It worries me that so few people understand orthotropics. Many think it is a new kind of mechanics but it is about biology which I am sure is why so few orthodontists understand Orthotropics.

The Stage 1 widens the suture rather than moving the teeth in the bone. The suture is made of interlocking bones so cannot be widened unless it is fractured which is what many orthodontists do however if you push slowly you can tilt the teeth which also makes the arch wider. The Stage 1 does neither of these but opens at about 1mm per week applying a very gentle force on the suture which results in the salts being removed from the bone so that it softens and grows apart at any age. Interestingly this growth is very stable (Skieller 1964). The teeth tilt slightly but move very little through the bone.

Routinely we widen for 10mm over 12 weeks but as I said this is mostly bony growth.. The Stage 1 is bad for tongue posture so three months is long enough. The Stage 1 also 1/ widens the lowers via the shelves. 2/ centres the mandible. 3/ Lengthens the arch 4/ reduces the Indicator Line, 5/ aligns the incisors 6/ closes any anterior spacing and 7 moves the whole maxilla forward about 2 maybe 3mm.

However the Stage 1 is only a small part of orthotropics it is the Stage 3 which achieves most of the correction. I keep on saying this but few orthodontists believe me thinking the secret is in the Stage 1. There is no secret all jaws grow forward and make beautiful faces if the mouth is closed..

Yes the tongue needs to be on the palate too but if you have a wide palate and have to keep your teeth together where will the tongue go? The locks are difficult to position and to progressively increase, but any intelligent person can do this. Amazingly I have taught orthotropics for over forty years and only a handful of people use the locks properly. Finally the patient must correct their subconscious posture I say this all the time because exercises alone will rarely achieve stability. However if you are forced to adopt the right posture all night every night for two or three years it becomes natural so the result is stable for life, which very very few orthodontic results are. Please tell the world this simple message as I am tired of doing so. Prof John Mew.

For an animal to survive it is essential that every tooth meets perfectly. However the genes that control our growth are not able to achieve that precisely. So during our evolution our teeth evolved the ability to move in various directions to ensure perfect occlusion.

The Tooth Eruption Mechanism (TEM) enables each tooth to erupt until it touches an opposite tooth (or thumb, finger or tongue). If the mouth is left open the teeth will erupt too far (see picture). Bill Proffits research would suggest teeth should naturally be in light contact for about six hours a day.

Teeth will also move sideways as can be shown by adding plastic to one side and watch the cheek or tongue move them away. They will respond to the push of a feather (1 gram) while fixed orthodontic appliances apply forces five, ten or even one hundred times greater. This is why teeth often hurt after appliances are fitted or adjusted, and pain means damage.

Teeth often tilt when they are being moved, but an interesting bit of research many years ago showed me that each tooth naturally uprights itself. It was a comparison between cases treated with fixed appliances and “driftodontics” (where no treatment is provided after extractions). First premolars had been extracted in the lower arch and either the spaces had been closed with fixed appliances using torque to upright the second premolars, or the space had been left to close naturally as the second premolars tilted forward.

Some years later the fixed cases had re-crowded slightly, while the driftodontic cases had less crowding and amazingly the second premolars had up-righted themselves. This was despite the occlusal forces that would be expected to make the tilting worse.

This information is particularly helpful in curing Jaw joint problems if patients can be trained to keep their teeth in gentle contact for six hours a day. A closed mouth posture is also essential to avoid recurrent crowding or relapse after orthodontic treatment. Prof John Mew.

Clinical opinion should be guided by rigorous scientifically-designed Tx protocols. However Orthotropics is based on posture and you cannot measure posture, so few if any Universities are interested in it. I worked in reverse based primarily on Bjork’s implant studies which factually showed that the maxilla could grow either horizontally or vertically. A 90 degree variation is completely out side any genetic explanation.

Although you cannot measure posture, you can measure the effects of posture. Accordingly I carried out a series of prospective studies comparing patients treated by either Orthodontists or Orthotropists. There can be no cheating in a prospective study which may be why there are few of them. I did four, the first on the direction of growth of Gnathion, the second on the difference in dental alignment and facial appearance in Identical twins, the third comparing dental and facial aesthetics between “excellently” treated cases by either method and the fourth a review of impacted canines. In the first three studies the orthodontists selected their own cases.

The first was geometric, the aesthetics in the second and third were judged respectively by ten and eighteen university postgrads, the fourth was a factual review. By internationally accepted statistics all these studies showed that the Orthotropic results were Highly Significantly superior. Not one of the major orthodontic journals would publish any of them. Don’t you think we should talk about this and need for forward growth.

All humans like other mammals are very similar at conception but develop differently due to a range of influences.

Early research on twins showed that there is far greater variation in the facial skeleton than any other part of the body. I believe that this is because dental occlusion needs to be perfect and this is beyond the ability of the genes to control. I discuss this in my paper on the Tropic Premise (1981) and suggest that there has to be a growth adjustment mechanism that allows the teeth of all mammals to meet perfectly. So the teeth just push (my Tooth Eruption Mechanism Hypothesis) and are guided into position by very light contact forces from the tongue, lips and cheeks. The maxilla and mandible on the other hand grow in response to posture alone. Forward if they are in contact and down if they are apert or to one side if they are held there.

Universities are only interested in what they can measure, so largely ignore posture. The research they do mostly measures the contrasts in development between various tissues in response to different circumstances. The large number of possible variations create huge contrast between individuals making it almost impossible to study what causes what. This further confused by the frequent failure of clinicians and research workers to separate causative, resultant and co-incidental factors. As a result our knowledge base has hardly advance in the last 100 years.