Book Review: GASP! Airway Health – The Hidden Path to Wellness

by Janice Goodman

The Book GASP Is A Game Changer

I was in dire need of a tool to help me explain to patients that some dental symptoms can be tracked back to an underlying airway issue and that there were solutions to these problems. GASP gives credibility to what I am saying and covers the myriad of topics in an evidence based manner. By sharing this book with parents and other practitioners, dentists play a key role in disseminating important knowledge to improve healthcare.

If you are thumbing through this journal, scratching your head and trying to make sense of some of the “airway centered/focused dentistry” articles–read this book. If you are a new grad and wonder why you need this information because it was not taught in dental school- please, consider reading this book before you dismiss the topic. We need everyone on board, but most of all we need the newest members of the profession to disseminate this knowledge and help as many patients by starting early. A lot of these medical issues are reversible and there is much that the dental profession can and must do to get the ball rolling to a healthier population.

GASP is written in a clear concise and easy to read manner and is meant for both the practicing clinician as well as patients. It is for a parent who wants their children to achieve their best potential in life and for those individuals who just didn’t get that help when they needed it. GASP also helps me to refer patients to other practitioners when treating “airway dentistry issues”, such as ENT physicians, myofunctional therapists and manual osteopaths. The authors explain why a team approach is the necessary way to deal with airway issues and often with the extra expense and effort involved it is difficult to convince the patient of that need.

Drs. Hindin and Gelb say it best:
“This book is about inspiration and hope. We are drowning in a “tsunami of chronic disease”….with huge increases in diabetes, dementia… ADD has doubled, there is a 300% increase in obesity since 1980, mental illness, anxiety, depression and more.

Mouth breathing, snoring and sleep apnea can start at birth and lead to changes in the prefrontal cortex as early as the first year of life. The changes produced by snoring, apnea, flow limitation and resisted breathing in infants can therefore lead to executive function issues at age four and seven with neurobehavioural and neurocognitive consequences. We knew that mouthbreathing could lead to altered growth patterns, which would exacerbate adult snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. It is now clear that the paradigm of diagnosis and treatment of these children needs to change…these trends are reversible”.

“Gasp looks at our healthcare crisis from a different angle. Evolution has blessed us by increasing the size of our brain, but this has led to small-retracted faces and sinuses compared to our predecessors. As pollution has worsened and our diets have deteriorated, our jaws have narrowed and our teeth are coming in crooked. There is seldom room for all 32 teeth. Our ability to speak was made possible by a flexible pharynx, but this created an “Achilles heel” of a collapsed airway. We are the only mammals except bulldogs who snore and stop breathing during sleep.”

The authors are teaching a new paradigm of diagnosing and treatment planning in dentistry, which they termed “Airway Centric”. They suggest that the hierarchy for dentists should be airway first and then TMJ, clenching, bruxism and lastly the teeth, bite and occlusion. This is logical, but will take a movement to get the profession to realize the need for this change. The movement is alive and is quickly gaining momentum. The authors of GASP have been involved in spear heading a dedicated group, the American Academy of Physiological Medicine and Dentistry; www.aapmd.org.
GASP is such a great boone to the distribution of “airway centered/focused dentistry” information and makes the movement to bring such knowledge mainstream a foreseeable possibility. OH


About the Book
Authors: Dr. Howard Hindin and Dr. Michael Gelb
First Edition: December 7, 2016
Paperback $17.95 USD; Kindle Edition $10.13 USD
Available through Amazon and local sources. (www.Gelbcenter.com and www.Hindincenter.com)

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