Hi, I’m Dr David Cowhig, founder of Dental Wellness. We’re going through the Dental Wellness week and talking about the oral fitness plan. And we’re up to the letter E. The letter E refers to ENT, which is ear, nose, and throat. Now you may think that’s got nothing to do with dentistry, but it’s becoming one of the key factors in achieving optimal dental health by ensuring that somebody can breathe properly and breathe through their nose.

The effects of mouth breathing can have a catastrophic effect on the mouth. Sleep apnea is one of the factors. Snoring is another factor related to mouth breathing, which dries your mouth out, makes you more prone to gum disease, and makes you more prone to acidic saliva and the wrong bacteria growing in your mouth.

It’s vital that we assess your nasal breathing and make sure that where you bite your teeth together is not having a negative effect on that. And sometimes, if we put something in between your teeth and you bring your lips together, and you can breathe better through your nose, then we use restorations, fillings to build up your bite or a simple splint that just fits the space in between your teeth. So it takes the stress away from the joints. 

It allows you to breathe through your nose so that you can keep your lips together because it’s vital during the day that you realize that your nose is for breathing and your mouth is for eating. And obviously, there are times when you have to mouth breathe when exercising, et cetera, but the negative effects of total mouth breathing heighten your nervous system. So it makes you anxious. It makes you unable to have endurance in sport because you are over-breathing.

So that’s where working with ENT surgeons to make sure that your nasal anatomy, your septum, which is a little bone in the middle of your nose, is straight, the anatomy of your sinuses is healthy, and there’s no tooth potentially that’s infected that’s having an effect on your sinuses and then potentially having an effect on your ability to breathe. So that’s where ENT is very, very important.