SUMMARY

• What chewing adds to the joy of life
• Why chewing is more than hacking your food
• The TWO HOUR rule
• From chewing to breathing

Do you have teeth to chew?

Imagine eating potato chips or crispy greens, bread or crackers or nuts. Alle these foods bring an extra crispy dimension of enjoyable chewing. Enjoying good food is pure happiness. Make at least one meal into a daily ritual. A ritual of pure bliss…

This starts with carefully selecting nutritious unprocessed (and preferably sprayfree) ingredients. Wash, chop and cook minimally to preserve vitamins. Then make a nice presentation on your plate for you and others to enjoy this beautiful gift of nature. Say your ritual word of gratitude: Yummm! Bon apatitte!

Chewing longer (20 -32 times per bite) makes your saliva do a better job adding in more enzymes that help to absorb carbs and fat. That makes you eat less and might help with weight loss. Doubling your chewing time has proven to be a very healthy habit. To make that conscious effort to slow down and enjoy is very effective.

The TWO HOUR rule: Your own saliva is the best medium to prevent decay. It contains calcium that repairs any surface decay after meals. But it needs time to do that. At least two hours. Be moderate and do not eat more then 5  times per day and watch the 2 hour rule. Intermittant fasting works as well.

Make eating into a meditation dedicated to gratitude for nature and farmers growing this food. We are what we eat, so please use those teeth!

Let’s see how this works in the following 15 mins video from naturopath Dr. Courtney Jackson

Mouth breathing is bad for your teeth and your health

It is amazing how healing certain breathing techniques can be. Most people have heard of the Ice man Wim Hof who uses and teaches ancient yogi breathing techniques to relax and enjoy the cold. He teaches this method with mouth breathing but it can be done with nose breathing as well.

It is really important to always breathe through your nose. This prevents the mouth from drying out and has a real positive effect on the development of a healthy microbiome. There is a pandemic of mouth breathing going on. Most probably this is happening due to soft, easy to swallow processed food. So please change this and start chewing more. Especially children are lazy and often forget to close their mouth and become mouth breathers with malformed jaws unless you help them train to close their mouth.

Snoring often goes through the mouth. There is an epidemic of sleep apnea. You can cure this following the Buteyko method. As with chewing it is important to become aware of breathing. Slowing it down and using the nose.

There are also signs that nose breathing improves your facial dimensions and doing some tongue exercises or chewing on gum can help. There is a trend set in 2020 called ‘mewing’ started by Dr. mike Mew that quite a lot of young people followed on youTube. The science on this method called “orhtotropics” is not settled, but it looks like a fun DIY way to improve tooth and jaw alignment.

So… take a deep easy breath through your nose and let go to the next ritual