The Ripple Effect

Jen & Her Palatal Expansion Journey

• Season 1 • Episode 5

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In this week's episode of The Ripple Effect I share a bit of my journey with Lefort jaw surgery to install 4 titanium screws into a DOME palatal expander.  Learn via my journey and lens of being a speech language pathologist (a patient, parent, and professional) and how I learned about my posterior tongue tie, high and narrow palatal arch, and nasal airway restriction had been the root cause of my sleep apnea/sleep disordered breathing.  

I share how I came to the awareness via my hindsight symptoms and my journey over the past two years with a tongue tie release, jaw surgery, surgical palatal expansion, and now braces.  You will learn what professionals to potential seek to have you or someone you know evaluated for this treatment and more.

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PJ McNerney:

Warning, listen to this podcast at your own risk. Side effects may include joy, feeling, content, illumination, newfound senses of purpose and wellbeing. Courage, realizing you are not alone.

Jennifer McNerney:

Welcome to the Ripple Effect. I am your host Jen McNerney, sharing the unfolding stories that made us and healed us.

Hello, welcome to the Ripple Effect Podcast, and in today's episode, I get to share my own very personal journey with palatal expansion and braces as an adult. And I really think that my lens of. Telling my story is unique in that a, I am a professional in sort of this scope. I'll explain further about this. I'm a speech language pathologist, so assessing the oral facial, the structural, the oral motor, the function of these muscles and looking at the mouth is part of my scope. However, as speech language pathologists, we know that we have a very large scope in which we could, our whole profession has many different avenues that you can go work in the hospitals and mostly work with adults. You could go into the schools and work with children. However, we do go to grad school and we get a basic foundation, and then you go out into the world and you have all these clinical experiences, and then obviously you go to continuing education. Classes. Well, my journey, for, and of course now hindsight being 2020, I had All of these symptoms that are very classic. Now, that would be very telling of something called a posterior tongue tie. Those are a little harder to diagnose because, when you just look into a mouth and you look at the tongue and you look at the range of motion and whatnot, you really have to know what you're looking for in assessing. a tongue tie and if it needs to be released, and I'm gonna share my journey in how. there might have been perceived, nuances in terms of the order in which I did things, and you know what? At the end of the day, I'm very happy with how my journey is unfolding. Has it been easy? No. However, it has been worth it. And one may ask why I would, this is not for aesthetic. Sure. My teeth were super crooked and they were tilted. And mind you, I had Invisalign when I was in my thirties, but not as, not addressing the root, just throwing braces on somebody without really looking at the structure. Now I know there's so many more nuances and you definitely wanna. A certain level of, certain people on your team that are equipped to diagnose, these nuances and structure and function and looking at the individual as a whole and not just these separate pieces. I share this this week on this, I have many different journeys in which I could talk about my healing. however, this week it's very, On my mind because I just got my expander out. So I had what was called a dome it's actually just called a distraction. Osteogenesis. Maxillary expansion, the dome. So let me back up with, I was in a group and, this is correlation, this is not causation. I was in a group about methylation and, a gene mutation called the M T H FFR gene mutation. And for some reason, individuals with this, mutation, they often have midline, issues. So anything that forms midline. So your pallet forms midline. You have a pal suture line down the middle and I actually highly recommend the book by, Dr. Ben Lynch called Dirty genes. It really delves into, root cause illnesses based on that particular gene mutation. And it's brilliant., it's a must read. And I had, after being in that group, I knew better, know. Better do better, I'm a parent of four children and, Because of my journey with Lyme disease and also breast implants. It's a whole nother podcast, and I know that's getting more traffic in terms of other women who are realizing how toxic those make you. But it's extremely toxic, if you are somebody that has a hard time with your detox pathways even being open and that gene mutation. Canon does affect how people with this mutation will detox toxins and whatnot. Back to the midline stuff, is that, you gotta imagine that if your tongue there, it's just a tissue that it's tied down to the floor of your mouth in utero. and it's a posterior one where it's in the back posterior would be the back, anterior a or front, tie. And when that happens, as your whole face and your whole structure affects everything, affects your whole structure and your airway, cuz your airway is the walls of your airway are also your facial structure and also your nasal cavity too. A tongue tight for in individual and a baby will then affect how you breastfeed. However, I was not breastfed. I was a child in the seventies where,, I think there may have been multitude of factors. Maybe I didn't latch, maybe my mom didn't produce milk. I don't know why I was a formula fed baby, but I was, that was just common practice and encouraged, I think, at the time. And so there was no clue that much for my mom with me having a tongue time. Now, babies, it, you can tell cuz of. Parents are having Trouble with the Latch. The lactation consultants are now diagnosing tongue ties. There is a lot more information out there about tongue ties now in 2023 than there was in 1976, and it's. Becoming increasingly more known. And I love that. That's why I love social media in this respect, and I love podcasts and communication and information getting out there and people sharing their journey. So I found out that my kids had tongue ties and, by having a baby, my youngest I knew and we got. Her tie released early and then we started looking at the kids, and then finally my husband are like, wow. Well, we also when you look at. My posture and how tight my muscles were. There were so many things that were going on for me, but I often will put and prioritize my kids' health over mine. I'm really learning to put on my oxygen mask more as a mother. Just to know that I make better decisions, when I'm actually taking care of myself and my health, and I'm able to find the right help for my kids when I do that. So that's an aside. And this week was a big celebration because my body was like, ah, but at the same time, My body was also like, whoa, we gotta get, I had a huge healing response, almost like a reset. I had, a ginormous fever, so the metal screws when it came out, and they were like much longer than I expected. and then the actual hardware that was in there came out. So now I. My mouth is expanded by six millimeters. Y'all. That is huge. And what my journey was first, I had my tongue tie released. In hindsight, I don't know, I go back and forth with this. It went really great. I had, a wonderful, dentist release it. His same doctor that released my children and two of my four children. Have had theirs released. We'll know more now that we're doing. My oldest daughter's expanding first and then getting her tongue tie released. I got my tie released. Had a huge multitude of cool things happen with that in terms of my posture and my, upper back and my, thoracic spine opening up. And, Chiropractors that I work with, body workers were very pleased with how much,, my structure of my spine changed just with that. However, at nighttime I was choking more on my saliva. So what was happening is that now I have all this range of motion with my tongue and now. My mouth, my oral cavity, just can't house this tongue that now has all this motion to, move around range of motion. And I would notice I'd wake up choking on my saliva. And so I needed to get continuing education hours for, CEUs continuing ed units. Holding onto your speech license and while I have pivoted with my career and I'm doing more, working with trauma and emotions and stored emotions and metaphysical things, And energy just in general and beliefs. And I do, I'm a theta trained healer and I'm working towards a certification that's, a whole testing system, which is amazing called contact reflex analysis but I still hold onto my speech license because that is a very reason I am a certified neuro emotional technique practitioner, is because of that speech license. And so I will always be a speech language pathologist. That's part of my journey. And so I started taking classes. I'm like, why not go learn about tethered oral tissues? So I took a tots training and, that's wonderful. If you're an S L P listening to this or a parent, her name is Autumn Henning. I think she does. Coursework or even things that you can at least follow her on Instagram, or look into her training. It's,, tots training. And I ended up meeting, a dentist here that, does tongue tie releases and I knew I had needed, and then also a myofunctional speech therapist I sat next to. It was just wild and I love to learn and I know that this isn't my. Niche. But I know now that if I, if somebody were to come to me or ask me a question, I could guide them to the right people. I have the right team in place. So we went to, Dr. Liz Turner, she has a clinic, I think it's called Bloom Sleep. I know I'm forgetting the name, but she is phenomenal. She did our, C B C T scans, so it's important to have somebody looking for everything. Basically I did my journey of getting my release first. Still with me having a cranial sacral therapist and sort of the metaphysical and the different things energetically that were going on. For me, it probably was my best and highest good, journey. To do the tongue tie first and then do the expansion. So she looks at actually all of us, we went in and I love the C B C T scan because it's not a lot of radiation. It's super fast. You just put your chin there and it does, a better look at what's really going on in the nasal airway and your sinuses and also your adenoids, and just looking at your airway and seeing where the airway restriction is. For me, mine was actually in my nasal cavity. A lot of it, my airway looked pretty good, so I'm like, wasn't getting, I wasn't getting good oxygen. we're supposed to be breathing in through our nose, and we're supposed to be doing nasal breathing at night. So open mouth breathing is a big, big red flag for potential tongue tie for airway restriction. Snoring is a big red flag for, sleep breathing, stopping breathing in the middle of night, choking on your saliva. Also sleep apnea signs and. Other things that people don't attribute to is, grinding of the teeth. I know that I'm in a group of, professionals or I work closely with a lot of chiropractors and they'll always say parasites. Parasites. Parasites, yes. And both could possibly be, related to. Airway restriction, like going into fight or flight, and quite honestly having to do something to open that airway by grinding the teeth, at night. So that is a sign of potential sleep disorder, breathing dark circles under your eyes. Yes. Some people will say it's low this, low that, but I think it's all related. Core things like getting breath and oxygen to the brain affects everything. You can't, you don't get REM sleep. Oh, I was a bed wetter growing up. Bedwetting, yes, it's can be common and normal, to a certain range, but I was like, bedwetting. I don't know. It was pretty embarrassing. I remember, being probably in kindergarten, maybe first, second grade, and my. Currently, and he has not done his expansion yet. he's next and he has still has to get his tongue tie released, but we're doing the expansion first on him. He will have an occasional accident here and there, and I already know also being like a restless sleeper is another, There's so many different nuances and signs, and it's all related to when you're sleeping. You're supposed to have your tongue be able to create a nice seal along the roof of your mouth and hold it there, so that's why working with the muscles and working with the myofunctional therapist to undo some of these patterns., and that may have been related to structure, but also just may have been related to maladaptive patterns to keep at the roof of the mouth. That just signals your body to be into more of a rest and digest rather than fight or flight. Well, many people that, have airway restriction are not getting oxygen to the brain will go into a fight or flight, and then there's different hormones that get released into your blood. And then you're supposed to, when you're in a. Sleep, go into more of a diuretic so you're not producing urine. But many people that have the bedwetting thing are not getting into that deep rem sleep, which is you're very resetting your entire system, your entire everything. I'm talking metaphysically you, you must go deep to get restorative sleep. I'm talking physically, emotionally, it's so important. And so there's a book called Why We Sleep. That was really well written by Matthew Walker that I highly recommend that you would read it. back to Dr. Liz Turner, she does our entire scan on. Everybody realizes that I have an interesting sleep pattern. I get into REM sleep, but not in the right, not in the waves of. Normal people do. And so I will say that I would, my whole life, never been a morning person, don't wake up feeling restored or feel like I could sleep all the ti, like I've just chronically tired, also low immune system stuff. So there are a lot of things going on here for me. And I know as a kid I had enlarged adenoids. They never did address those. And I know there's ENTs now that will. Take them out. If it's like effective, there's gonna be even people that are nuanced within, the profession that are doing this work. So it is also important to follow your intuition because you could go get an opinion from one doctor and then you get another opinion from a different doctor, and it's completely the opposite. I had to stay true to my intuition and knowing what was my highest and greatest good. And I knew my root cross was structure. So I had a pretty, pronounced posterior tie. And also that you can tell there was so many telling things. Right now I have my braces on and they've only been on. Two months and maybe a little over two months now, and already so my teeth were tilting inward. So imagine that your tongue is the foundation that, then the oral cavity in the maxilla, your, the roof of your mouth and then the bottom of your nasal cavity, your maxilla, that your tongue is the foundation, which that forms around. If there's like a vacuum there, if it's being held down, it's just going up high and narrow and forming. And also, I have a really long nose, a really long face. So I now can almost see it just by looking at people. Cause I'm like, oh. Just what I know now on my own personal journey, having that speech and language background, having looked at children and just knowing how I'm just being a patient myself and being in this body that had no room for my tongue and whatnot. It's been a very eye-opening journey for me and I often say, I hope that people are going to the dentist and the orthodontists that have this airway knowledge, and I know that there. There's gonna be people that just slap on braces. And guess what though? If there's that tie, if there's not enough room for the tongue or if there's snoring still, there's just gonna, it's just not gonna address it. I'm a prime example because I had had invis liners but then they didn't move my teeth didn't move much. Probably cuz they had no room to move. So creating. What I had to do for surgery and I had it last October, is a surgeon had to go in and just cut, right under my nasal, my, yeah, the septum here cut here. So there's two scars here. I'm still healing the scars there cause there's like meridians that, that go there. So I am privy to all this information and I still felt like this was my best and highest good decision. So, Cut two incisions here and then had to chisel down the middle to open up the suture line. I had to get the, I already had the device put in, and then the four titanium screws are what went into my bone. And the reason why it was more invasive at age 46 is that your palatal suture line closes. At around, I heard it's between like 12 and 14. Somewhere in those teenage years, your suture line fuses together. So that is why it becomes, that's why, my daughters have their devices. There's no screws., it's just on their molars and we still crank something, but it's not attached to the bone. Because of my restriction was in my nasal cavity. I was a candidate for the dome, which was providing that, the expansion of that, upper jaw maxilla. And so then by that way, I'm widening my nasal cavity as well. Right now I don't sound great because I just was, I'm getting over being sick or just having a. Reset of my, my immune system kicking out all the, I think all the junk, the toxins from the metals and the, I had four, I had metal in my bones since October 12th of last year. So it just came out on April 6th. What I can tell you is that, what a wild, I'll show you some pictures. What a wild journey though, because as soon as that surgeon went in and, cut down the. Cut through. I like, looked like it got beat up afterwards because there was like, there was bruising and blood, everything was flowing down here and I only had a LeFort one. It's just how they cut along to do the jaw surgery, so he was able to just go in there and I just had. Stitches here along there. And then right away the surgeon was like, you're gonna see the gap starting there. And I was like, already like, wow. Cuz he opened it up and then I had to wait about six days and then I had a wrench and I cranked it and we, and. The orthodontist. I used Foundation Orthodontics out of Denver. And, Dr. Moran, she knew exactly how much space I needed. That's why I love technology. They're able to measure and look at the pictures and that C B C T scan was amazing and all the measurements and whatnot that they. Um, I think I ended up having to crank it I was cranking it twice a day, once in the morning, once at night, and it was about 42 cranks. And I got so wide. It was such a wild journey. And every time I cranked I was like, my crank, the head pressure, the cranial bones, but I always had weekly chiropractics. Sometimes I had. cranial sacral in there and I do a lot of energy healing work on myself and, I have others. I do trades with others, so I think, and I know what supplements to take too. I have different protocols that I get from my different functional docs and I also muscle test myself, for daily supplements, just to make sure. So I was healing quickly and. A lot quicker I think, than even the professionals thought I would, which is fine. We're that kind of family that people are always like, what are, what are you doing? And then you tell'em what you're doing and they're like, ah, that can't be that and that, whatever. So we, ended up, or I ended up. When I say we, my daughters were with me and they are close to being done with their expansion and thankfully I caught them early enough. So my, my daughter Abby has her tongue tie released and that was amazing cuz her twin brother's name is Liam and she had been in speech therapy forever, since like two, and she. As soon as she got her tongue tie released, she was able to say his name. So she had a pretty pronounced posterior tie. And not that it's, it affects so much more than that. And I'm mostly concerned about, my kids getting oxygen to their brain because if you don't get, have that oxygen, you don't have. That you're in fight or flight, your body's doing all these compensatory things to get your brain. The oxygen, it affects your heart health. And every system when I'm learning a different modality is that your heart is the queen bee. So if your heart is not getting, pumping that blood, getting that oxygen, then your brain starts, it's. All related. And I will say that now that aside from me getting this raging fever after those screws came out, which it was, which I actually celebrated, even as horrible as I felt because having Lyme disease. And co-infections and having not a normal immune system, response to foreign, viruses, bacteria, anything foreign in my body. And then having a big fever to burn it all off was like brilliant. And then I have a friend, and who, did some energy work on me, and she is trained in. medicinal Chik and body code and emotion code and choose like a fever. Jen means like vital, like high fever, especially, which mine was, is like your vital life force is strong, so, God aside, getting a fever. I will say that I've already noticed that I am sleeping deeper. I mean, aside from having some crazy fever dreams and feeling like I was getting downloads from this, especially this time, where we had a full moon and we have the Equinox and this whole week of leading up to this Holy Week as if you are a Christian or a Celebrate Easter Passover. and I, yeah, it feels like I am just anew that this journey is like, it couldn't have been more perfect than to just get this out and. Because what was the challenging part is I went through all that and I knew I had the space in my mouth, but I didn't have the space in my mouth because the expander was still in my mouth. So I had to do a lot of emotional work around the length of time that it took. But it was rather rapid because I, I think I got it in August and then trying to get coordinated. I didn't have the surgery until October, but say I had time that better from October to getting it out in April is about six months. So that bone is totally, and our body is so cool. So it opening it up and each time you cranked your bones just, it just grew. And created all that space, and now I have to have braces on for about two years, and already my gap is closing in and my teeth, it's just wild. My whole facial structure looks different too. A lot of people will comment and, I will say the metaphysical healing that I noticed is. I had more restriction on my left side, which your left is considered your past and also you're feminine. And I, am big at beliefs and lineage, beliefs and even past lives. Beliefs. This is the metaphysical stuff that comes in. Well, I had a lot of beliefs around being able to speak up, speak my voice, which is ironic because that's what I was drawn to do, is to help people. Find their unique voice. I still am doing that with, the energy work that I do to embody in, their everybody's unique frequency. That's same thing, voice, how we express ourselves, embody ourselves, whether that's voice communication, communication is, can be nonverbal, can be verbal with words, but it is, it's energy. It's our unique frequency. So I'm still doing that just looks different now. So I had a belief around, being able to speak my truth, and I was visiting like a past life and I had all these past lives where it was like, like just being hung or, um, burned at the stake, which is, I'm just putting this awareness together that maybe that was, that fever is just kind of blowing those pictures about, speaking up, embodying myself, my unique frequency and whatnot. So it just felt like a huge reset. And there's, downloads are still coming in, even in this podcast. so then I also had a, belief around, being safe to be a woman just looking at all these lifetimes where just being a woman I didn't have a voice or didn't even have a profession and whatnot. And then also, taking up space. So just being able to take up space. I had done a lot of theta work with my theta training also, metaphysical. Trainings and working with chiropractors. It was just like all these awarenesses, working with neuro emotional techniques. That modality has been life changing for me and, It just created the best scenario for me to heal quickly from this expansion journey. So I'm still on it. I still got the braces on and wow. I will say if your kid or teen has braces, it is no picnic. I will tell you that every time you get the new wire in or the type like you're, it is, Erika is my friend. That has been wonderful managing the pain for me and, Yeah, I just do a lot of different, hyperbaric chamber has been a wonderful modality for helping with that. Oxygen. I have something called sympathetic resonance technology as part of contact reflex analysis. These optimizers I will have them on,, I'll put them, so like this circle of Willis, like this breathing cycle. I'll shine the light there because it vibrates at a healthy cell. And then I go to my weekly chiropractic., this week I have my cranial sacral therapist. So I'm doing a lot of things to support and keep myself, Healing I actually know the myofunctional exercises, so I have been doing that myself. However, the people you need on your team are going to be privy, like an E, an E N T that knows about this airway stuff. A speech language pathologist that knows this. Spa stuff and the tongue tie and all that. Dentist, orthodontist. Who else could be, there's chiropractors that I met at this conference. Occupational therapists, your lactation consultants are gonna be the first people that are gonna see that cuz of the breastfeeding is what's gonna be a telltale sign with the latching. Where they just can't get that proper latch because that tongue is tied down. That is a bit of my tongue Tie P expansion journey. It has been a whirlwind but worth it, and I wanted to share that with you, and you can find more of my videos about P expansion on TikTok under, I just changed my name to reflect my new business. It's called Heart Rooted Healing. That is how you would find me, on TikTok, heart Rooted healing. On Facebook I have a page called Heart Rooted Healing, and you can find me on Instagram heart rooted healing as well. So, Take care of yourself. Have a wonderful blessed week,

PJ McNerney:

All content by Jennifer McNerney and guests are for educational and informational purposes only. Listeners acknowledge said content does not constitute medical or professional advice or services. This podcast is for private, non-commercial use Only guests on this podcast do not necessarily reflect any agency, organization, company, or potentially even themselves.