Native American Wisdom Withstands the Test of Time
Old News is Good News
As an active clinician with an insatiable appetite for knowledge, I am always searching for new perspectives on our poor health. Sometimes I find antique descriptions of current health problems. I recently found and read a book by George Catlin on how our children can achieve beautiful faces and superior health by ensuring that they sleep with their mouths closed. I had thought this knowledge to be a recent scientific finding, so naturally, I was intrigued and read the book in a few short hours. I was highly impressed with the Native American wisdom he shared. Sadly, the knowledge was largely forgotten and is only followed by a few people today. Here's some of what I learned...
George Catlin
George Catlin was born in 1796 in Pennsylvania. After training to be a lawyer in the early 1800s, he abandoned the profession to pursue a career in painting. He had always been obsessed with Native Americans and decided to visit them to paint them in their natural surroundings. He painted hundreds of scenes and portraits, many of which are famous. He was keenly interested in their healthy traditional ways and wrote many books on various aspects of their culture. The Breath of Life Or Mal-respiration: And Its Effects Upon the Enjoyments & Life of Man caught my attention recently. Amazingly, it was penned in 1864. He wanted the rest of us in the "civilized" world to hear what the native tribes knew for thousands of years: be sure to sleep with your mouth closed, especially make sure your children do. Before I get into the great ancient wisdom he shared, you need to understand the back story.
Modern Humans Are Naturally Keen Observers and Have Been Since Our Beginnings
One of the critical elements of good science is observation. Careful observation can lead to valuable insights. For instance, the ancients understood how seasonal changes affected growing cycles and game migration to maximize their food sources. Beyond seasonal patterns, ancient cultures observed complex celestial movements and mapped out the procession of the equinoxes that takes almost 26000 years to complete one cycle. Clearly, our ancestors were astute observers of natural phenomena and had superior knowledge to help them survive.
Weston A. Price
One of the best-known books describing how ancestral knowledge resulted in superior human physical specimens is Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price. You can read it for free by clicking on the link. In the 1930's he traveled worldwide to study cultures who practiced ancient traditions and ate the same ancestral diet as their forbears while shunning modern processed foods. Being a dentist, he was primarily concerned with tooth decay and crooked teeth. He noted their outstanding facial formation, straight teeth, lack of tooth decay, and resistance to diseases like tuberculosis. In every case, the same locals nearby who had switched to modern ways were much less healthy and had less esthetic faces and teeth. The cultures he studied did not understand the underlying science behind their actions; they simply knew that following the traditional way of life would produce superior health results. Dr. Price, as a scientist, attributed their health to nutrient-dense foods and the lack of processed foods in their diets.
Ancestral Health and Ancestral Medicine
In modern biology, evolution underlies most scientific research. In contemporary healthcare, however, evolution is almost nowhere to be seen. According to Ancestralhealth.org (I am a member and a lecturer), "Neolithic and (especially) post-industrial diets combined with modern sedentary lifestyles have pushed our physiologies dangerously far from their adapted environments, and it is becoming exceedingly expensive and ineffective for medical practitioners to fix the resulting damage done to our bodies or halt the epidemic flood of illnesses collectively referred to as the diseases of civilization." They go on to say that "When we understand how our diet and lifestyle choices cause our health states to degrade, we can better implement cost-effective ways to improve health. Not only is an ounce of the right prevention worth a pound of cure, the right ounce of prevention costs a lot less."
Breathing, Sleep Apnea, and Airway Dentistry
I have written several posts on breathing and how modern industrialized populations suffer from poor breathing and small jaws and faces. Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, ADHD, depression, and anxiety are linked to apnea and poor breathing while sleeping, and it all starts in childhood. (1) Poor oral posture is one of the leading causes of poor facial development and the resultant lack of breathing correctly. Click on the link to read my recent post about it. Children are especially vulnerable to the dangers of sleeping with an open mouth.
Correct Oral Posture
Correct oral posture has the teeth lightly together, with the tongue positioned against the palate. At CT Sleep Center, when we find children that are not demonstrating correct oral posture, we correct the problem as soon as possible to ensure proper facial development and establish adequate breathing. Our stance is based on numerous recent scientific papers describing how poor oral posture results in deficient jaw and facial formation with resultant health problems. The treatments we recommend to correct the situation before it becomes problematic may be as simple as exercises taught by a myofunctional therapist or orthodontic expanders. Other treatments can include tonsil removal and allergy treatments. In adulthood, treatment is more complex and expensive, including CPAP machines or facial surgery.
Native American Wisdom As reported By George Catlin in 1864
Because Catlin was primarily an artist, he spent much more time studying all aspects of the human form than the average person. After visiting over 150 tribes throughout North, Central, and South America, he accidentally became the foremost anthropologist and ethnographer of his day. What follows are some direct quotes from his book if you wish to read some of his amazing insights. If you do not want to read further, know this, children and adults alike must sleep with their mouths closed to achieve beautiful faces and superior health.
Quotes From The Breath of Life Or Mal-respiration
"I have devoted the greater part of my life in visiting, and recording the looks of, the various native Races of North and South America; and during those researches, observing the healthy condition and physical perfection of those people, in their primitive state, as contrasted with the deplorable mortality, the numerous diseases and deformities, in civilized communities..."
Catlin wanted to "see with his own eyes, the customs of the native Races, and obtain his information from the lips of the people themselves, instead of trusting to a long succession of authorities, historians and other writers (who) are more liable to lead the world into erroneous conclusions than that of the true native customs and character of Aboriginal Race."
"I have said that no diseases are natural, and deformities, mental and physical, are neither hereditary nor natural, but purely the results of accidents or habits."
"When I have seen a poor Indian woman in the wilderness, lowering her infant from the breast, and pressing its lips together as it falls asleep in its cradle in the open air, and afterwards looked into the Indian multitude for the results of such a practice, I have said to myself, "glorious education! such a Mother deserves to be the nurse of Emperors."
"An Indian child is not allowed to sleep with its mouth open, from the very first sleep of its existence; the consequence of which is, that while the teeth are forming and making their first appearance, they meet (and constantly feel) each other; and taking their relative, natural positions, form that healthful and pleasing regularity which has secured to the American Indians, as a Race, perhaps the most manly and beautiful mouths in the World."
"And when I have seen the careful, tender mothers in civilized life, covering the faces of their infants sleeping in overheated rooms, with their little mouths open and gasping for breath; and afterwards looked into the multitude, I have been struck with the evident evil and lasting results of this incipient stage of education; and have been more forcibly struck, and shocked, when I have looked into the Bills of Mortality, which I believe to be so frightfully swelled by the results of this habit, thus contracted, and practised in contravention to Nature's design."
"Man's cares and fatigues of the day become a daily disease, for which quiet sleep is the cure; and the All-wise Creator has so constructed him that his breathing lungs support him through that sleep, like a perfect machine, regulating the digestion of the stomach and the circulation of the blood, and carrying repose and rest to the utmost extremity of every limb; and for the protection and healthy working of this machine through the hours of repose..."
"This is not because the derangement of the teeth has made the habit, but because the habit has caused the derangement of the teeth. If it were for the sake of the teeth alone, and man's personal appearance, the habit I am condemning would be one well worth struggling against; much certainty discover its destructive effects upon the constitution and life of man, it becomes a subject of a different importance, and well worthy of being understood by every member of society..."
" Open mouths during the night are sure to produce open mouths during the day; the teeth protrude,...the whole features of the face are changed, the under jaw, unhinged, falls and retires, the cheeks are hollowed, and the cheek-bones and the upper jaw advance..."
"...resolve at every moment of your waking hours (except when it is necessary to open them) to keep your lips and teeth firmly pressed together; and your teeth, at all events, under any and every emotion, the next generation would be a Re-generation of the Human Race."