went to the doctor, I'm like, think about how you would behave if you're sleep deprived as an adult.

You're cranky. You're short with people. You can't focus. This is what's happening to my daughter.

She is tired, even though it seems like she's sleeping eight to nine hours a night. So even when she was little, if I put her to bed, she would sleep nine hours. So if I wanted to sleep in or get up early, I would put her to bed accordingly because she would sleep nine hours. As she got older, she was waking up tired and cranky.

And so I went down this whole rabbit hole of what was going on. So she also, her teeth were really tight together. And as a dental hygienist, your baby teeth should have spaces between them. Well, I now know that when your child does not have those spaces between their teeth, they have an airway issue.

Here's how it starts in the mouth. Before the agricultural revolution, we nursed our kids until they were three or five years old. Since the agricultural revolution, we do more bottle feeding. Our foods are more processed and softer.

So we're not chewing the same that we used to, right? When you are breastfed, you develop this suck, swallow, breathe, and your tongue pushes up against the roof of your mouth. When you're bottle fed, you use your buccinator muscles. So you use different muscles.

So as you grow and develop as a child, you are developing different muscles. Hence, the shape of your face develops by how you feed your children. So, yes, right. Okay.

Tell me more about that. It all starts with how you're feeding. So if you're nursing, so first of all, if you can't nurse, if it's painful, if your child's not gaining weight, if you're not producing milk, a lot of times it has to do with a lip tie or a tongue tie. That can be released the first few days of birth.

We used to have doulas and midwives, and they would have a long fingernail. And when the baby was born, they would just stick their finger in the baby's mouth and slice that little front of attachment under the tongue. Once we started going to hospitals and that kind of went away, that stopped. So it was just something that was done naturally.

And no one questioned it. So go back. There was a gentleman called George Catlin. He wrote a book in the 1800s, Shut Your Mouth, Save Your Life.

We knew back then that breathing had a lot to do with health and everything like that. So Dr. Boyd is a pediatric dentist in Chicago. And he is developing all this.

He's an anthropologist. He's a nutritionist. And he talks about all of these kids. and he actually has prevented cavities just by working with the airway and breathing and expanding the palate. So when your tongue hasn't been on the roof of your mouth because your bottle fetter, it's not going up or your tongue type for whatever reason, if you expand the arch between the ages of three and eight, you can use their growth and development to help open their airway. So he is getting kids to breathe better. So he found that correlation between breathing and reducing cavities. Because when you breathe through your mouth, your tongue is down, it dries out your mouth. So your saliva already reduces when you sleep. But when your tongue is down and you're a mouth breather, you're breathing in that air, which is reducing the saliva even less. And the saliva bathes your teeth. When you're breathing through your mouth, you're also using your chest to breathe. We were meant to be nose breathers. Babies cannot breathe through their nose until they're three months old. So that tells you we were meant to breathe through our nose. When you breathe through your nose, your nose warms, filters, humidifies the air, and you get nitric oxide CO2 exchange. When you breathe through your mouth, you get none of that. So when you're sleeping and you're mouth breathing, you always stay in fight or flight. And we restore

and repair in our REM sleep. We have four cycles of sleep. You get to REM sleep after about 90 minutes of sleeping. And when you're breathing through your mouth, you're sucking in that air.

So you're also swallowing that air. You're swallowing that bacteria. You're more prone to GERDs to irritable bowel syndrome to gas because you're swallowing air and you're always in fight or flight. When we get in that REM sleep, we restore, repair our body. That's when our memory is processed. You don't necessarily have sleep apnea. You have sleep disordered breathing where your body's waking you up because you're not getting enough air. So if kids sleep on their face with their butt up in the air or they toss and turn, that's your body's way of compensating and waking you up because your body's telling you you're not getting enough oxygen. When you breathe through your mouth, you get 18% less oxygen to your brain. So think of why our kids are acting out, are sleep deprived, have behavioral issues because they're not sleeping. We think they're sleeping, but they're not because they're mouth breathing. All right. We're doing a workshop on this. This is so fascinating. This is such good information. Okay. So I've learned about and coached on this before that we need dark, you know, dark room at night when you're sleeping,

get away from screens a couple hours before bed, make sure that it needs to be dark. So we create melatonin. Correct. Okay. Need that. Right. And, um, and then there's bed wetting issues that, you know, we've worked, you know, I've talked about those or we've done, done, uh, I've done trainings and things on those, but this I have not ever heard of. And that's what got me into this. My daughter was wetting the bed. It turned into a social issue because she was 13 years old and they kept saying she would outgrow it. We tried the mat that you, you know, goes off and wakes you up. Well, it's too late. They've already peed by then. We've tried waking her up. We've tried not giving her liquids. None of that worked because it comes down to the mouth breathing thing.

They're not sleeping. So when they do finally get to that sleep, they sleep through that, that not waking up. We did myofunctional therapy. She stopped wetting the bed, but it was a social issue because she wouldn't spend the night at people's houses. I skipped that little part there.

That's how I got into this because she was wetting the bed. And that's when I found out that all of with mouth breathing. So I kind of skipped that part a little bit. So the myofunctional therapy stopped at the bedwetting stopped. What is that? Tell us about what's, what's myofunctional therapy. So myofunctional therapy is training. It's physical therapy for your mouth and your tongue. So when your tongue tight, or when you have low tone, what it does is it disassociates your tongue with the rest of your muscles. So when you're bedwetting, when your mouth breathing, when your tongue is tied, when it's low, when you're breathing through your mouth, your muscles of your chin, your neck, your shoulders are compensating for the fact that your tongue doesn't move separately from everything else in your mouth.

And you may have like longer cheeks. So they call it allergy shiners or adenoid face where the kid's face looks a little bit longer. Or they have that mouth breathing where they sit like with their mouth hanging open, or they have rolled shoulders. These are all signs that you are having issues.

And what myofunctional therapy does is it strengthens the muscles of your face. So we'll do a whole evaluation. We look at how you chew. Can you wink?

Are all of these muscles moving together? And we teach you to use your tongue separately from all the rest of the muscles of your face. And we tone all those muscles. And then we help you breathe better.

Because what happens is your tongue is falling back and blocking your airway or blocking your soft palate. Because you don't know how to control it properly. or because it's tied. So not everybody needs the tongue tie release, but more than 50% of people are tongue tied and it's hereditary. So if you open your mouth really wide and you can't reach the roof of your mouth without closing, you have some type of a tongue tie. There's four different classes of tongue ties. Okay. So say that again. If you open your mouth, if you open your mouth really wide and then try to put your tongue up to the roof of your mouth, you should be able to touch the roof of your mouth, the very tip right behind your teeth without closing. If you have to close, you have some type of a tethered tissue and that frenum attachment is connected all the way to your toes, which is why it affects your posture.

Because when it's tight, you tend to be like, you know, kind of all scrunched. And a lot of people say when they get that release, they feel this like I can stand up straight or they feel this like whole release happen because their tongue is tethered. And then the lip tie is when that's really tight there. That's why infants can't latch to the mom or why it's painful to the mom.

So why you would look at that when your kids are little, because it's much easier to release it their first few days of being born. Because if you have the tie done and there's different ways you can do it, there's a laser, there's cut and sutures. You know, that's like a whole nother podcast. But if you don't do therapy before to learn how to strengthen those and be able to create a suction, it will reattach.

So the therapy helps you learn how to use your tongue properly before you have that. Or sometimes it can stretch that and it will help you breathe better because it will help you open your airway. And sometimes you have to have the palate expanded because you don't have enough room for your tongue. Like this is literally so cool.

I've got kiddos running through my head right now that I'm like, I got to I got to reach out to these parents. Dr. Boyd made a YouTube video with it's called Finding Connor. and this mom actually did a video because she, her child was acting out. They did everything they could do. No one could figure out what was going on with him. He was expelled from school.

He worked with Dr. Boyd. Dr. Boyd expanded his airway, got him breathing, got him sleeping.

And it's called finding Connor because she said she found her son again after working with Dr. Boyd and having the airway open so he could breathe. All of these issues that he was having were because of his airway and breathing. This is so, I love discoveries like this when I can, you know, thank goodness for this podcast.

Cause I mean, and like you said, we met a couple of years ago, but we couldn't make it happen. I was doing. But you were, yeah, exactly. Even a couple of years.

And you've been a dental hygienist for what? 30 years, you said? 35 years. And you did not know this until in the last, what year, year and a half?

Last two years. Yep. Yep. And then I got breast cancer and then I saw I actually had to use our healthcare system.

And I saw our healthcare system was a sick care system. They treat the symptom, but they don't treat the underlying cause. And that's what I found with my daughter. And then when we went through the myofunctional therapy for her to quit wetting the bed, I realized that my mom had it, my sister had it, my niece had it.

It's definitely hereditary. So I'm doing functional therapy on my family and I just feel like I could have helped more people if I had only known. And if I don't know, and I'm in this field and I've worked in this part of the body, my entire life, how many people don't have this information? So we're definitely going to do a workshop and hopefully I'm going to get that set up with you before this episode airs.

So we will have a link in the show notes for the event. We are definitely doing an event on this because I mean, I think I talk fast, but you talk really fast. I need to slow down. I mean, I totally get it.

I get excited about something. What do you know when you have a discovery like this and you just want everybody to hear and you want to get all the information out in as short amount of time as possible. But there is a lot of information here. And so I think between the two of us, we can figure out how to get that out, maybe even have a little worksheet or something for parents to have this written down.

And we're going to talk more in depth about this. Cherie, tell people what you do then and how you work with people. So I have a whole bunch of different things right now. I have a free Facebook group called Healthy Mouth Moms, where I go live once a week and I put information in there.

I have a YouTube channel that I just started doing. I have a podcast called the Healthy Mouth Mom or Healthy Mouth Movement Podcast. And then I work with parents one-on-one as well doing the therapy. So I have a consultation.

You know, we look through, can you breathe through your nose, nasal hygiene, sleep hygiene, like you talked about, what's happening, what's function is going on. And those are all things that we can evaluate. and then I can recommend where you need to go from there. Do you need to work with me?

Do you need to see someone else like an ENT or an airway orthodontist or something like that? So it's pretty involved. And the first thing we start with is can you breathe? Because breathing is everything.

And that's one of the things that I talk about when we're born, we begin our life with a breath. We end our life with a breath. But when we talk about being healthy, we don't look at how people are breathing and how you're breathing and what you put in your mouth is where you should start if you really truly want to be healthy. What about kids that have speech difficulty?

Because I'm wondering about this tongue tie thing. And if you work in tandem then with like an SLP, a speech and language pathologist. Yes. Yes, we do.

So here's the funny thing. Now that I'm in groups with SLPs is SLPs learn one thing, dental hygienists learn another. And then there's this in between where we need to come together. So we learn the muscles of the face.

And so speech does affect it. It's T's, R's, S's. And so, yes, if you're having a speech issue, sometimes releasing the tongue and working with the tongue can help some of the speech things. But I tell moms that I'm not a speech pathologist.

And so we do work in tandem with one another. And sometimes it takes a whole team. Like sometimes you need an ENT, an airway orthodontist, a body worker, a chiropractor, a speech pathologist, a myofunctional therapist. And there are some speech pathologists that are myofunctional therapists.

I'm a dental hygienist and a myofunctional therapist. So that's why I will help get you to who you need. And we can tell with an evaluation if it's more of a speech issue, a tongue issue. But a lot of times, yes, with the tongue tie, they are all related.

And then I'm wondering about, you know, feeding issues. You talk about breastfeeding versus bottle feeding, which there's no shame here, parents. You know, I'm living proof. I wanted to breastfeed.

I was going to do, I'm the attachment specialist, right? So I was making sure that I was going to do as much of this naturally and breastfeed as long as I could. And it wasn't happening for me and my boy. And part of that was I wasn't producing enough.

So within about six weeks, we had to get him on to formula as well. We did both. But there are some parents who it's just not their thing. They don't want to breastfeed or their environment isn't such where they can.

And so no shame there. it's just good to know that. Right. Because then you want a lactation consultant or a feeding specialist, or there's baby led weaning. There's so much involved in this. And that's why I want to create something where parents understand how all this fits together. Because I think I didn't know that. You didn't know, right? Lactation consultant. And I think a lot of parents don't know if they're having an issue. There is something they can do about it. And there is no shame.

Like you said, some people, they just don't want to do breastfeeding. Some people, they can't. And for me too, we had a lactation consultant. However, it was all about how to get them to latch on.

And there was none of this. I can tell you that. So there's the breast and bottle feeding. But then what if your kiddo is a toddler, a five-year-old, an eight-year-old right now, and you're noticing some of these things that maybe you've got a picky eater.

I just recently had a guest on the show talking about the difference between picky eating and problem feeding. And I'm just noticing that all of this really works together. And a lot of these kids, when they're picky eating and they have problem feeding, they can't, they can't breathe. So my niece couldn't chew, swallow and breathe.

So she was chewing with her mouth open. My sister was constantly yelling at her. Close your mouth. Well, now that I know what I know, she couldn't chew, swallow and breathe.

She had to separate the steps. So she didn't just have bad manners. She couldn't breathe. Interesting.

Yeah, that's very interesting. And Sharon Moore wrote a book called Sleep Right Kids. Dr. Shereen Lim wrote Breathe, Sleep, Thrive.

I mean, I have stacks of books because there's just all of these things. So putting it all together and getting you to the person you need based on whatever situation you have is where I have decided that I'm going to specialize. It's like see the whole picture, decide where you are and find that person that can help you. That is so cool.

All right. Now, before we wrap up the episode today, I do have to ask, and I know this is about kids, but how many people listening today have a spouse that snores at night? And that's so I'm guessing this has a lot to do with that as well. And maybe you don't need the CPAP machine.

Maybe you need this myofunctional therapy instead. Well, because the CPAP machine treats the symptoms, right? So now you're forcing that positive pressure up your nose. And then that's why they went to a mask, because you're still breathing through your mouth.

So sometimes you have to close your mouth, but here's the thing. A lot of these people on CPAP can't breathe through their mouths. So do they have a deviated septum? Do they have swollen turdinates?

Do they have enlarged adenoids? Do they have swollen tonsils? Do they not have enough space for their tongue? A lot of these need MMA surgery where they split the palate and they expand.

A lot of these adults are not going to want to do that. So myofunctional therapy can help a little bit if you're not going to have the expansion. But when you're snoring, the roof of your mouth is vaulted. There's not enough room for your tongue.

your tongue is blocking your airway and it's creating some of those issues. Or if you're a person that wore braces and your braces are relapsed and you have spaces again, it could be a tongue thrust issue where you push your tongue forward. So again, that's a good thing to get evaluated. But yes, all part of oral myofunctional disorders.

And so breathing or snoring, clenching, grinding, a night guard again treats the symptoms, not the underlying cause. Which is mouth breathing. So interesting. And you're saying the adults wouldn't want to do the procedure because it's just too painful or too late in their life?

Like for me, for instance, both my sister and I had the same orthodontist. They removed premolars. Your teeth should fit like a box top on your upper teeth should fit over your lower teeth. But when you have premolars, then you kind of come a little bit forward.

And now we both have a deeper bite or your teeth are back. If your tongue is doing these funny like protrusions when you swallow. And what happens is when you have that vaulted palate, you can't breathe and you get TMJ problems. So when I open, my jaw deviates to one side and pops because of what happened with my braces.

Ideally, for me to fix that, I need to wear braces again, open up those spaces and get four implants. I'm not going to do that. It's a money issue. It's a time issue.

It's having to go through all of that. I mean, and it's, it comes down to pain point. How much of a pain point is it for you to want to have to go through all of that in order to do it the correct way? Right.

So there's an ideal way. And then there's a way that you're going to do it. My sister said the same thing. She's like, I'm not going to go through all of that.

Well, and you know, the bummer is that even if you do have dental insurance, a lot of times it, the coverage is just not that great. It's still, it's still, I graduated in 1988 and they covered a thousand to $2,000 per year. That hasn't changed since the 80s, but costs have gone up. Yeah, exactly.

And we treat your mouth separately from your body, but it's all connected. So it's so expensive and it's just so sad because here I'm thinking again, like kids and behaviors. Step one of no problem parenting is to seek first to understand why is my child behaving the way they are? This is a huge piece that's often missed and not that, you know, I'm super happy that we had the therapeutic world and we have the behavior mod stuff and we have all of that, but I am seeing this massive shift in the last, I would say five or six years, really getting away from a lot of the behavior mod kind of stuff and focusing more on these other, like what's happening in your body. That's causing you to behave the way you are.

What is the root? And we need to get to that root cause. And so this is absolutely fantastic. All right, parents, check the show notes. We're doing an event. It's going to be linked in there.

And we're going to have Cherie back on and we're going to have information for you. I'm sure we're going to be charging for this event because I'm already thinking it's going to cost a little bit to put some materials together to actually, so that parents, you're not just coming to a workshop where you're listening and watching, but I want to have handouts for you. I want to have some information to send to you so that you can bring that to your pediatric dentistry. You You can bring it to your SLP or pediatrician or whoever and find some resources in your local area.

Since we're a top 2% globally rated podcast, Sharia is not going to be able to necessarily help everyone in every country. Right. Time zones and things like that are a big deal. So we're going to make sure to get you some handouts and some information that you can download and take with you from that workshop.

OK, well, as if you didn't talk fast enough, now you're hyping me up and I'm talking even faster. This is so, so amazing. Thank you so much, Cherie, for popping on here real quick. I know the podcast is booked up through September, but when we reconnected, I'm like, you got to get on here.

We got to do, we got, I got to have you on sooner rather than later, because this is just so important. So, all right, parents, I'm going to have a link in the show notes for you to be able to go to Cherie's site, cheriewords.com. Thank you for having me.

I think the more that we can get this information out, the more that we can look at this stuff, the more kids that we can help sleep better, breathe better, and just survive and thrive. Because you can't, I mean, Maslow's theory of hierarchy is you need to meet those basic needs to survive and thrive. Those basic needs start with breathing. Very true. Let's make, let's keep it simple. Get back to the basics. And, and man, I just, I'm just envisioning a checklist for parents right now. There's new parents and parents of young toddlers. And, you know, I get lots of calls about little kiddos at risk of getting kicked out of daycare, you know, and, and, or kindergarten because of their behavior. And I am determined that, you know, it is, there's more to the story than just some little kid that wants to misbehave. There's so much more that has to do with sleep. Are they getting an oxygen? Let's start there. So, wow. Very cool. All right,

Cherie, we will be in touch and see you at the event. Thanks so much. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to get this information in the hands of the people who need it. All right, that's it for today. Parents, make sure you click on the Eventbrite registration link for that May 30th event and join us. You can always get the recording if you're unable to attend at that time. And if you like what you've heard, if you like listening to this podcast, the number one way you can support me is by leaving a review of the show.

take a screenshot of the podcast graphics share it on your instagram facebook other social media we appreciate your help in getting the word out when you help us you're helping us help more families thanks so much guys