Paul Ehrlich is the world's best-known and most distinguished ecologist, and one of the best known figures in any field of science. Now, teaming up with Sandra Kahn, he offers us his most personal and practical book to date. You'll discover the widespread consequences of how you carry out such seemingly mundane, automatic, and repetitive acts as breathing, smiling, and sleeping—and how your ways of doing those things affect peoples' perceptions of you. Read, enjoy, learn, and prepare to be astonished!"

A. Qureshi, R. D. Ballard, and H. S. Nelson. 2003. Obstructive sleep apnea. Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 112: 643–651 A. Sheiham. 2005. Oral health, general health and quality of life. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 83: 644–644; A. Sheiham and R. G. Watt. 2000. The common risk factor approach: A rational basis for promoting oral health. Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology 28: 399–406; R. G. Watt and A. Sheiham. 2012. Integrating the common risk factor approach into a social determinants framework. Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology 40: 289–296; and Matthew Walker. 2017. Sleep the good sleep: The role of sleep in causing Alzheimer’s disease is undeniable; here’s how you can protect yourself. New Scientist October 14–20: 30–33. In some cases we’ve simply speculated—we suspect that snoring in hunter-gatherer children was rare, for example, but we haven’t found evidence to support that notion—no reports from, say, people who lived with!Kung people on their sleeping habits, no evidence that leopards were attracted to snoring kids during humanity’s long trek out of Africa. Considering the relationship of snoring to modern jaw configuration, mouth breathing, and similar factors, 21 we thought it likely that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were not heavy snorers. In any case, we’ve tried to make clear, at least by context, when we are simply speculating, and our reasons for doing so.We can prevent this problem, argue Kahn and Ehrlich. Parents should encourage their children to wean to tough foods that require chewing, like humans did in the days of hunter-gatherers. Also to keep their mouths closed when they’re not eating or talking. Proper oral posture with the lips closed, the tongue on the palate and the teeth lightly touching The stakes aren’t as high as with something like climate disruption, which could lead to billions of premature deaths. But Jaws describes an epidemic that is causing a lot of expense – think braces – and misery. Many people’s lives could be improved if it were dealt with. It’s also a public health problem where some of the power to avoid it rests in your own hands. Another environmental change that contributed to the epidemic was moving indoors, where things that cause allergies such as dust mites and formaldehyde concentrate. Allergies create stuffy noses, and that leads to mouth breathing. That, in turn, bypasses the natural air cleaning, warming, and humidifying functions for which the nose was designed. Pause for a moment to look around and note how industrialization has changed your everyday life. The way we eat, the way we work and play, the way we sleep, and even the way we die are all fundamentally different for us than for our ancestors. In the breakthrough book, Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic, pioneering orthodontist Sandra Kahn and evolutionist Paul R. Ehrlich come together to explain how industrialization is also contributing to a silent epidemic that is right under our noses. Figure 3: Cephalometric radiographs comparing the size of the airway before (a) and after (b) Forwardontics treatment.

The major claim of the book is that you and Sandra Kahn have unearthed a hidden epidemic in which people’s lifestyles are affecting how their jaws develop, with many downstream health consequences. What do you feel is the most convincing evidence of that?

Better living, starting from the jaw

This book is great if you’re new to the world of malocclusion and are not yet aware of the massive effect tongue ties may have on our jaws AND bodies as a whole. A major question for society as a whole is how to supply the needed guidance to those children needing preventive care. It can be a fairly long process requiring dedication on the part of both children and parents and intensive (and often expensive) help from dental professionals. Dr. Mew and his insights were portrayed with some fondness. I was especially moved by the included photograph of his lone petition for policy change outside the BDA. The qualitative case studies and research cited could have been valuable, had they not been diluted with pedestrian accounts. I feel the urgency, but it was difficult to gain depth through the repetitive, almost nagging tone of the book. So when Sandra was looking for the right way to treat her eldest child without extracting teeth, she first turned to “myofunctional therapy” as a rising and popular form of treatment. The idea was that how you chew, how you swallow, and how you position your tongue, repeated thousands of times a day for your entire life, would result in changes to your teeth and your smile. Imagine if every time you swallowed you pushed your teeth out a bit; eventually your teeth should move outward. Sandra enrolled her preteen children in myofunctional therapy and marched them through the exercises. At the same time, she kept studying the literature and investigating more intensely, while keeping a close eye on the kids’ development. Keeping all the things in mind, the authors do state that much of these theories and relations that are mentioned are not proven scientifically and it's their theory that they are leaning on. Much of it might be true, much of it might be not but It helps you to be cautious of yourself, your oral health and possible consequences if you are not conscious about it. In the end, for parents of young kids, no need to panic, as the authors themselves convey in the book,