The mouth-posture code. How to improve health, well-being and posture starting with your mouth E-Book

Leopoldo Maini

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Is there a connection between how your teeth come together and your posture? Absolutely yes! Oral and dental health is important not only for aesthetic reasons but also has a strong impact on the overall well-being of the body. Some of the most common postural issues, such as scoliosis or nagging pains like stiff necks and headaches, can actually be caused by malocclusion, improper chewing, or swallowing habits. The relationship between posture and dental occlusion is real and significant! In this book, Dr. Leopoldo Maini explains, with minimal technical jargon and plenty of practical examples, the basic mechanisms that control chewing and human posture. He also shares useful tips to help improve your body's functionality and restore balance and well being starting from the mouth.

Leseprobe

Preface by Prof. Massimo Rossato

Introduction

Chapter 1 What is a normal mouth?

Chapter 2 The 3 Malocclusions

Chapter 3 Be careful how you swallow! Be careful how you breathe!

Chapter 4 Tongue frenulum and postural syndrome

Chapter 5 Mouth, electric currents and posture

Chapter 6 The dangers of tongue piercings: a dangerous fashion

Chapter 7 Doctor, can you remove that gray filling?

Chapter 8 Curved spines? It's the cell phone's fault

Chapter 9 Smartphones, tablets and PC: what are the risks for the neck and shoulders?

Chapter 10 Mouth, cervical and posture

Chapter 11 Good Posture Starts Early

Chapter 12 Functional equipment and posture

Chapter 13 The 4 postures

Chapter 14 Eye, Mouth and Posture

Chapter 15 How to measure our posture with the stabilometric platform

Chapter 16 Mouth, Feet, Shoes and Sport

Chapter 17 Secrets of the Mouth and Posture

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

LEOPOLDO MAINI

THE MOUTH-

POSTURE CODE

How to improve health,

well-being and posture

starting with your mouth

Youcanprint Self-Publishing.

Title

"THE MOUTH-POSTURE CODE"

Author

Leopoldo Maini

Publisher

Youcanprint

ISBN

9791224021070

Website

www. Dottmaini.it

All rights reserved in accordance with the law. This book cannot be disclosed and reproduced in any form, even partial, and by any means, including computer and digital. Even read or recorded reproduction, even if free, is not allowed. The contents are the result of years of study and the direct experience of the Author, therefore names, places and details have been voluntarily changed in order to make recognition impossible for the guarantee of privacy.

The book has an exclusive cultural purpose and, despite having educational content, in the belief of the uniqueness and specificity of all patients, no responsibility is assumed for any professional choices that may be inferred.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface by Prof. Massimo Rossato

Introduction

Chapter 1 What is a normal mouth?

Chapter 2 The 3 Malocclusions

Chapter 3 Be careful how you swallow! Be careful how you breathe!

Chapter 4 Tongue frenulum and postural syndrome

Chapter 5 Mouth, electric currents and posture

Chapter 6 The dangers of tongue piercings: a dangerous fashion

Chapter 7 Doctor, can you remove that gray filling?

Chapter 8 Curved spines? It's the cell phone's fault

Chapter 9 Smartphones, tablets and PC: what are the risks for the neck and shoulders?

Chapter 10 Mouth, cervical and posture

Chapter 11 Good Posture Starts Early

Chapter 12 Functional equipment and posture

Chapter 13 The 4 postures

Chapter 14 Eye, Mouth and Posture

Chapter 15 How to measure our posture with the stabilometric platform

Chapter 16 Mouth, Feet, Shoes and Sport

Chapter 17 Secrets of the Mouth and Posture

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Preface by Prof. Massimo Rossato

I remember that in 2013, during the posture and skiing course at Madonna di Campiglio-Dimaro, when I fell and suffered a serious fracture, Leopoldo was the first to reach me, a faithful companion given his skiing skills.

During the course, which was practical on the skis and theoretical in the classroom, we analysed how to use innovative methods to stimulate the anticipation of the athletic movement on the slalom course, through the reflexes of the extrinsic muscles of the eye, which together with the stomatognathic apparatus control the orientation of the human body.

The aim of competitive sport was to achieve super vision in order to achieve super athletic performance.

Neurolinguistic programming studies show that modelling by imitating the movements of the teacher is very useful for learning, so we worked together both on the proprioception of the foot receptor inside the ski boot and on the eye receptor using a device called Stereotrainer DM1.

Human posture and the medical discipline that studies it, posturology, are fundamental not only in skiing, a very partial and specific field, but in all the days and movements of our daily lives.

The same methods are used to correct the athlete and the person with back or neck pain.

Emotions play a fundamental role in learning because the afferents that come from the muscular proprioceptors, from the skin, from the feet, from the eyes, and finally from the teeth, the tongue and the ATM, reach the amygdala, which has synapses with the limbic system, the organ that is the seat of affectivity and emotions, and the hippocampus, which is very important for memory.

I wanted to express this reasoning, carried out in extreme synthesis, because Leopoldo Maini has written this book in an attempt to propose the subject of posturology as a dialogue with the reader, full of personal stories that evoke emotions and involve the sensations he has collected over many years of experience in explaining the Tonic Postural System.

I met Leopoldo Maini in the posturology course of Bernard Bricot, whose teachings, French idioms and anecdotes often shine through in his book.

Leopoldo Maini was able to surpass his teacher because he studied the stomatognathic system in particular, using innovative devices and techniques, without neglecting the eyes and feet, which are unfortunately often very difficult to teach in orthodontics.

It is common to talk about malocclusion, but here we discover the importance of the tongue and swallowing, what it means to have a short tongue frenulum, or what it means to have amalgams made of heavy toxic metals in an oral environment of water and salt. The chewing muscles, as well as those of the eye, but also the 11 muscles of the tongue, are all connected to each other and to the myofascial system that runs from the head to the feet, which links oral problems to other pathologies of the person's general posture, such as a curved back or scoliosis.

So I can say without a doubt that he has earned the praise of the Postural Equipe Academy and with this book "The Mouth - Posture Code" he will be able to continue his daily conversation in the home of the patient-reader with sincerity.

Prof. Massimo Rossato

Medical expert in Pain Therapy, president of the Italian Posturology Federation, scientific director of the Postural Equipe Academy.

Introduction

Is there a connection between the way your teeth fit together and your posture? Of course there is. Our mouth is a very sophisticated and delicate organ, made up of teeth, jaw joints and masticatory muscles, whose correct functioning is essential to avoid pathologies linked to poor posture.

In recent years, there has been a growing belief that dental disharmony and night-time teeth clenching affect the activity of the neck and shoulder muscles and therefore the position of the head, causing troublesome headaches, ringing in the ears and dizziness.

It is now widely accepted that the way we close our teeth, or occlusion, can contribute to changes in our posture.

This book describes the basic mechanisms that control chewing and human posture and explains how chewing instability has a clear effect on the posture of our bodies.

Many postural disorders are dysfunctions. A healthy body functions well. Take a good look at the Riace bronzes: they are aesthetically perfect. Their athletic and muscular bodies are not only beautiful, but also give the impression of a young man in perfect health, which means that these athletes were beautiful because they also functioned well.

It is now estimated that more than half of all common diseases are caused by functional factors. It is known that more than 50% of the population suffers from back pain and muscular headaches, and that more than half of people over sixty suffer from back pain caused by lumbar osteoarthritis. This group of pathologies, defined by many as "postural syndromes", has become almost a public health emergency, partly because of the cost of treatment to our national health system.

However, many are unaware that more than 50% of children and adolescents suffer from malocclusion, which is associated with spinal scoliosis and lower limb disorders such as knee malalignment (varus or valgus) or flat or hollow feet.But how many of us know that the position of the teeth affects the support of the feet on the ground?

We can think of the human being as a set of bones, muscles and nerve cells. The skeleton is our support structure, the muscles are our movement system, the nervous system, together with the brain, is the control centre of the whole system.

We can compare our brain to a very sophisticated computer, where the eyes are the camera, the ears are the stereo sound system, the feet are the keyboard on which we are constantly typing information, the skin is the scanner capable of picking up the various stimuli, interpreting them and transferring them to the computer's central memory, and the mouth is the USB port into which we make new connections every day, which are constantly analysed and interpreted.

Even in our bodies, thousands of pieces of information are transmitted every minute by our peripheral receptors, the feet - which tell us our position on the ground at all times - the skin, the eyes, the ears, the mouth.

If, on the other hand, the keyboard of our computer breaks down, the loudspeakers do not work or, even worse, the camera transmits in black and white and perhaps the USB port has damaged contacts and does not read the keys, it will work intermittently, we will no longer be able to work with the risk of losing all the data, thus causing serious damage.

As in a computer, so in our body: if all the information transmitted is in balance, the brain positions the body correctly, otherwise it is forced to make compensatory adjustments, sending both the muscular system and the body's support system into a tailspin.

Our brain is able to remember perfectly all the stimuli that come from outside. If these stimuli are short-lived, they do not cause major imbalances, but if they persist over time - such as the absence of a tooth, a bridge that raises the chewing position, a bad position of the tongue, a wrong support of the foot on the ground - the brain reacts by modifying the system, creating functional muscular and skeletal pathologies that unfortunately become irreversible over time.

In this book you will also discover how the position of the tongue can affect the alignment of the teeth and cause malocclusion, or bad teeth alignment, as well as significantly affecting the posture of the whole body. We will see how important it is to correct malocclusions as soon as possible in children, but also in adults, because the position of the tongue is the key to keeping both the teeth and good posture in shape.

Our chewing is a very complex system, comparable to the gears of a watch. Each tooth makes contact with its counterpart at 4-5 points, and if we multiply these contacts by 32 teeth, we have more than a hundred interdental contacts. It is therefore enough for just one tooth to close poorly and immediately a dozen gears of our "dental clock" are altered and the system is compromised.

With all this in mind, how can we think that a patient with oral problems does not also have postural problems?

Unfortunately, even today, so-called evidence-based dentistry, i.e. medicine based on scientific evidence, i.e. the evidence that scientific research has produced for a particular treatment, denies the relationship between posture and occlusion and questions the correlation between occlusion and myarthropathies, i.e. masticatory disorders that originate in the masticatory muscles or in the temporomandibular joint.

Can we consider the relationship between teeth and posture as science or pure mythology?

"We could dazzle you with special effects and ultra-bright colours," said a TV advert in the 1980s, "but we are science, not science fiction: our philosophy is quality, constant, over time," continued the presenter, taking off his mirrored glasses.

So here, to paraphrase the same words, we must consider the code of the mouth and the posture "not science fiction, but reality and science", so the key concept must be that a quality mouth guarantees us a constant and painless posture over time.

We will discover together in the reading that if teeth are missing in the mouth, we will have a difference between the posture of one part of the body and another, perhaps a lower shoulder or a shorter leg.

To deny this relationship today would be like saying that the head and mouth are separate from the brain.

As doctors, we are appalled that these obvious links between oral disease and posture are still being denied when the latest evidence, based on scientific work from 2016, basically says that it is time for doctors to stop arguing about these issues because it is certainly not helping patients.

Essentially, it says that all dentists should start looking not just at the mouth, but at the shoulders and spine of patients, and most importantly, start taking back and posture photographs to document cases. In fact, winged shoulder blades, shoulder rotations and shoulder girdle pain are often a sign of problems higher up, at the level of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ), which often manifests as pain in this joint when opening and closing the mouth.

It so happens that patients with generic diagnoses of fibromyalgia or depression can benefit from oral care and postural adjustment, and should not be treated with antidepressants or injections of painkillers such as Voltaren and Muscoril, but simply better framed.

The relationship between posture and occlusion is real! But we need to stop thinking like we did a hundred years ago. We need to change our approach and understand that teeth are not just for chewing and smiling, they are fundamental to the whole balance of the body.

Today we are able to rebalance the system because we know the laws that govern posture.

I would like to recommend from the outset that you do not see this book as something to be read and then put away in your home library. Instead, I want it to become a manual that you refer to from time to time to keep the concepts fresh in your mind.

However, before you read any further, get a pencil, or better still a highlighter, and as you read, highlight anything that you think is noteworthy so that you can easily find it later.

I personally do this when I read a book, so that even after a long time I can still find the key concepts that the author wanted to express without having to reread the whole book.

Well... now that you have your highlighter in hand, you can get started. Have fun!!

Chapter 1 What is a normal mouth?

In my daily work I often see patients who have no idea how their teeth should be positioned.

This topic is very important because if a mother does not know how her child's teeth should be, how can she understand if something is wrong? I will try to explain in a very simple way what a normal face and teeth should look like and how the teeth should fit together.

Let's start with the face, which when viewed from the front must be symmetrical, i.e. the same on the right and left sides. In particular, the line joining the two pupils from the front, called the bipupillary line, the line joining the two ears and the line joining the two corners of the lips must be parallel and horizontal. The distance between the outer corner of the lips and the centre of the pupil must be the same on the left and on the right.

If these rules are not respected, we end up with an asymmetrical face, often tilted to one side.

To give an example of an asymmetrical face, think of Toto, whose lower jaw is completely tilted to one side.

In everyday life we often meet people with asymmetrical faces. The serious thing is that this is almost always reflected in the rest of the body, as we will see later.

As far as teeth are concerned, we all know that we have a fixed upper jaw and a mobile lower jaw. It is precisely the mobility of the jaw that ensures that, when we have an abnormal contact between the teeth (called pre-contact), it detects the obstacle and, in an attempt to avoid it, slips and deviates to one side, creating the asymmetry we have been talking about.

This reflex, called avoidance, is at the root of many so-called gnathological (i.e. chewing) and postural problems, and it is therefore very important that when the dentist places a filling, it is placed in the correct articulation with the corresponding teeth, because if a filling is too high or too low, it can cause problems with the entire chewing process.

In particular, we can say that a high filling is immediately uncomfortable for the patient in the same session in which it is made. On the other hand, the so-called "low fillings" are more insidious and underestimated, and in the long run they cause problems of loss of height between the neighbouring teeth.

In some cases, a "high" filling can cause a descending problem like that of a patient of mine, whom we will call Gianni. For reasons of privacy, the names of the people I use in this book are obviously fictitious, but they refer to real clinical cases that I have personally treated during my thirty years of experience as a dentist.