Improper Breathing Can Lead to Sleep & Health Issues with Karese Laguerre on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

the same script again, and again, for the constant ear infections, throat infections, congestion, and so forth. And all of those things sound yes, one very common, a lot of families and households are experiencing a lot of those things. But they’re really similar because a lot of the origin of such I learned about through a pediatric dentist was all based in the Oral Facial function, how they were using their muscles, how they were breathing. And once I fell into that rabbit hole to help save my children, and I got to, you know, really see an entirely different version in my household of, you know, thriving and success. I couldn’t help it I was addicted, I was now very, very passionate about helping other people rediscover their children. So that’s my long story about how I got into it.

 

Manon Bolliger  03:59

It makes sense. Because I was gonna say, there’s got to be some real reason that you know, you pick anyway. Well, that makes sense, that makes a lot of sense to and good for you for noticing it, you know, like, because, I mean, a lot of times in our culture, we’re sort of like, okay, well, you know, take a pill for this or do this or, Oh, that, you know, there’s nothing you can do just put them in another place or another corner or close the door or, you know, all kinds of dysfunctional behaviors that parents you know, take on because they feel hopeless, you know? So, yeah, so good for you for actually persevering. Well, why don’t we start like since you brought up your kids, why don’t we start with your son then what changed? And what could you do? What happened to him? That you now do that makes sense with your you know, your passion currently.

 

Karese Laguerre  05:01

Absolutely. So ADHD is one of my favorite things to talk about. Because my story with my son was just so long and so common, I should say, I really started with him when he was in kindergarten, I want to say it was the first time a teacher told me that he had difficulty focusing. And that he would find one of the little dust fuzzies that are floating around in a ray of sun that would shoot through the kindergarten window, and his eyes would just follow that, and he just could never pay attention in storytime. And it’s all sorts of things. And I’m like, well, but he’s five. So you know, that’s fine. Then it was him in first grade. And it was like, Yeah, but he’s six like guys leave him alone. He’s, of course, he’s not focused. He’s a six year old boy, seven, he’s eight. The excuses continue on until about fifth grade, where we took him to a pediatric neurologist, and he was officially diagnosed. Now official diagnosis, I like to remind all the listeners that ADHD is not something that you go and you get an MRI or a CAT scan, or you do some blood work, it’s the doctor that we waited six months to get in to be able to see, had this wonderful little checklist, she asked us a bunch of the symptoms, she checked off some stuff, boom, there it was, that’s the diagnosis right there. I had to wait for that and pay a whole lot of money out of pocket for that. But that ADHD diagnosis then came along with the traditional medication. That medication, we tried and it didn’t work, we went through another one, and it didn’t work. And we went through another one, it didn’t work, you know, all the typical stuff, we went through the Adderall, and so forth. And it wound up just being sort of a dead end for us. But you know, that was a lot of what we were told to do just keep the plan and you know, modify the diet. But when I came into this world and learning about myofunctional therapy, what I actually discovered is that ADHD, and all of the symptoms, because it’s a symptom based diagnosis, all of the symptoms of it actually have a 70% overlap with the symptoms of sleep disorders in children. So a child who is getting inadequate sleep, may very well exhibit themselves as a child with similar symptoms, because there’s that large overlap as ADHD. And it turned out that it wasn’t an ADHD true diagnosis for my son, it was actually a missed opportunity for that pediatric neurologist to do a differential diagnosis, and to prescribe maybe a sleep study. Because when we did get him a sleep study, he had moderate obstructive sleep apnea, so he wasn’t getting good quality sleep at all. And that was impacting how he was behaving during the day. And so with myofunctional therapy, it’s an exercise based wonderful way to change the way you’re using your muscles, I like to say it’s almost like personal training for all the muscles below the eyes, but above the shoulders. So we’re working with all those muscles to help strengthen and coordinate them and establish new neuromuscular patterns. So that now when he goes to sleep, we don’t have the snoring because snoring is such a thing. Well, I’m sure we’ll get into that a little bit. But we don’t have the snoring. He’s able to sleep restfully and peacefully and get through and cycle all through his stages. The myofunctional therapy really did impact him tremendously to the point where we were able, I want to say we were five or six months into the myofunctional therapy program, and we were able to just 100% right off all that medication. We didn’t need that anymore. He began to thrive, and he just really needed some sleep.

 

Manon Bolliger  08:47

Wow, incredible. It is just if you don’t get also, possibly the oxygen you need. You know, I’m sure that was part of the way, you know, and then that’s a stress on your whole body. Right?

 

Karese Laguerre  09:03

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because that’s what we need more than anything. We need oxygen, we can go for, you know, a few days without water a couple of weeks without food, but oxygen, you got minutes.

 

Manon Bolliger  09:17

Exactly. So how simple are these exercises that because I’m assuming that it’s not you just don’t…you don’t go in just to get it done. You have to do it daily. And it keep a routine. So how easy Are they for people to learn them?

 

Karese Laguerre  09:38

So, it’s very much a commitment. I like to liken it to personal training when I’m describing it because I think that that drives home that commitment. So let’s say you go to the gym you’re working out with a personal trainer and you work out with him one day a week and then you go home you sit on the couch the rest of the week you’ll never get six pack abs and I don’t have to explain why I think we all understand why it wouldn’t happen right. Our muscles, they really need that work and the discipline in it to, you know, facilitate change. Now, so kind of to go back to your question, it’s kind of like, well, how easy are crunches or, you know, whatever it is, you’re gonna do deadlifts to help work your core or help work your abs. working muscles is as easy or as difficult as it might be, depending on your strengths, or your weakness in that muscle group or muscles set initially. So for some people, it’s very, very difficult. And it takes a lot of discipline, and it takes a lot of time to be able to get up the strength and the awareness. And working with a therapist, you’re able to really troubleshoot and get a lot of the individual, you know, techniques that you would need in order to really be successful. But I like to say on average, most people, you’re doing the exercises two to three times a day, and when you’re doing them probably 5 to 10 minutes each time you sit down to do it. So maybe 15 to 30 minutes out of the day. So it doesn’t sound like a lot. You know, we’re all leading busy lives. So commitment.

 

Manon Bolliger  11:06

Yeah, and what about then for the children? Like, it must be hard at first until they see the benefits, right?

 

Karese Laguerre  11:17

Absolutely, it’s definitely a harder road with parents who have to really take the onus of the responsibility of exercising and making sure their kids are exercising. The children, it’s, we try to make it as fun as possible, we use a lot of tools and a lot of things, there’s a lot of ways you can incorporate food and really engage all of those muscles, your facial muscles, your lips, your cheeks, you can engage a lot of different muscles. By making it a little fun that way, they almost don’t recognize that they’re exercising, but I just also makes the program just a little bit longer to.

 

Manon Bolliger  11:54

That’s true probably. So anyway, so that’s with your son. So kind of a misdiagnosis. Turns out, though, how long did it take once you actually realize that he needed this physical kind of rehabilitation therapy to get him out of where he was at and getting to sleep?

 

Karese Laguerre  12:20

It took, I want to say about, he started to sleep better, not fully, efficiently, but he started to sleep better four to six weeks in, but really five to six months is when we were officially like, Oh, he’s doing really, really exceptionally well. On average, most kids are about six to nine months to finish a myofunctional therapy program. So he is right there along that average.

 

Manon Bolliger  12:49

Yeah. Amazing. I mean, if you think about it, you know, these poor kids can be on drugs that cause all kinds of problems that don’t help them. They get labeled, they don’t have normal lives. It’s like wow, you know, it’s amazing to hear that. So then there was your, your daughter, that was the sleep and the nightmares, right?

 

Karese Laguerre  13:18

Yes, she had night terrors, the sleepwalking and bedwetting. Yeah, so she had all those sleep issues. And she actually was a very big thumb sucker. So a big part of our respiration, especially at night, first phases of sleep stage one stage two muscles really start to relax. And when you think about lying down, and you’re lying down in a bed, everything is relaxed, but then there’s also gravity. And so now gravity is pushing things down too, and with her thumb in that mouth, that thumb was actually displacing the tongue from the roof of the mouth. So our tongue at rest should actually rest with the entire arch of the upper palate, that palate, the roof of the mouth, should be contained with the body of the tongue. So the tongue should be resting up and out of the upper respiratory tract up and out of your airway. But when you’ve got your thumb in there, displacing where that tongue should be resting, that tongue now rests down in back in the mouth, and now you’ve got gravity you lay down, and everything falls backwards, and it was just obstructing her airway significantly. So we had to one eliminate that oral habit, and then to really start establishing more strength and awareness for her of her tongue so that she can facilitate resting it at the roof of her mouth anytime that she’s not eating, drinking, speaking.

 

Manon Bolliger  14:48

Right. So you mentioned me just want to make sure I heard this right. I’ve understood it’s should be the tip of the tongue but you’re saying much more than body of the tongue.

 

Karese Laguerre  15:01

Absolutely, the entirety of the body of the tongue. So, yeah. Where it is right now, I’ve got a quick one minute test. So if you put your feet flat on the floor, and you sit up nice and straight, and you take a deep breath in through your nose, you’re going to breathe back out through your nose. And we’re going to do that two more times deep breath in through your nose back out through your nose. And as you do it, the third time, I’m going to speak through it, I want you to just be really aware really in tune with your body. Where is your tongue in space in time in your mouth, and the whole body of the tongue, not just the tip. So some might find the tip of their tongue sits up there, but the rest of the tongue might be low or in the middle of the mouth, some might find that it just rest towards their teeth. Tongues just hanging out in.

 

Manon Bolliger  15:55

Yeah, right by the teeth.

 

Karese Laguerre  15:57

By their teeth. Yeah.

 

Manon Bolliger  15:58

And then the tip is still there. So it feels like there’s a gap where I’m not touching it. And the rest, it’s there, but it’s definitely relaxed up.

 

Karese Laguerre  16:09

It relaxed up. That’s interesting. Yeah, why is we want that tongue body to sit in the entirety up against the palate and not against the teeth, actually, because when it’s sitting and resting up against the palate, especially more of the body of the tongue, so the back or the posterior portion of the tongue, that’s going to help stimulate that vagus nerve. That’s your autonomic nervous system. It’s stimulating your nasal floor. And so that’s going to help you respirate better because we want to stimulate the nasal floor that’s going to help you get in more oxygen stimulate and produce nitric oxide. And that’s going to be the key is that tongue. I like to consider the tongue a respiratory organ. I know everybody has…

 

Manon Bolliger  16:50

No, I can totally see that. But you know, it’s interesting, because I have noticed in the last while this is not a therapy session, but like, hey, it’s full. But you know, I will listen to things because I get very relaxed, and I generally sleep well. But I have this habit because my partner keeps telling me, are you sleeping and I say no, no, I’m totally listening. But I have this. You know, as I relaxed, I have this like, snoring that I can hear. But I’m not at all asleep. I’m snoring.

 

Karese Laguerre  17:28

Are you upright or are you lying down at that time?

 

Manon Bolliger  17:31

I’m laying down.

 

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Karese Laguerre  18:41

You’re lying down, okay? I like to compare that then to so imagine someone with six pack abs, right? You lie them down in a bed, six pack abs don’t move. They they’re all there. That’s nice, tight muscles. Somebody who has more of a beer belly, you lie them down, everything shifts, all of a sudden now gravity’s taking hold and things have to move and manipulate. Imagine the tissues of your throat so your pharyngeal tissues similarly, right? So as you lie down, everything just sort of shifts. If it’s not strong and facilitating in its own right, the openness of that upper respiratory tract, then you lay back, you get gravity involved, and everything just sort of start to fall in on itself. And then that’s what that sound is. So when you hear a sound during breathing, because breathing in all respects, it’s supposed to be in audible, you shouldn’t be able to hear anyone breathe ever. If you’re hearing something, it’s typically either they’re congested, and you’re hearing it because all of those tissues are inflamed, and so that’s narrowing that upper respiratory tract or everything is relaxed and starting to fall in on itself. And that’s the air it’s meeting resistance as it’s going down, and it’s causing vibrations of the tissues. And you’re hearing the sound of that.

 

Manon Bolliger  20:05

Yeah, that’s definitely what it is. Because this part is all clear. So that’s interesting. It’s funny, because I was looking forward to this interview, but this was quite a while ago, since we booked it. But I bought these little tools to you know, I haven’t opened the box yet it just arrived, but to do exercises to see if that because it feels like it’s all caving in on me. And then it makes me want to, like choke, you know, and I’m, like, I’m thinking and this is not normal. It shouldn’t be like this, you know? So, anyway, yes. Yeah. So something like that, obviously can be can be treated by doing exercises and, and the tongue as well, like you said it should actually lie up.

 

Karese Laguerre  20:52

Yes, because we want to get the tongue body up and out of that airway. Because the tongue is a pretty big, I call it an organ, somebody might want to call it a, you know, muscle set. But it’s a pretty big organ and so if it’s not up against the roof of the mouth, it’s falling down and back, and I don’t want it anywhere in that upper respiratory.

 

Manon Bolliger  21:12

That makes sense. So okay, so back to your daughter after that interlude. So the night like this, the screams and the nightmares. How do you explain that? As part of the picture.

 

Karese Laguerre  21:32

So, the night terrors really do fall in because her sleep stages, they weren’t being well cycled. So a lot of the times, you’ll find that these children that are experiencing the night terrors, and some adults do as well. But it’s primarily children, their respiration when the body has to prioritize, breathing, and kind of deprioritize, all of the wonderful restorative benefits that we get during sleep, the brain processing memories, and all sorts of wonderful things that happen while we’re sleeping, when the body has to now prioritize that you’re not going to cycle through your sleep stages that would do all of that restorative work. So you’re not going to get into a really good REM, you might start to dip into it, but then your body is like Nope, we can’t have that. So it winds up being a lot of negative feedback, where it’s a nightmare. It’s not like a night terror, you wake up and you start to feel in a lot of ways, like you’re perishing, where you ever have a lot of those dreams back to back to back where it seems like oh my gosh, I almost died in this dream. That’s a wake up and scream for a child for a child that is a very much ah.

 

Manon Bolliger  22:45

Right of course. Yeah. And that obviously would impact the whole vagus nerve like stability too, right? Yeah.

 

Karese Laguerre  22:53

Absolutely. And then during the daytime, they exhibit a lot of hyperactivity or anxiety.

 

Manon Bolliger  23:01

Yeah, Yeah. And then the bedwetting.

 

Karese Laguerre  23:03

The bedwetting is just the body not shutting off. So once we hit that stage of REM, we’re actually supposed to be in paralysis, like you shouldn’t be able to move. So people who are tossing and turning, you’re in stage one through four of sleep, but you’re definitely not in true REM, where your body’s doing all these restorative processes, we can’t restore while you’re moving around, we got to shut down a lot of that nervous system. So when that body is not really shutting down all the way because you haven’t gotten into those deeper cycles of sleep. That urinary tract is still on. And a lot of times it’s cycling when you’re in those lighter stages of sleep and you think that you’re using a restroom but you’re not actually using a restroom.

 

Manon Bolliger  23:49

So again, fixed by working with the jaw, probably the TMJ or?

 

Karese Laguerre  23:59

Alleviated by doing a lot of work on breathing, establishing good nasal breathing, good tongue posturing, and ensuring that the pharyngeal muscles are nice and strong and able to help self sustain because they’re still gonna relax when you sleep. But we want it to have more of that six pack ab type of imagery, where it’s not going anywhere, even if you’re lying down as opposed to, you know, that beer belly style where everything relaxes, and it becomes not how it should look.

 

Manon Bolliger  24:30

Like it’s funny in the work, do you do you know about Bowen therapy? The physical therapy?

 

Karese Laguerre  24:38

Yes, I have heard of that.

 

Manon Bolliger  24:40

Okay, yeah. I run Bowen College and I’ve been practicing it for 30 years. But we do a lot of work with the TMJ, but also the coccyx. So with bedwetting, often there’s a correlation that if the coccyx is not in the right position, the TMJ goes out and vice versa.

 

Karese Laguerre  25:03

It’s such a huge connection between the mouth and the hips and the feet and everything. So one, the fascial planes that run through that the deep line fascia, but then two, if you think about it, all the arches of our body really do have to be well connected and have to move in a sense together, right? So when there is a shift that sphenoid bone is key, is that what you guys talk about a lot, that sphenoid bone winds up being off, the hips tilt off, like the TMJ is off, there’s always that deviation and deflection in that joint, then, yes, you’re speaking my love language.

 

Manon Bolliger  25:43

Secondary breathing, you know, as well, right with the positioning of the pelvis. So that everything, you know, can flow as they say. Yeah that’s why I was super excited to hear more specifically, what what the work is on what it actually can treat. So now, we talked about your second daughter, you have four kids?

 

Karese Laguerre  26:05

I have four, yes. For the younger two kind of mimic each other in a sense. Yeah, both of those girls were tongue tied. I didn’t know it very early on when I was breastfeeding them. But we had a lot of issues with breastfeeding. So I just assumed it was supposed to be painful. I just kind of rode the wave with that. But then wound up with mastitis several times, there were a lot of burst feeding sessions where it’s like, sucking sucking, fall asleep, wake up sucking, sucking, sucking sucking fall asleep, and it’s continuous, where it seems like oh, they’re never really getting enough because they were sucking inefficiently or unable to really latch on well, and to, you know, facilitate getting the milk out on their own because of the tongue tie requires a lot of work from the tongue in order to breastfeed. The older they got it became ear infections, sore throat, congestion, a lot of upper respiratory issues. So those ear infections, you know, our tongue is actually against the roof of the mouth whenever we’re swallowing. It actually, when it presses up against the mouth in a peristaltic or normal swallow, it’s actually helping to relieve or drain our Eustachian tube. So those middle ear tubes, right? Otherwise, when you’re not getting that constant action, because how many times a day are we swallowing, you know, experts say on average, maybe 2000. If you’re not getting that, and you’re compressing different muscles, and everything just sort of sits there, you’re putting yourself at a higher risk for tinnitus and ear infections and so forth, because you’re not able to naturally clear. So the ear infections, the sore throats, they were mouth breathers as well, the mouth breathing. You know, there’s correlation, not necessarily causation, but correlation between mouth breathing and hypertrophy or inflammation of the tonsils, and the adenoids. And definitely all of that air passing through their mouth. And the only way to filter the air in the mouth is through the tonsils. That was another one of our big, big issues there. So being able to really work with them on nasal breathing, establishing nasal breathing, establishing better tongue posture, really did help us a long, long way.

 

Manon Bolliger  28:27

And did you find, like for nasal because there’s a lot of kids, I’ve seen that are their breathing with their mouth, you know, and their positioned that way? Is that…why do you think we’re seeing that so much.

 

Karese Laguerre  28:45

There’s a number of reasons why we suspect it’s occurring. A good portion of that has to do with how we feed our children nowadays, there’s a lot of things in pouches, there’s not a lot of chewing that’s happening very early on. So outside of the pouches, everything that you might find in a jar or bottle is mush. And so they’re not really chewing, they’re not stimulating that jaw, they’re not working those muscles efficiently enough and so that winds up being a deficit for them. Sippy cups are detrimental and do not help to establish a mature oral functioning pattern of swallowing or lip rest. And so sippy cups find it being detrimental, but the marketing on them is just so so strong, where everybody feels like Okay, after a breast or bottle we go to a sippy cup. That is the most incorrect thing that’s ever been, you know, marketed out there into the world.

 

Manon Bolliger  29:39

I didn’t know that. So is it because you’re it’s like you’re it’s the wrong positioning. To basically you’re sucking but you’re not sucking.

 

Karese Laguerre  29:52

Yes, exactly. Exactly. It has the tongue in the wrong position. Like everything about it is it’s very incorrect. It’s only been built to help prevent spills, which is an inconvenience. But if we’re trying to get our children to develop really well and to get good oral muscle strength and awareness, they need to go from breast or bottle to an open cup.

 

Manon Bolliger  30:17

Yeah. And they have cups where you can hold two sides to make it slightly easier. Oh, good to know. Yeah, cuz I have one grandchild almost, almost coming any minute. And another one that’s nine months old. So it’s interesting. It’s funny at this stage, my kids, it seems like so long ago. But I certainly notice all these little things, you know, with the grandkids, that’s for sure.

 

Karese Laguerre  30:52

Absolutely. You want to get them away from all the pouches all the the baby foods baby led weaning, it’s a phenomenal book. And there are lots of support groups and organizations online to help. But it really does facilitate a better natural path into chewing and eating. Because a lot of times people don’t realize it’s super important for the oral development that they start to chew. That’s how they stimulate. Our body, especially our teeth responds to bone loading. So the more chewing and more of that munching action that they get early on, the better their teeth will erupt, you’ll get through teething significantly easier. Nobody thinks about that. But that’s actually why we give children teathers. It’s not because they need something cold to suck on. It’s because that chewing stimulates eruption. Yeah.

 

Manon Bolliger  31:42

Right. Well, you’re a total wealth of knowledge on this subject. It seemed like you were given exactly the challenge that you know that such you able to help a lot more people. So that’s amazing. Any, any other…we have a little bit of time left, not much. But anything you want to share? Or to wrap up this? Or you know that you really wish I didn’t ask as many questions so you could actually say something?

 

Karese Laguerre  32:14

No, no worries. I think the really best thing that people can do if they want to do something right now, if they’re like, I don’t know that I can invest or commit in myofunctional therapy right now. But I want to do something to help me get a little better. Invest in a nasal hygiene routine. So whether you’re going to do something that’s like an irrigation system, like those neti pots, and you’re really flushing out, or you’re just using a saline spray, and you’re helping to clean and cleanse out that way, make sure you’re cleaning your nose, just like you have a routine every day for cleaning your body or cleaning your teeth and so forth, you need to clean your nose. Like we said before, respiration is like key, we need oxygen more than we need food more than we need water, we need oxygen. And so we should be cleaning out those nasal passages every single day to ensure that our body has the best chance to facilitate as much oxygenation as possible. So establish a nasal hygiene routine.

 

Manon Bolliger  33:12

Okay, I’m gonna ask another question, though. But I’ve heard mixed reviews about like not not the breathing where you breathe through one nostril and then you switch because you’re using air there. But the neti pots. Why are they…why do you say that they’re good? Because I mean, most of the causes of inflammation are usually dietary things that we’re sensitive to that we shouldn’t be eating that’s inflaming the mucosa. Right. But outside which should be corrected, either. That’s the primary. But what does the neti pot do that I’m not aware of.

 

Karese Laguerre  33:56

So, saline irrigation is going to help clear out. So a lot of what our nose does as our breathing is it’s filtering a lot of the air, then we have how many ways to get rid of that you can either suck it all in. So you know the kids who had the sniffles. You could start sucking stuff back in and down and it goes down your throat, or you can blow it out. Not many people are doing enough of either you might start thinking about blowing your nose when you feel something or you might start thinking about I don’t know, a big sniff to get all that post nasal drip down. Otherwise, but what your saline irrigation is going to come in, it’s really to help clean out a lot of that because you’re not blowing enough. Nobody is blowing their nose enough. Nobody’s cleaning out adequately enough. So it’s really just going to help to clean and then if you use one, just pro tip if you use one that has xylitol in it, so a xylitol based saline rinse or solution that’s actually going to help by providing just a little antimicrobial layer in there to help sort of prevent

 

Manon Bolliger  35:04

Oh, okay. I guess I was happy with my Chili’s. Blowing my nose is not the issue. I’m eating spicy food even though probably my body is saying it’s enough. But anyway, well thank you so much for sharing all that. Yeah, I mean your whole experience with this and also putting this on the map because I don’t think everyone knows that there are actually ways that you can help all of the conditions we’ve talked about. So thanks very much.

 

Karese Laguerre  35:42

Thank you so much.

Ending

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