Margaret Barry | Mitolife Radio Ep #143

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
tongue, fascia, tie, body, issues, vagus nerve, release, mouth, swallowing, muscles, day, tissue, procedure, palate, feel, people, move, connection, vitamin e, thought

Matthew Blackburn 00:20
You're listening to Episode 143 of MitoLife Radio. I'm Matt Blackburn and today, we're speaking with Margaret Berry. Margaret is a personal trainer, and a certified pregnancy and postpartum corrective exercise specialist. In this show, she really blew my mind with the information on tongue ties and the systemic effects that a tongue tie can have on the body. She shares her journey of healing from hypo thalamic amenorrhea, basically having no period, and hair falling out and hormones being trashed, and how she recovered from that. And then she goes into the tongue tie and breaks down what it is, what causes it? If you can have it as an adult, how you know you have it, the severity of it, the symptoms, how common is it? And what's the solution for it. She also shares her knowledge on the vagus nerve, and fascia, and how all of this connects. And then there's a little q&a at the end, where people ask about mewing What can I do while pregnant deviated septum, clumsiness, not able to swallow pills, cranial sacral therapy, tongue thrust, and more. So let's jump into it. Here is Margaret Berry. All right, we're here with Margaret Barry. Welcome to the show.

Margaret Barry 02:03
Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Matthew Blackburn 02:06
Yeah, this is gonna be really fun. I like having guests on about subjects that I don't know much about. And seems like all this stuff you're into, stuff that I haven't really studied, like tongue ties and fascia, to a very superficial degree... but you were saying that what got you into all this was healing from hypothalamic amenorrhea (it's a mouthful).

Margaret Barry 02:35
It is not fun to deal with either. So yes. So that kind of catapulted me into this world of both fitness and nutrition and the balance between those two. That's kind of what catapulted me in. So I, in my late teens, I was really into exercise, I was a swimmer, I was actually a competitive swimmer for a number of years. And I had to stop the sport due to things in life happening. And at that point, I started to get really neurotic about my food and really focused on what I was eating. And eventually, I think, if looking back, I could have been diagnosed with some kind of, you know, various eating disorders, whether it's anorexia, or binge eating, or orthorexia, or all three. I could have had all three based on looking back at those different phases. But it was really like my own prison that I made for myself in my mind, because I was so hyper focused on this one thing, which was the input and output of my body, and I I just let that take over my brain and really take over my life. And I mean, I remember that in my day, there was like, not a time that I was not thinking about "Okay, what am I going to eat next, what I'm going to do to exercise to burn it off." And looking back, I think that it was me just striving for control in my life. I felt like the other areas of my life were out of my control. I was like, you know, 18-19 years old at the time, and I think that it was just me trying to find control and I was like "I can't control other things happening my life so I can control my body. So I'm going to be really good at that." So it was that manifestation of desire for control, basically. And so, which brings me to the hypothalamic amenorrhea, I essentially had no period. Like I went for almost a year, I think was over a year, of complete no cycle. My hormones were completely tanked. My hair was falling out, I felt terrible, obviously. And the worst part of that was that people were complimenting me on how good I looked. That's the thing that just hurt me the most. They're like, "oh, you look so good." And I'm sitting here going "but I really don't feel good. I know this is not healthy. I know this is not healthy." And in that recovery process. I eventually jumped from being very restrictive to being very selective with my food. It's like I switched the way I was being obsessed with it. And it was just very, I was very obsessive. I was also vegetarian for a while, and then that wasn't obsessive and restrictive enough, so I went vegan. And that just further dug me into the hole that I'm, you know, still working out of. But anyway, I just remember at one point I got so disillusioned with nutrition altogether, I was just like, "I don't even think this matters." Then I started to research female hormones, and I mean, I just used Google, right? I was just Googling how to raise progesterone when you don't have a period. And, you know, the advice that came up was actually fairly decent advice, thank goodness, because I was just a 19 year old, 20 year old using Google. But it came up with you know, you need to eat more food, you need to have enough body fat, female body needs to feel safe in order to reproduce. And so I kind of realized that I was going to have to gain weight and that was really scary for me, to realize that I was going to have to gain weight to get myself out of that. And I wanted to have children one day, so I knew that that was important. So I started the process of eating more food. I think I remember googling herbs to support. So I think at the time I used, which your audience may be familiar with, vitex or chasteberry. I used that and in a couple of months of really focusing on that I did have to gain weight so that was hard for me to get over, realizing that I had to let go of what people thought of me, knowing that I was not healthy on the inside, knowing the truth of that and being okay with people looking at me and going "wow, she's gained weight, what happened to her", and then being okay with that, and the judgment of others. It was a couple of months and then I started my period back again, my hair started growing back, I started to have more energy, I no longer felt depressed (because I was very depressed). So coming out of that, it made me have compassion for women who have either had similar experiences to meet, or have had any kind of disordered relationship with food and with exercise. So I just really felt like that was something I wanted to do, and I wanted to help other people, regardless in the way that they have been treated by the culture surrounding diet and nutrition for women. So I did some trainings with the Nutritional Therapy Association, that was all the way back in 2013-2014. And since then I've done other trainings too, with the goal of bringing that information to women in a way that makes sense and as easily applied to their life, and is not going to put further stress on them. That was a big goal, to be streamlined in my approach and help women in all areas of their life, whether they have children or preparing to have children or they're postmenopausal, streamlining things and making it simple and applicable to their life.

Matthew Blackburn 07:40
That's really awesome. Yeah, I like that you brought up the gaining weight, and the shaming and judgment that comes with that. Because I noticed both men and women have that like body dysmorphia, from television and movies, and just society or whatever. Where men it's like the more ripped, the better, and then for women it's like the less weight the better. That's the patterns that I've seen anyway. Yes, absolutely.

Margaret Barry 08:05
It is. It's so pushed on us. And even in the environment that I grew up in, and this may be surprising, but I was homeschooled, we didn't do a lot of media, but I still got the message that the thinner is better. Eating less is better. You're not disciplined if, you know, you're not eating tiny, tiny portions. You're not disciplined, and there's something wrong with you. And I mean, even as I was recovering, because there's been different stages to my recovery, there's the initial "I need to gain weight in order to help my body feel safe, so that my hormones cannot be dysregulated." But then as I grew in my understanding, I still thought sugar and carbohydrates were the devil. I was just like, "this is bad." Everyone can agree that these are bad things for us, because the information I had at the time was confirming my view about those things. And at one point (you're gonna love this) I actually taught baking classes because I was a baker for many years, and I specialized in like gluten free and specialty cakes, like wedding cakes. I did that for a number of years, even when I was, you know, having all these issues with food, but I even decided "I'm going to teach a baking class and we're going to use, you know, erythritol and stevia. And we're going to make all these:. I mean, it was actually really tasty, but I did cooking seminars where I was like "sugar is the devil.Here's how to bake things without sugar and without carbohydrates." Looking back on that. I just shake my head sometimes when I look back at the things that I had done in the past. I had someone email me recently and was like, "hey, are you still doing those keto baking classes?" That was like 15 years ago, like I'm not doing that anymore. But I just looked back sometimes, and I just shake my head at myself. I'm like... well, I was doing the best that I thought I could do with the information I had at the time. So I just say that that's where I was then, this is where I am now. So, I come a long way.

Matthew Blackburn 10:04
That's hilarious. Did you have a lightbulb moment with like PUFAs and polyunsaturated fats? Because those kind of get the thumbs up, and sugar gets the thumbs down. It should be the reverse.

Margaret Barry 10:15
Yes, exactly. So that was a couple years ago that I started to, because even in some of the schooling that I had, they were like "Yes, omega-3 oils, you need to get that". They weren't talking about the whole foods, or that it's in natural, whole foods... they were just like, "yes, you need to be supplementing the omega-3's." And I just kind of took that and believed that it was true until I started researching that, and I kind of I did have that moment where I was like, okay, they're telling us to use flaxseed and flaxseed oil, or those very volatile oils, and I knew that that's problematic from what we knew about inflammation. And it really it's like the reverse, when you think that this is wrong, but it actually can be beneficial, especially for people in stress. And as I've been working with people who are totally stressed out, one of the worst things they can do is lower their carbohydrate intake and increase the polyunsaturated fat intake. I mean, everyone's slamming nut butters, and if someone enjoys that, that's fine. But if you notice that you have any of those symptoms related to having too much of that in your body, that's something to look into. Because it's a big missing piece. People don't talk about that and like I said, even when my schooling they kind of, you know, hammered some of that. And I didn't question it at the time, but a couple years down the line I was like, "huh, that actually, that doesn't make a lot of sense." You taught us the biochemistry, but then for example, when they say that the primary fuel of the cell is glucose but we really, really need to be fat burners... you know what I'm saying? Like, as a blanket statement, I remember kind of going "wait a minute, why would we subvert the way that we have been created naturally? Because this way is better?" That just didn't make sense. It just didn't compute. And I started kind of going... wait a minute, that does that doesn't make sense.

Matthew Blackburn 12:07
Yeah, yeah, there's there's a lot of mental mental gymnastics that's done too, like they say, you know, burning one mole of fat produces more ATP than burning one mole of glucose. And all these little, little things get that get thrown around and I think the picture is a lot bigger. I was actually talking to my friend last night, Max, about my fruitarian days. And I think my record for eating bananas in one sitting was like 23, or 24 bananas, in one sitting. Wow. And there's quite a bit of tryptophan in there, which could be deleterious for serotonin increase, but I was thinking about the potassium content, and he had me look up, he's like, "how much potassium is in banana? Let me google it" and it was like, close to 500 milligrams for medium sized banana. And so I was adding it up, I'm like, geez, I was getting multiple grams but I still felt anxious and I think my potassium burn rate, just like all of our magnesium and sodium burn rate, yes, goes up. But I'm sure when you were dealing with that you were just burning through your minerals with the stress. You mentioned depression?

Margaret Barry 13:11
Yes, absolutely. And actually, over the last couple of years I've really gone deep into minerals. I think I found your page whem I was going really deep into minerals, because I was like, "that's the missing piece. That's one of the missing pieces of people's health." And again, in my training, they kind of were like, "this is one of the foundations of health, minerals." I was kinda like, that's nice. Magnesium, sodium, potassium, that's cool, moving on. And then I started diving deeper into it, and really thought yeah, really looked at that and was like... wow, this. Actually, I probably had a really high magnesium burn rate, my sodium and potassium was probably completely tanked from all the stress that was going on, and then the restriction. So yeah, looking back, I could have easily easily typified myself how burned out I would have been on my mineral profile from that.

Matthew Blackburn 13:58
So what led you to the the tongue tie stuff? Is that an issue with newborns? I haven't looked into it too much.

Margaret Barry 14:06
So with the tongue ties, I ended up coming into that space, or learning about it, by my children's own experience with it, with my first child. So first, I'll define what a tongue tie actually is, so people can understand. Essentially a tongue tie, or lip tie, or a buckle tie (you can have them on your cheeks as well), it's a tightening of the lingual frenum. That lingual frenum underneath the tongue, on some people, has inappropriate links, and on other people it is way too tight, and the tongue is tied down too tightly on the floor of the mouth. So essentially, it's a tightening of that muscle and that causes effects in the entire body. And it is most commonly referred to and discussed in children but there's a whole host of issues that can happen as an adult with a tongue tie, which we would think that we would follow that logic and go "wow, if it causes this much issue for a baby, then why would it not cause similar manifestations or problems in adults", but we don't think about that typically. So with my daughter, she was born, I think she was around 37-38 weeks when she was born, so she was a little early but we had trouble for about six weeks with her breastfeeding, and I was at my wit's end. I was like... something in the back of my head, my intuition said "something is not normal here. I don't quite know what it is, but something's not normal." Like, it's not normal for my baby to choke right after I feed her to where I think I'm going to need to call 911, I don't need to be putting her on a slanted bed to sleep, you know, so that she doesn't choke, that just doesn't seem normal to me. A lot of gas, a lot of issues in her digestion, and even just her temperament. She couldn't calm down. It was like she was on the gas pedal and the brake of parasympathetic and sympathetic dominant, it's like she had the gas pedal all the way down into sympathetic dominance. And looking back, I'm retroactively looking at her like, yes, that makes total sense. So I had heard from a friend of mine, that her daughter (actually my sister in law) had had the same thing, a tongue tie with her daughter, and she very kindly mentioned it to me when she was six weeks old. And I had heard about tongue ties and I said, "oh, not my baby, I pay attention to my nutrition. This couldn't be a problem for my baby, this... No." So she had brought it up again when my daughter was about six weeks old. And at that time, I was like, "I'm ready to see if this is an issue for my child", because we had been told by the pediatrician, lactation consultant, "no, she doesn't have any tongue ties, that's not a problem", or that it's overdiagnosed, it's massively blown out of proportion. So again, being a naive first time mom, I just took their word for it, but when I talked to my sister in law I realized I needed to go have this assessed by someone who is trained specifically in the function of the orofacial myology of the face. So we went to a pediatric dentist, we had her assessed, and he clearly showed us "this is why she's unable to stop swallowing so much air when she's breastfeeding, why she can't get as much milk, you know, in one feeding, and she's feeding every hour." He showed us clearly, with her mouth in the appropriate way, this is why it's a problem. And so we said, "okay, well have the procedure done." And it takes literally less than 20-30 seconds to get that taken care of with the laser, he used a laser. And I remember when we were coming into the room after she'd had it done, I immediately latched her, and the latch was completely different. I was sitting there going, my eyes got big, I looked up at the doctor and looked at my husband, I was like, "this is this is completely different!" It's like she's able to open her mouth further, she's getting more milk, and she slept the longest stretch she had ever slept in six weeks of her life. She slept all the way home, which was two and a half hours, she slept after I got her out of her car seat, she'd never slept that long because she couldn't get enough milk because of her swallowing issues, and it was finally like her system was resetting a bit, her her parasympathetic nervous system was able to actually interact in an appropriate way. So on the way home from that appointment, I remember the doctor saying, "hey, you know, these are actually typically hereditary. So mom and dad usually has one and passes it to the baby." And I remember thinking, the wheels started turning my mind and I was like... wait a minute. So on the way home, I took a picture of my mouth. I still have that picture of my mouth where I was like "do I have a tongue tie?" And in my mind, I was researching on the way home and I said "well, I don't know, maybe I'll check into it later on." That was three and a half years ago, and it kind of took me until this year to understand the impact, especially with regards to the fascia system, myofascia, and understand that and want to take action on it. It made a huge difference for both of my children because I have two, and with my son, we learned our lesson and we went when he was three or four days old. Right after he was born, we had him assessed by the same doctor to make sure that he didn't have any tongue and lip ties, and he did. Coincidentally he's actually a more calm baby than she was because we got that done, like taken care of right away, his body was able to adapt to it very easily. So essentially, it can be a problem for children, which is most commonly talked about, but for adults, absolutely. It can flow over into that as well.

Matthew Blackburn 19:37
Wow, that's amazing. First question: with the procedure, like you mentioned, it's a tightening, which is the laser just loosening it up or is it does it cut it?

Margaret Barry 19:47
Yeah, it essentially cuts the tissue that is holding it down to the floor of the mouth. Some doctors will use scissors or other ways, usually it's scissors or laser that they will do. And typically, the tightening occurs, you know, it's the shortening, it's basically been shortened too much and so when you cut that, it oftentimes lengthens the tongue more, and you'll have a longer tongue, and your tongue can move more in your mouth. So it essentially frees that up with either laser or the scissors, and having it had it done as an adult, which we will talk about, was really cool, because I was wondering what it was like for babies, and how it was when you're getting your tongue tie released. It was very cool.

Matthew Blackburn 20:30
So I know that nutritional deficiencies in the mother... Like all the kids, I had braces, I had a friend with a headgear that was really embarrassing and, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with Weston A Price, the dentist that studied indigenous cultures, and that there's that retinol-vitamin K2 piece, and B vitamins. I'm sure there's a lot of things involved: magnesium, minerals... but children being born with the tongue tie, have you researched the nutritional deficiencies associated with that?

Margaret Barry 21:02
Yes, I have a little bit, and I have some theories as to why we're seeing more, because usually a question that people ask is, "okay, well, back in my grandparents day we didn't hear about people having tongue ties", although there are different accounts of that happening back in the day. But so, with Weston Price, there's a really cool overlap with Weston Price that I just love because, you know, he was studying the ability of the palate to develop in a wide balanced manner, so that all the teeth can fit in the mouth and he saw that, of course, with the introduction of the refined stuff into the diet and people not eating their traditional cultural foods, he noticed that correlation of the narrowing of the palate with the introduction of those processed and refined foods that were more Western influenced into these cultures. You know, pasteurized milk... they were drinking raw milk, and now they're doing pasteurized, stuff like that. So it's really cool, because if the tongue is resting in an optimal position in the mouth, the palate develops over the top. So I've learned this from the people that I have, you know, asked about this, because I meant to say this at the beginning, but obviously I'm not a pediatric dentist, or a myofunctional therapist. However, I've researched this for three and a half years so I do know some about the connections there. But the tongue, actually, if it's sitting correctly in the mouth, the palate is able to develop over it in a balanced and wide manner. So I was born with a narrow palate, I had palate expanders, like you talking about the headgear and all that, I had palate expanders to expand my palate. Ehen I was maybe 10, or 12 years old, I had a thing to help me with my bite, I had a lot of different healthcare going on with that, and different interventions in the mouth, but it really comes back to that nutrition causing the body to either, basically, I guess the word would be kind of co-opting that and not be able to form as optimally as it should. So, in the case of Weston Price, he had studied that connection with the palate. And so when I saw that I was like, "oh, the tongue, that makes sense, if the tongue is in the right spot palate develops optimally." So with the tongue ties, there is indication, there's some research, there's not a lot, but there are some connections to the gene mutation that everyone has, the MTHFR that everyone loves to talk about. There is some connections with that. And also with the addition of iron and folic acid to people's food that was not naturally found, you know, in the food supply... so enriched products, and all that kind of stuff, so there is some connections there. There is also a connection to the hereditary aspects of this. For example, and this one... I explained this and I was like, "it sounds kind of harsh" but it actually is true. So for example, back in the day, let's say 1700s-1800s, if there's a baby born with enough of a severe tongue and lip tie, then they would actually not be able to eat well, because back then, let's say the mom doesn't feel like she's producing enough milk, she hands it off to the wet nurse or someone else who is a lactating female. You hand it off to her, she would nurse the baby. Well, if the baby literally could not get enough milk, or they couldn't even get the bottle to feed the baby, they did not have the type of infrastructure we had these days to take care of babies who are not able to eat for one reason or another. So back in the day, the baby may not survive, the baby will not pass their genes of the really severe tongue tie to offspring because they might actually not survive. So in our case, we're seeing more of that because there is an actual hereditary aspect, you know, for people who have the shape of their ears or, you know, the birthmarks that they have, that can kind of stuff can be hereditary sometimes to different physical characteristics. So it makes sense in a way that the tongue tie would be something that is similar to other hereditary conditions, but that's just interesting because they wouldn't have survived to pass on but these days we do have the infrastructure to help babies, who maybe couldn't have nursed, survive. So we're just seeing that's why it is so common, I think. And it's more common than ever these days, because we've had a long time since 1700-1800s for people's bodies to change, especially with the different process things that we're bringing into your diet as well.

Matthew Blackburn 25:23
That's really interesting. That's fascinating. The connection with MTHFR too because Morley, a frequent guests on the show, he said that copper deficiency, basically, a really fascinating study detailing how that's true. And you mentioned iron and folic acid, which I think both of which deplete copper, definitely iron.

Margaret Barry 25:44
Yes.

Matthew Blackburn 25:47
Maybe a generational copper deficiency, which started a long time ago.

Margaret Barry 25:52
Yeah, and then with ascorbic acid. I admit that back in the day, full disclosure, I was like, ascorbic acid is the same thing as vitamin C. I told my mom, I was like "no mom, it's actually the same thing. It's molecularly the same." And looking back, I'm just like... Margaret, no, you're depleting your copper. You don't want to be getting rid of that with ascorbic acid. So yeah, it makes me wonder it I love how people will be like, well, it's just like that they will say it is just hereditary, but then my mind goes to Okay, no, like you don't get histamine intolerance as a hereditary thing. You actually can have issues with kava and the dao dao enzyme, like you can have issues with that. That is, you know, obviously influenced by your genetics, but there's an underlying deficiency going on that can cause you to manifest that in your body.

Matthew Blackburn 26:40
For sure. So how do you know that you have a tongue tie? I would guess snoring is a thing, because I'm a nose breather during the day, but at night intermittently, I guess that I snore. So I've tried the mouth tape and the little nose widening thing, all the different tools, you know.

Margaret Barry 26:57
Yeah. So there's a lot of different symptoms, and it kind of depends on, you know, how severe it is, or what your issues are as to what classification of tongue tie. There's four different classifications for severity and a lot of times people can have an anterior tie, or a posterior tie. So depending on where the tissue is anchored most deeply, sometimes that doesn't look that bad. And then they get in there, and they're like, "oh, yeah, this is actually more restricted on one side or the other." That's why your spine is curved, or that's why your hips are hiked, because it all operates on that same spectrum of the fascia and how it interacts with the body. But yes, snoring is definitely one that is common, it's an issue with the airway as well, like the body protecting its airway, it doesn't feel like enough air. And so is grinding of the teeth. Now a lot of people associate that with parasites, and it is associated with parasites to some people I would say, but it can be an issue of your body again, trying to protect that airway. It's kind of a stress response of the body, grinding the teeth, and that actually has an impact on your airway. Another thing is difficulty swallowing, or feeling like it's hard to swallow, or you choke on things a lot. That used to be me, I could choke on air before, I could be talking here I'd be like, just admitted I'm choking. So yeah, choking on liquids. Also, headaches and migraines, especially tension headaches, not so much migraines, they can be related to other things. But really, tension headaches, especially if they recur on one side or the other can be totally associated with that. And that, again, has to do with the connections there in that myofascial chain of the body and how that interacts with it and also neck back. And even facial pain can be related to that, because you have that connective tissue, the fascia, it's all over your entire body. And it operates on a spectrum so that if you pull on one end... so if you're thinking about, you had a netting in front of you, if you pull on one end, it's going to affect things that are distant to that pole. So if you have the tongue pulling towards one side or the other, it can affect the position of your skull, which can affect the position of your shoulders, and hips and everything up and down that kinetic chain. And that can lead to excessive tension in areas of the body that are recruited because the tongue cannot be used properly because the tongue is a muscle. So I'm like, all right, yeah, with the training I do with women's I do fitness training as well the different modalities that I teach, I'm always reminding people the tongue is a muscle. So if the muscle is weak, what happens when you have a weak muscle? Well, it usually recruit other muscles in the area because it's weak. So the tongue is anchored in the neck. So it's going to be recruiting muscles in your traps in the back of your neck and your face and your jaw in the muscles. This muscle that comes here from your ear to your collarbone and even the muscles in your traps, it's going to recruit all sorts of different muscles to compensate. Also, TMJ is another thing that is hugely impacted. All right, before I started the therapy for the tongue tie release I had no idea that I could not move my tongue independent of my jaw. Whenever I moved my jaw, my tongue would move, when I removed my tongue... but it was just, this on this, I could not figure out how to get to work. But it's amazing how the body learns, it's very smart and it learns how to move correctly when you give it the tools it needs to. So there's a lot of other ones, but those are some of the main ones. And then there's also even with speech, so speech issues, or issues pronouncing things or being tired, like talking makes you tired, you feel your mouth feels tired, your throat dry the next day... I had no idea that was related until I started looking into it. So there's a lot more, but those are, and even digestive issues too, because of the connection to the vagus nerve, which is something we can go into as well, the digestive issues swallowing extra air, similar for babies, as well as adults. So there's a broad spectrum, but many things that you wouldn't think are connected to a tongue tie can be connected to a tongue tie.

Matthew Blackburn 30:57
That's really fascinating. Have you ever heard clients tell you like, growing up it hasn't happened as much? Maybe since I raised my magnesium? I'm not sure. But my neck would kind of lock up? Like it would almost feel like it would pop, pop out a place somewhere and then pop back in. It was a really weird feeling, but it would be really uncomfortable, almost by my Adam's apple.

Margaret Barry 31:19
In the front there, in the front, yes. Yeah. And you know, I also thought about that with relation to potassium, because I also had trouble swallowing back when I was super duper potassium deficient. So potassium and magnesium. They, you know, they're interacting in the way the muscles are actually contracting and relaxing. People always think of magnesium is like the the only thing that can affect that, but totally potassium, I had no idea. I know now that potassium was also affected by that. So you have muscle tension, for sure, especially in that neck, and even around the throat too can be connected to those muscle imbalances that are there too.

Matthew Blackburn 31:54
Wow, so I'm inspired to get an assessment. Can you do that, just go into a practitioner? And what do they do? Like just stick your tongue out? And they look at it?

Margaret Barry 32:03
They have you usually do some range of motion tests. So at my dentist, he took an assessment of, you know, your range of motion "can you do this? Can you do that?" And I remember being shocked at how I could get the front of my tongue up because if you think about the timeline, if you hold your hand up at a 90 degree angle with the fingers towards the floor, if you think about that, you want to have the entire tongue on the roof of the mouth. But a lot of people only have this part of their tongue up because this part is tied down. So when I got my tongue released, I could get not just the front 1/3 of my tongue on my roof of my mouth, I could get the entire tongue on my mouth, on the roof of my mouth. So that was fascinating to me when I was in there, because I was thinking, "Oh, I have pretty good range of motion", which he did say, but I couldn't get the posterior tongue up, which is a big problem when it comes to sleep apnea. Because later on, if the back of the throat is not properly tonified, you can end up with issues with sleep apnea where you stop breathing or choking in your sleep back. And it'll be related to issues with that posterior tongue just not coming on line as far as being activated. So, and also a word of note on the dentist, like which dentists to go to, it depends on in your area, there's different websites that you can look to make sure that someone knows, you know, knows what they're looking for, and is well educated because there are good a pediatric dentist or functional dentist, and then there are ones who are not as trained in the area. So with mine, I knew taking my children there that it would be a good option for me as well. And it was fun for him to see me as well, I was like, well, this you, you've done this release for my two children. I'm here now for mine.

Matthew Blackburn 33:43
That's hilarious. How much does it cost generally to get the procedure done?

Margaret Barry 33:47
Yeah, so it varies by state, but I've heard as low as $250. And as high as 950 to $2,000 depending on the actual procedure being done. My provider did where if you had any buckle ties, which is a tie on the cheek, or if you had an upper or lower lip tie, or a tongue tie, it was all included in one price. So some centers will do that, other people will charge according to the site that you need to have done.

Matthew Blackburn 34:15
Wow. I wonder how how common this is, if you like to do it, like what percentage of the developed world has this issue?

Margaret Barry 34:23
Yes, I have. And there's estimates of that's upwards of 75 to 80% have a significant like enough of an issue where they're going to need to have it looked into. So yeah, and I mean, of course the people who... there's a whole segment of the medical community who completely denies the existence of tongue ties whatsoever, who says that they're not a thing, they're overdiagnosed, they're a fad. That's my personal favorite. When I hear they're just a fad. I'm like no, it's not a fad. Just talking to the people who have had it done as on themselves or on their children they can tell you that it is most certainly not a fad. So it is a pretty high percentage of people. But I think that unfortunately, most of the symptoms that come from having a tongue tie are just commonly accepted. For adults it's just normal to snore to have sleep apnea, to have issues with flexibility, or I can't touch my toes and I'm so inflexible, or issues with headaches or neck pain or chronic spinal issues and misalignments that just come up. I think that that's accepted as normal. So we just don't look further for a root cause to why is this occurring on this level.

Matthew Blackburn 35:33
Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, cause I've dealt with all those issues off and on. I mean, not so much headaches, but a lot of the other stuff, maybe 80% of what you mentioned, I've had some point in my life. So I probably have that going on. It's amazing that it could affect so many other areas. But it makes sense, as you said, it's like, as above so below, like it's all starting. I often talk about sleep, like our brain is what heals our tissues while we're sleeping. Like it's sending down different frequencies to different tissues to heal them. So it really does all start in our supercomputer up here.

Margaret Barry 36:08
Yes, yeah, absolutely. And when the nervous system can communicate effectively with the rest of the body in an unimpeded way, then you can wake up in the morning and be refreshed and relax, instead of feeling like you just didn't sleep, then sleep awake all night. I noticed for myself before and after how I had a lot of sleep benefits for myself. Like I felt like I was getting more rested. My muscles weren't as tired when I woke up in the morning, which is very strange. But even if you look, and I have, there's an actual diagram most people can find if you google search like "tongue tie fascia connections", there's actually a photo that has a dissection of, it's not explicit, so you don't have to worry about looking at a cadaver, but it is a actual fascia dissection of a cadaver, and you can see the tongue and it goes through the lung through the diaphragm, through the quadratus lumborum muscle, it connects your ribcage to your hips, it goes all the way down into the pubic symphysis. So on either side of the pubic bone, on the sides of the legs, it goes through their of the fascia. And it actually goes through to the back of the knee, and it goes down to your big toe. So next time you lift your big toe, your big toe is connected on the fascia to your tongue, all the way up that line, because everything in that plane operates in relation to each other because all the fascia is connected to all the other fascia. But sometimes there's that direct line from the top of the body all the way down to the bottom. So it's just amazing that that is so connected to everything. It really is. It goes through all those areas. Yeah, so this is very fascinating.

Matthew Blackburn 37:45
I found the picture. Yeah, it looks like airway matters the website. So I'll post I'll post that.

Margaret Barry 37:50
It's so cool. It makes so much sense.

Matthew Blackburn 37:54
That's pretty awesome. Does it affect dental health, like teeth and gum health?

Margaret Barry 37:58
Yes, it sure can. And I didn't know this until a friend of mine looked at my teeth before and after. And she was like, Oh, your gums look a lot healthier. And I was like, "well, why is that?" and she said, "well, it's probably because your saliva is able to coat the mouth better than it was before." Because the saliva glands can actually, in my case, my saliva glands were impeded by the tension of my tongue. So they were not able. I mean, after I had the release, I was drooling because I was finally producing saliva. And of course, saliva has all those good digestive enzymes in it. So I think it helped my digestion too. But it can affect their oral health like and in a huge way. So yeah, if you have that saliva, that saliva is what prevents the enamel from having problems in your mouth, they can actually protect proactively against that. And also, if you're not mouth breathing, you're not getting in bacteria that's not supposed to be in your mouth or grow in there. It's supposed to be you know, you don't want to have a lot of oxygen going through your mouth. You want the oxygen and air to go through your nose. So it can have benefits for oral hygiene as well.

Matthew Blackburn 39:06
That's incredible. Yeah, I found a study talking about vitamin K2 and teeth health and how key to regulate the pH of your saliva. So probably like a combo of those can do a lot for health.

Margaret Barry 39:19
Oh, yeah, for sure. K2 is like awesome. It helped me because I had earlier this year, I was working through a calcium shell. So I use K2. And that helped me so much to get that calcium back where it's supposed to go, my teeth were no longer sensitive. My dentist was kind of like, "oh, that's cool, huh? You know, noting for later here, your teeth no longer sensitive because you remineralized them. We don't care about that", you know, they were just sort of dismissive like, "Oh, that's nice." I was like, this is very cool. I had this problem, and I don't have it anymore.

Matthew Blackburn 39:48
Yeah. So talking about fascia. Kind of a good segway. It's my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that fascia is kind of like the electrical highway that that electric currents run throughout the body, and that can get dysregulated in so many ways. Tongue ties is one of them.

Margaret Barry 40:06
Yes, for sure. Essentially, if you think about it, it's like a giant spider web. And it has neurologic properties, like you mentioned, it's got proprioceptive property. So it tells you where you are in space. It's like an extension of your nervous system, which is super cool. The healthier that is, the more we will be able to know where we are in space. And it also has physiological functions, and also helps you move lymph so the lymphatic fluid flows along the fascia. So if you have an area of fascia that is dehydrated, or it's not receiving and giving water, it's not flowing through, then you can have stagnation, you can have pain there as well. So that's another connection to that too. But I like to describe like the fascia itself as if you've ever sectioned in orange out, and you have those sections of the orange and they have that white pithy stuff in it. So you look on the outside, it's got the white, white, pithy stuff, and then you break the orange apart further, and maybe you cut a slice a section of orange in half. And it's got all of those little, it looks like little raindrops of orange juice that is surrounded by this thin layer of you know, connective, pith of the orange. So that is similar to what's happening in our body, is that everything in your body is encased and everything in your body is encased in that fascia, every single organ, every single muscle, everything. So people only think of the fascia as the stuff that you know, you cut into, if you're cutting into somebody to operate on this, that's just that white stuff on the surface before you get into the organs, but it's actually part of the organs. It's part of the muscles, it's everywhere and in everything. So it's all interconnected. And you can have signaling issues with the nervous system through the fascia. If there's an area that's been injured, you can have, you know, areas where they're injured, or they don't have enough blood flow, or if you're just not moving, because the fascia adapts to the positioning of your body. So if someone's hunched over the computer all day, with their shoulders up to their ears, their fascia will adapt to that position and say, "okay, this is our new homeostasis, let's stay here", which is not good. So it's very important to understand that you can actually improve that by retraining your body's positioning and making sure that you are hydrated, and also make sure you have minerals in there as well, because the minerals are connected to all that, they actually help. There's even evidence that it can help with some of the formation of fascia itself, like the actual synthesis, along with stem cells in there as well. So there's a lot of connections there. And you know, the fascia can also set your pain, it can actually sense pain, or there's those nerve endings in the fascia. And there's, actually I learned this a couple years ago and it completely blew my mind, but there are actually more nerve endings in your fascia, then in your muscles, so you have your muscles, and but the fascia is encasing every individual muscle fiber, every single little bundle of muscles in there is encased in fascia. And that is why you have more nerve endings there than even in your muscles. So when you are stretching that, when you're moving that, when you're moving in those ways, you're actually hydrating that fascia. And you're bringing yourself more into balance neurologically as well.

Matthew Blackburn 43:27
That's incredible. Have you looked into the connection between fibrosis and the fascia?

Margaret Barry 43:33
Yes, my mind was blown, because I know some people who deal with that. And I was going, "whoa, this makes like the the calcification of that as well like that." It just makes so much sense when you're looking at it. Because, you know, earlier this year with the calcium shell, and I've worked with other people with that, when you get that out of your body, when you get that out of the bones into your tissues, it's bad news, like things cease up, things don't move and glide as they should, because healthy fascia should slide and glide blank. If you ever cut a chicken breast and you've got that thin layer of that connective tissue, it's supposed to be sliding and gliding. And if it's not, then you're gonna have that pain and inflammation. And if it's actually infused with that, the extracellular matrix is the fascia is infused with that, it's going to be very stiff and very brittle and all the cells are going to be affected by it. So it's it's huge. It's huge.

Matthew Blackburn 44:25
That's incredible. Wow. Yeah, that's a whole a whole rabbit hole. I think I heard about the fascia from Thomas Myers.

Margaret Barry 44:33
Yes. And he's still teaching. He is one of my favorite resources, Anatomy Trains is his work. He has textbooks. He has classes. I was doing a class of his earlier this year on you know, self manipulation for that. So you know, with the factor like helping yourself, modulate its response and hydrate again, he's a really great resource on that because he still teaches, he actually was taught originally by I think The Rolfing, Ida Rolf. He was one of her students, which I didn't realize until recently, I was like, "oh, that makes total sense."

Matthew Blackburn 45:06
Yeah, I think the first video I ever saw from him was why massage hurts. And he went into the emotional trauma connection, which is a whole other thing.

Margaret Barry 45:17
Yes. Oh my word. Yeah. So fascinating. It remembers your body remembers, always does, it is really cool. Like, even with getting my tongue tie done, I actually had some emotional release, after having it done. And I was prepared, I had read that you could have that happen. Because I know from working with people with their fascia issues, and you know, working with them on that, I knew that you can have emotional reactions to things. I had people in my class before, where they just start crying, like we're doing a move that's really getting into that fascia and really moving the lymphatic fluid, and they will burst out crying. And they're like, "I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm crying." Like, it's all good. It's good, this is good. You need to get it out. So I knew after I had mine done, when you release that tension that's been held for so long, you can actually have emotional releases, because your body does store that, it remembers it. It always remembers the trauma. So if you're in a car accident, your body remembers that the parts of your body that are involved, they remember until you can kind of get in there and reset, and help that trauma to have a safe way of you know, expressing yourself and getting out. So I was prepared. But I was still kind of like, "whoa, this is a lot of emotions. I'm feeling and I don't remember, I don't know why I'm feeling them." So was just very emotional afterwards.

Matthew Blackburn 46:34
That's incredible. Yeah, I love all the different modalities that we can use to facilitate that, like I for the last few years have been playing around with sensory deprivation, floating and that's something that I've noticed, or a memory that I thought I forgot that I didn't care about comes to the front of my mind. And then I have like a shake. And I feel like it's getting released.

Margaret Barry 46:57
You know what, so after I had something happened like that, that's interesting you mentioned that, because when I was coming out of the office, after my tongue tie, which I was already emotional, because I was like, "this feels so amazing." I mean, I had, I had a release happen physically while I was on the table. While he was in there, my neck kind of did something I've never been able to do with it before, which is actually relax it in and activate the back of the muscle instead of the front while I was on the table. My psoas released, my feet went from being you know, one was turned out more than the other one laying on my back. And both of them work. I mean, fell out to the side by the end. So I was kind of... my mind was blown. We were in the car and I had this where I was I kind of got a little shaky, and I got kind of like "we need to go home... why are we driving, we need to go home" and kind of got in this weird state. I think it was my nervous system re-regulating, and I've talked to other people who've had their tongue ties released as adults, they've had the same thing. And they were like... I warned them about it, I was like, "I don't know if this is going to happen for you but it was about an hour after I had it done where I was in the car. And I was like, oh, man, something's happening a little bit." I don't know if this is normal, because at the time I had the procedure done I didn't know anyone personally in my community, anyone that I knew personally who'd had it done as an adult, I only knew babies, I only knew babies that had it done. So I was kind of... it was uncharted territory for me, because I was like, "well, I have my theories on why this is going to help me but we'll see if it actually does." But I remember being kind of surprised about having that reaction to it. And it makes that, what you're saying makes sense of that connection to the nervous system remembering that.

Matthew Blackburn 48:37
That's really cool. Have you heard of anyone that... like, is surgery the only option to that procedure? Or have you ever heard of anyone that, I mean, I've trouble thinking that there would be a way to naturally stretch that out or release that tie? Yeah, unless it can take decades or something of doing something?

Margaret Barry 48:57
That's a good question. So I my understanding is it, of course, depends on the severity. So if someone has a really, really restricted tie, however, the therapy that you do to prepare for release, which is what I chose to do, I knew that this makes sense. If you break your leg and you're like "I don't need any rehab help to help me I don't need any PT, it's fine." You know, I knew that that was not going to, you know, I needed somebody to help me with rehabbing and relearning to use my tongue. So the therapy that you do can actually be so helpful that people will start seeing results from the therapy, and then they will get the tongue release. And it's the icing on the cake, because they already were working on good oral resting posture, and then it's finally able to reach up there. There is a guy I think it's called the Gillespie method. And that is a way that is it's basically with cranial sacral therapy, which I did afterwards after my release as well. But Gillespie Method is something that people will sometimes do to see if they can get that tension out to release. And maybe sometimes a cut is not necessary, but it definitely depends on the person as to how restricted they are, and it's not necessarily based on the appearance as most people think "okay, you look at it, and it tells you if you have a tie", it's more about the function. So someone may have a tie that doesn't look that bad. And then they try to do one of the things that they tell you to do when you're getting released and you're like... I can't even do that. So really, it really depends on the person. But for example, I had before and after pictures of one of the moves that I learned when I was preparing for the release, I had before and after photos of how my actual suction and hold you actually suction the tongue up to the palette. I have pictures showing that I did lengthen that a lot by just doing the section whole exercise that my therapist gave me to do beforehand. So yu can move that. But sometimes it's how you know, how much can you go before you actually need to release the tethered tissue that's in there.

Matthew Blackburn 50:55
So yeah, interesting. Yeah. I had horrible vision. And I work contacts and classes for years. And I tried the Bates method and the figure eight and the eye exercise. Yeah, and the whole glasses and things for about a year and had zero improvement, probably because I wasn't on vitamin E. And I don't know, but I ended up getting LASIK. And I don't regret it. Like I still have 20/15 vision, I think there's a place for procedures for sure in the natural health world. I was wondering, does that procedure hurt when they use the laser? It sounds like it would.

Margaret Barry 51:27
So it's different for every provider. Most providers, when they do babies, they will do a little bit of a numbing wipe in there for them to make sure that the tissue is not like... we're just going to burn it off of you, they kind of do a little bit of wipe in there to numb it before they do it. Now when I had it done, he put a wipe on it for me before putting in some of the local anesthetic to numb that actual part of the tongue. So the procedure itself was completely painless. In fact, I would love to relive that because the release that you get on your neck, and I have before and after photos of my neck where I couldn't lean back, I couldn't look up to the ceiling. And afterwards, I could almost look at the back wall. So like I could look at the back wall from having the procedure done. So yeah, it's really interesting that that can totally be paying. I mean, you know, depending on the provider, it could be painful, depending on what the provider is doing. But if they numb it, it completely did not hurt at all for me. And the healing process was interesting, because by about six weeks, you are mostly pretty much healed, the tissues pretty much healed, but you do stretch it as it heals, to ensure that it heals in an upright manner. Because if you think about your tongue, if it's spending most of its time, at an angle, you want to stretch it up at like 90 degree angle, to be able to make sure that tissue heals in an optimal manner. And the first thing I remember after having the tie release was that I could touch the back of my throat with my tongue, you know, the uvula in the back. I can touch all. the fact that I still do that to this day, like, wow, I have so much more mobility, this is insane. Because it really frees it up to have that huge increase in mobility that I saw. So yeah, it definitely depends on the provider as far as pain, going back to your original question.

Matthew Blackburn 53:18
Awesome. Let's jump into some questions. We have quite a few here. Awesome. Someone asked about mewing and I've heard about this before, does that help the development of the jaw facial features?

Margaret Barry 53:34
Yeah, absolutely. It's essentially, and I've looked into this too, because someone mentioned to me after I had my release, and I was like, what is that? Oh, that's what I'm doing. It's basically... you press that tongue to the palate and if it's done correctly, I mean, there's before and after photos of people where their jaw line is improved from the correct posture of the tongue on the roof of the mouth. And the only thing with the mewing is that it's like if you can't get the back of the tongue up, you won't necessarily see the changes as much as you could as if you had the whole tongue on the roof of the mouth.

Matthew Blackburn 54:07
Someone asked: does she recommend I guess fixing a two year olds tongue tie or waiting till older, like is there a minimum age?

Margaret Barry 54:16
That's a good question. Yes. So in my unprofessional opinion, because I'm not a professional, but I would personally. If you go to your provider, you could see what their healing recommendations are for example, if they do recommend that you do therapy before and after, you would want to wait for an age where they're able to understand and follow through with the therapy. I've heard that sometimes it can be good because at two years old, their their palates already kind of formed in place. But you can actually, you know if you want to have them do the herapy before and after they need to be a little bit older, depending on what the provider says of course, but a good provider would be able to say okay, here's what we need to do as far as the therapy and give you that recommendation.

Matthew Blackburn 54:59
Awesome. What can I do while pregnant to prevent a tongue tie? Say a lot of animal foods?

Margaret Barry 55:04
Absolutely. You said earlier, eat your retinol, vitamin E. Okay recently, this is a great way to get vitamin A okay, I started doing and I don't know if you've heard of this done this before Matt but cod livers, the actual cod liver, and they have so much vitamin D, I had no idea how much vitamin D it had. I was like 60,000IUs, something crazy, so I yeah, that's an easy way if somebody doesn't like liver which, you know, that's one of those things where people love it or hate it. Or you can do the 25/75, 25% ground liver with organs and then the 75. I can do that, I found that I can do that so that's what you're in for doing the vitamin A. I mean yeah, like we said earlier, vitamin A, K2, basically all the fat soluble vitamins are going to be really valuable for you, and also avoiding anything fortified if you can, you know from iron or folic acid and all the other stuff they put in there to fortify.

Matthew Blackburn 55:58
Um, what about deviated septum with the tongue? Tongue tie release can help with that?

Margaret Barry 56:03
Oh, that's a good question. So with deviated septum, since it is more of that structural thing, the ENT may be able to tell you if, you know, fixing the tongue would help the septum or if fixing the septum would help the tongue, because that's, of course, that's part of your airway. So yeah, getting that assessed and seeing if one would help the other or vice versa. That that could be something that could be helped inadvertently, by getting the tongue resting on the right place. And getting that actually fixed too would be helpful. Probably both, like I would just say do both, I'm always like, yeah, get the tongue checked out, because it's probably playing a role. That's my new thing,I say.

Matthew Blackburn 56:42
"What's the success rates?" someone asked. How come tongue tie issues aren't always resolved after surgery?

Margaret Barry 56:48
Yes. So that's a good question. And I think that it definitely depends on a couple of things. It depends on your provider, did they get a full release? My provider, I knew that he had a track record of getting the full release, because I will see people's releases sometimes, and I'm looking at it going, "that does not look very complete, he didn't get all the way down there." So it would come down to finding a good provider and also preparing before and after. When I found out or, when I decided I should say, that I was going to get my tongue tie fixed I was like, "I don't need this." At first, I was like, I don't need a therapy, like I can just go in there and get it done. And I'm realizing that the therapy that I did before and after, I think was one of the reasons why I did have good results. Because you do have to commit to that therapy aspect, I think that therapy plays a big role. And then the provider themselves, you're making sure that they are going to give you a full release, not just, you know, check the box that they lasered this area, make sure that they get in there, because when my provider was releasing mine, I had more tissue on the right side than on the left side. Which is super interesting, because I've always had trouble with my shoulders, one shoulder being hiked up, which again, the head is turned so it all kind of goes back to that kinetic chain. My provider knew that he needed to go a little bit more on the right side because it was more anchored. So having a good provider I think really, and also the age of the person. So ideally, in an ideal world, we all having a done at three days old or four days old, so that your body has time to adjust to that with the vagus nerve. But you know, I'm proof that you can do it even when you're older. I just turned 30 this year. So you can still do it when you're older and see changes that you know if you're a baby as far as the structural and physical.

Matthew Blackburn 58:33
Awesome. Yeah, I missed the vagus nerve that you mentioned earlier. Let's talk about that for a second.

Margaret Barry 58:38
Oh my gosh, I love it. Because I, as a former person who was I feel like I was constantly like on the sympathetic and parasympathetic side, I felt like I was constantly on the sympathetic side. Like I was always stressed, my heart was always racing, I was always just very, very stressed. And when I learned about mineral balancing, that helped so much, because I realized the things that I needed to do. One was actually calcium, super cool, because it's a very calming chill mineral. That's why I think people crave calcium when they're in more of a faster metabolic state, they tend to crave that because it helps bring that into balance anyway. So with the vagus nerve, very cool because your soft palate, there is an intervention of vagus nerve on your soft palate. And what we were talking about earlier, with the tongue resting on the palate, if the tongue is not able to rest on the palate at all, that's a big problem for the vagus nerve. If they can only fit on part of it, then that's also a problem. Whenever you swallow in a correct swallowing pattern, you're stimulating the vagus nerve, which of course is important for digestion. But if we're not doing that swallowing where it's actually moving on top of the palate, it's almost like you're stimulating the vagus nerve every time you swallow, which of course primes you for great digestion. So it's almost like it was designed like that on purpose. It's so cool. But the vagus nerve of course, actually, people can try that. So if you feel in your mouth underneath the, so you have your two front teeth, you go right behind there, there's little speed bumps there, they feel like ridges, right behind that is where the vagus nerve, one of the places it innervates on the roof of your mouth. If I'm stressed, I will rub my tongue to that spot, my therapist taught me that, I will rub it. And immediately I feel like immediately my heart rate starts to come down, I feel a little more centered and grounded is the it is so cool, it's very much connected to that. So if you think about if someone's walking around, and they have low tongue posture, where their tongue is flush with the teeth on the bottom, the on the bottom of their jobs, it's flushed there, it's not going up to the roof, then you're not actually stimulating the vagus nerve to, you know, to bring those benefits to your entire autonomic nervous system and the balance there because it affects everything. Vagus nerve affects digestion, respiration, even the metabolic rate, and the burn rate of some things is affected by that balance in there, and vagus nerve. So that is just very interesting that that is connected to that area of the mouth. So if you're not stimulating it, you're not getting the vagus nerve to actually be stimulated how it should be. And if you mouth breathe, of course, you raise stress hormones, so it's this, you know, keeping the mouth closed tongue on the roof of the mouth as much as you can, that comes back to the question about mewing. You know, mewing as you're applying pressure with the tongue to the roof of mouth. Interestingly, when I got my release done, I actually saw because I could get the back of my tongue on the roof. I have pictures that show my palate widened and I'm still kind of like, I took the pictures and I posted them on my stories. And I was like, "guys, I can't believe this is real. Is this actually my mouth?" I sent it to a dentist. The dentist was like, "what did you do?" so I got my I got my tongue tie released. And I started putting the back of my tongue because it's almost like, on my palate, the back molars started to move out and it widened that back of my mouth, it is crazy. And it's just from putting the tongue in the right spot. I didn't have any more expansion done. I didn't have anything else. It was just practicing that good tongue posture. And no wonder if you get that fixed, and you can put your full tongue on the roof of your mouth, your vagus nerve is going to be happier, because you're helping your body balance that autonomic nervous system.

Matthew Blackburn 1:02:22
That's really cool. Yeah, I've seen like vagus nerve stimulator devices, I think you hook it to your ear.

Margaret Barry 1:02:30
Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it, they have all kinds of ways to stimulate because there's a lot of different ways. You know, like you said, gargling, or different exposure, different temperature exposures can affect that, too. So yeah, there's a lot of ways that you can affect that.

Matthew Blackburn 1:02:46
That's really cool. Someone asked: "Does tongue tie contribute to clumsiness? my teenager is very uncoordinated."

Margaret Barry 1:02:55
Ooh, that's interesting. Well, I guess if it's affecting their kinetic chain, then it could, it could be connected there. And if it's affecting your fascia, it's affecting your proprioception, like I said earlier, so it could be but also, I think a lot of times when we're growing and our legs are longer and maybe they grew two inches in the last week, because we're in a growth spurt, sometimes we can tend to be more clumsy, I was totally clumsy as a child. So you know, it could be but also, it could just be that it's just a it's a thing that their body's getting used to. It's almost like, you know, when I've been pregnant, my center of gravity changes and I have to navigate differently. And I may drop things more or run into more things because my body's figuring out where I am in space. So that could be what's going on.

Matthew Blackburn 1:03:41
Can tongue ties be related to not being able to swallow pills?

Margaret Barry 1:03:45
Yes. Hmm. I went from having trouble swallowing one pill, that's just my experience, I went from trouble swelling one pill to I can do five or six capsules at one time with no problem. And my airway also is improved, I think because I can actually swallow more now. But it can be because ideally, if you're doing a good swallowing pattern, which I'm still retraining, that's the thing, it doesn't stop when you just get the tongue done, you're kind of repatterning, it'd be like learning to walk again, with a knee replacement or a hip replacement, you have to keep "okay, my foots ducking out a little bit. I need to bring it in in alignment with myself." So yeah, if you learn to swallow correctly, you'll ideally be able to have the food there or the pill and then the tongue kind of brings it back in one motion. So instead of choking or gagging or being unable to swallow pills, you can actually have a one smooth movement to bring it back and the difference for me swallowing now, knowing the right way, it's so much easier. And my face was doing all the work. I look back at pictures of myself and my face was doing the swallowing for my tongue was actually supposed to be. It's a big muscle. It's supposed to be pulling that back for me. I wasn't letting the tongue work. So it can be that something to look into if you have it. You struggle with swallowing food, or you tend to choke on things, or even pills, that's something to explore.

Matthew Blackburn 1:05:07
Awesome. Importance of cranial sacral therapy, after revisions, are you a fan of that after getting the procedure done?

Margaret Barry 1:05:16
I did do, I did do cranial sacral, I did a combo afterwards. So that's something that I was reading about that could be helpful. So I did with my release, I had it done, I did a little bit of cranial sacral and myofascial release before, and then I did some afterwards to kind of keep things going. And the benefit of the cranial sacral therapy is that as your nervous system is learning, its new regulation, of course, that brainstem, the back and all the way down to the pelvis, all that is connected. So whenever you're changing things up in the, you know, at the jaw, at the, you know, at the back of the throat, at the neck, you're going to be affecting things further down south on that kinetic chain. So the therapist can help you release any restrictions that may be impeding your movement of your tongue, or your jaw. So it can be helpful, especially if you have someone who's knowledgeable. My therapist got to see the before and after on me, and she was actually like "wow, there's a difference in your tissues, before you had this done and after" so that's fun. If you find someone who can work with you before and after, you can kind of, you know, they can see the difference before and after. And then it's validating for you as well, because you remember what it was like trying to get that knocked out of your back that just wouldn't let go. And then after the tongue tie, it's almost like when you get that release your muscles let you go in further to release things that it was too guarded on, it's almost like your muscles are like "oh, we're not gonna let you in because we're in the sympathetic mode", and then you get the get the release, the nervous system can calm down, and then you can actually get in there and have relief. So yes, that can be very helpful tool, I noticed that when I would have it done. And then I do my tongue stretches, my tongue was really loose and like able to move a whole lot. So they sometimes do work on the inside of your mouth as well, which is completely wild, but it feels great on either side of the mouth. They'll have you doing some releases and, you know, they can even give you some homework on things that you can do. So yes, that can be helpful.

Matthew Blackburn 1:07:16
Awesome, that's great. How to know if it's just a tongue thrust and not a tongue tie?

Margaret Barry 1:07:23
Yeah, that that would kind of depend on, I would say, the therapist or the person working with you to know if it's if a tongue thrust is connected, because obviously, tongue thrust can be like... it's connected there with the way the tongue is moving. But yeah, I would get that assessed and see if it is a habit or if it is a result of a compensation from the tongue tie.

Matthew Blackburn 1:07:44
Hmm. Awesome. Let me see here. So a lot, a lot of repeat questions that were sent in. Let's see. Yeah, why are there so many more now? Too much folic acid, glyphosate? Do you think iron and folic acid are big ones?

Margaret Barry 1:08:07
I do I have a theory, I think those are two of the big ones. Yes. Just to how everything's so enriched that with all this fake stuff our body is like, "well, what do we do with this?"

Matthew Blackburn 1:08:20
Right. Yeah, we're getting hit pretty hard.

Margaret Barry 1:08:23
From all angles. So yes.

Matthew Blackburn 1:08:26
Yeah. Um, let's see... pain level and recovery. Yeah, I don't know if I asked you this earlier. So does it hurt when you're healing from the procedure?

1:08:36
Yeah, it can. Although I always tell people I do have a high pain tolerance, just generally, I've been told that by people before. But for me personally, it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. I was thinking "I'm going to be miserable. For two solid weeks, it's going to be awful." So I did end up doing some of the ibuprofen that the doctor recommended after and I only needed it for two days. And I needed it to help me be able to do the tongue exercises I needed to do right after to ensure success of the surgery. But after that, after the two or three days, I did some arnica gel on it. I did a blend that had arnica and I think chamomile and a couple other things to help with swelling. And honestly, it was very manageable. If I'd known how much better it would be than I had made it in my mind then I would have probably got it done sooner because that was the biggest impediment for me, I was being worried about how bad was going to hurt, and am I going to be miserable for two weeks... I mean, I had meetings with clients. Three days, four days after I was talking. I felt great. So yeah, it definitely was not as bad. The biggest part for children or adults, the worst part of it is that you do need to lengthen and stretch the winch. And for me personally, past maybe a week, a little bit over a week, it was just minor soreness when I stretched it. And after having had my children's done and doing their stretches I thought, "you know, oh my goodness, this probably hurts them, they must really not like this, really, they just didn't like my fingers in their mouth." Because at when I had it done as an adult, when I was doing the stretches on myself, I was like, "oh, this just feels like I'm pulling, I'm pulling my tongue back. It's not like I'm torturing myself." So that that helped me know, for my children, maybe what they were experiencing that, I don't know, it was not quite as bad as I had thought, the stretching would be. But that is something to know. If your provider says that you do not need to stretch your tongue after you have it lasered, then you might want to find someone who does understand how that wound healing process occurs. Because it is important to heal in a diamond shape. Because the wound is usually in a diamond shape, you want to make sure that heals in that tall diamond. And it's not folding in on itself, back to square one.

Matthew Blackburn 1:10:58
Got it. And is it just like a few times a day you do the exercise all day, throughout the day.

1:11:04
I did. So the actual exercises, I tried to do them like every couple hours, the first couple days just to make sure my tongue was still moving. But the actual stretches you do, you do every like three, four hours, you know, for throughout a day. And then you keep going until basically that tissue's kind of healed in. I used your Dissolve-it-all while it was healing because I wanted to make sure that there was nothing building it, no scar tissue that's building up behind it. So I think I don't remember if I'd posted that, I may have I had like a kit like, here's what I'm using. I'm using this and use it because it's serrapeptase and all that I wanted to have that systemically going on while I was healing to help with inflammation too. So yeah, actually you would you do the stretches kind of around the clock till it is almost all the way healed. Mine didn't take very long for it to start filling in after I had the procedure done.

Matthew Blackburn 1:11:54
That's awesome. Well, I'm inspired. It seems like there's a there's a lot of these dentists like, like you said, it's just a matter of finding the right one you might have to go to see.

Margaret Barry 1:12:03
Yeah. And you could even, you know, you could talk to a therapist, like my therapist that I used was all virtual, she did everything virtual, which was fantastic, because I kind of live in a very rural area. So you know, you can actually ask someone and ask them, "do you have any recommendations in my area?", or do you have a list of things to ask the provider? Like, "did you just get this laser? Or have you had it for a while and you know, like you're not just looking to pay off the laser?" because I have unfortunately heard of that happening before where someone gets a new piece of equipment. And they're like, "alright, let's start doing 10 cars to pay off the equipment." And that's not what you want to do. I mean, it's not. So yeah, you want to be aware of that. You want to make sure that the person you're going to is reliable. The person that we went to is two and a half hours from where I live, I was willing to drive, because I knew that he knew what he was doing. And he was very reputable. I have sent so many people to him since then. It's funny. I'm sure he's like, "Oh, another one from her. Like I remember her is back in March." You need an affiliate discount. So, well, this has been really, really fascinating. Yeah. Are there good books or lectures that you recommend on the subject people? Yes, for sure. And actually there's a couple that you could, you know, look into, but for the tongue ties in particular, there is a doctor His name is Dr. Zaghi and he is the one of the nation's foremost physicians that is a tongue tie doctors who is a data dentist, he is one of the nation's foremost guys who's trying to collect clinical data. You know how people want the study, they want the studies that show that tongue ties affect this that and the other thing, his website and also his YouTube channel, I think it's called the breathe Institute, B R EA T H E. That is his YouTube channel. He has tons of different videos on there for, you know, for people to look at, to get educated on that as well. And then understanding the fascia piece. There's a great book by Dr. Tom Meyers is Anatomy Trains, and that book, I read that a lot when I was looking into the connections of tongue ties in the fascia because it just explains to you how it is so connected because you wouldn't think it is but it definitely is very connected to that too. And then I also had the therapist that I use that was really great to work with as far as giving resources and being able to explain to you how it affects, her name is Carmen Woodland and she, I think she's online if you Google her name, she has a business where she does the virtual therapy and I was very pleased with her. The way she gave me the exercises to do she was there before, during and after. So she's a great person to reference as well. And then also anywhere, like if you search online, there's also a website. I think it is called... uh, I can't remember the exact name of it, but "it's is your baby a tether-flow or a tether-berg?" It's if you just Google that and we can even link it for people. Here's a wonderful article that explains what one of the listeners was asking about, why do some people have really good results right away for the tongue tie? And why do some people not? And it explains to you how you may have one baby, depending on their restriction level, you may have one baby that has different results, and then another one that has completely different results because their problems are deeper in their body. There's more issues deeper in the body that you need to resolve with regards to the fascia. So I think it's... The Tao of of Tongue Tie, maybe is the name of it. Yes, I think that might be it. But anyway, we can that that's just something that would be helpful for people to look at too.

Matthew Blackburn 1:15:50
So awesome, isn't that right? That's a lot of resources in your website, MB-fitness.com. And then you have an Instagram @_musclesandmotherhood.

Margaret Barry 1:16:01
Yes, yes. And I have a lot of the pictures of the tongue tie process and all the stuff I was talking about, like my neck changing and all that that's all on there, too, for people to look at if they want pictures of people that have had it done as adults, because it's hard to find that.

Matthew Blackburn 1:16:16
Well, I like this subject. It's a rabbit hole. But it's something that seems like it's often overlooked. Like you said, 80% of people have it. And it's relatively simple to fix, because I interviewed the guy have some effects about the mouth tape. And he was talking about how children now are born with smaller airways. Yes, because of, you know, nutritional deficiencies and stress and all these other factors. That seems like there's multiple things affecting especially to something like snoring, which seems like you know, people say, "oh, it's just excess mucus", but the story is a little deeper than that.

1:16:55
Yes, yeah, absolutely. It always does. It always goes deeper. And with the mouth taping, I started doing that after I had the release. Once I knew that I could put my tongue in the right spot. I started doing the mouth taping, it's been helpful. Once I have that position. Yeah, it always goes deeper. Because typically people are like "oh, you know, you just need to do this or that." And it kind of helps for a little while. But it's like once you get down like we know, with anything, until you get drilled down to like, what's really going on and what's possibly affecting other things. Yeah, that can really be something that you might not think about, but it's all over and underneath that.

Matthew Blackburn 1:17:26
That's awesome. Well, yeah, yeah. You have an awesome Instagram and a lot of free content on there. And do you do HTMA, too?

Margaret Barry 1:17:35
I do. Yes. Yeah. I just started doing that last year and I love it. It's so helpful. Minerals, that just adds a whole nother thing. I'd be completely out on minerals. It's just so fascinating.

Matthew Blackburn 1:17:48
Yeah, there's mixed opinions on that I forget, I think someone asked Morley what he thought about it or something. And he was like, do they burn the hair? I think it changes something.

Margaret Barry 1:17:57
Yeah, I've heard varying things on like, the efficacy, you know, with the tissues, and especially if it's not closest to the scalp, so I tell people, if you take your hair at the very ends, it's gonna give you that different blueprint than like, what's closest to your actual head hair of your scalp. So yeah, there is differences of opinions, depending on the lab too, like what they're using to analyze too.

Matthew Blackburn 1:18:20
That make sense. Yeah, I really want to have it done. I've never done it. And I remember years ago, I learned like, the hair is a heavy metal detoxifier. That's one of its effects is that metals get pulled out of our head through the hair. That's stuck with me.

Margaret Barry 1:18:32
Yeah, and you'll see it on there too, you'll typically see them, you know, if someone has heavy metals, it will typically come out, it's going to be coming out of your hair, because it's kind of what's leaving your body. And yeah, you can have metals show up there too. And it can be- they actually say there's research that says that it's for heavy metals, in particular, it's best the hair the hair is a best place to look at for those, even more than urine because the body sequesters them in the tissues. And you know, you're not going to necessarily see that in the urine unless it's an acute exposure, like lead, for example. You may see it coming out in your hair later. So I didn't know that, actually read that it was some mainstream health sign. I was like, I'm shocked to hear that they would say that it's actually better than another way of assessing the toxic metals aspect.

Matthew Blackburn 1:19:16
Yeah, yeah. It's kind of parallel with iron. Like they're looking in the blood, but it's actually overloaded in the tissues. Not the serum

Margaret Barry 1:19:22
Yes, it's like, but my serum iron is low and it's like, that means nothing means nothing.

Matthew Blackburn 1:19:31
Right? Awesome. Well, this was a lot of fun. Margaret, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. Yes.

Margaret Barry 1:19:37
Thanks so much for having me. This was really fun. I love talking about all this stuff. And yeah, sharing what I've learned because I love to dig into all these topics.

Matthew Blackburn 1:19:47
Yeah. And do you offer consulting with clients or?

Margaret Barry 1:19:51
I do. I do. I primarily, kind of back to my story In the beginning, I do work with women on improving their metabolic health. So if they've completely tanked their metabolism, I work with them on that one to one but I also have a course that is coming up that's going to teach the you know how to help women in particular with their metabolic health, especially if you're coming out of, you know, over over exercise, under eating, and restriction. So I do that's yeah, I have like many different- peoplethey come to my page you're like, Wait you're the tongue tie person, but you don't actually do that, you just talk about it and educate but then you also this and that, I'm like, Yes, I have many hats.

Matthew Blackburn 1:20:28
No, I think that's awesome. Because I, I think it's simple. I mean, I kind of like fixed myself with the Keto thing. I mean, it took like a year of working at it. But I think it's helpful for a lot of people to go through a coaching thing or a one on one. Yes. Especially if they've been so spun out for years with just dieting in general.

Margaret Barry 1:20:45
Or if you're tired of hearing, you know how it is online, where it's like, everybody's giving their two cents all the time and you can't see straight, you can't actually get down to the basics of what you actually need. So and especially for women, too, I feel like men, men are kind of like, Alright, we just fix the problem, to fix the problem, you just do this, one plus two equals three, and you go, and then women are like, but wait a minute, how do I do? How do I handle this? And what about this? And what about this? And it's like, that's where, you know, that's where I kind of come in, because I like to make it more simplified for them so that it's not it's not so overwhelming, because I understand that like when I was researching health things back in the day. Oh, my goodness, there's so much I thought, you know, oh, I need to eat no sugar okay, I need to eat this. You know, so much noise. So,

Matthew Blackburn 1:21:31
Right. I love it. Well, thanks, Margaret. Yeah, I'll put all the links below where people can check out your stuff and stick around as I as I close out the show. Thanks so much. Wow, tongue ties, who would have thought that it has that profound of an effect on different parts of our physiology. I thought it was fascinating when Margaret said that there are more nerve endings in the fascia than the muscle tissue. That was pretty mind blowing to me. I also thought it was cool that she had an emotional release after getting the tongue tie procedure done. A frequent guest on the show Atom Bergstrom often says that yawning is an effective way to process and release stored trauma. So I wonder if there's a connection there between the tounge and yawning, and trauma? I'm sure, Atom knows, or maybe Margaret does, too. But it's fascinating how all this stuff connects. And I was really surprised with that statistic, that 75 to 80% of the population has this tongue tie issue. That blew my mind. That's almost everybody. And to me, it makes sense looking at, you know, the braces, industry and Invisalign, and the head gear, and all of the things that we have to do to straighten out the teeth and pull teeth when there's crowding. It doesn't seem natural. And the same thing for the tongue tie. I'm really curious what specific deficiencies go into developing a tongue tie, I would imagine it's all the normal stuff, copper deficiency, magnesium, retinol, vitamin E, vitamin K2 all those nutrients I just mentioned are so broad acting. For example, vitamin E is not just a chain breaking antioxidant, as they say, but it actually blocks the harmful effects of estrogen. And vitamin K2 is not just for calcium regulation it's also a very powerful mitochondrial enhancer. I think if expecting parents paid more attention to their liver health, both the mom and the dad, then there'll be a lot more healthy babies created because retinol, vitamin E, and K2 deficiency is so widespread, not to mention copper, magnesium, potassium, but if you get all of those things in place, I think that we can avoid most if not all of the health issues that children have right out the gate. So if you want to dive deeper into Margaret's work, you can go to MB-fitness.com. And she offers workouts and nutritional therapy. She also has a blog, and her first blog post was actually on fascia and that was a really good read. And Margaret's Instagram is underscore muscles and motherhood. I know that I'm going to dive into the tongue tie rabbit hole more and more she definitely inspired me to. And I'm almost 100% sure that I have it myself, you can find my work at Matt-blackburn.com. I blog post recipes, all my recommended products. And recently I've been putting some more love into it, I put up the biggest ticket item so far, it's a float therapy chamber from serenity floats. So if you're opening a spa, or health retreats, or you're just an extreme health optimizer, like myself, then you can get a home sensory deprivation, float tank, and they make either a closed pod with a lid, or an open pool setup. And I think they have the best, I almost went with a cheap one. And I'm really glad I didn't, because I know that these are built to last. And I actually had an interview with the owner of this company, Max Casa. And that was a really fun show talking about the benefits of magnesium. And the benefits of sensory deprivation on nervous system. I also put the flex beam red light up there. I don't know of too many light therapy devices that are portable that you don't have to have plugged in. So this one's really cool because it's battery operated. Several years ago, I invested in a wrist light charging device called the quant lit that went on your wrist and it could beam in green light, red light, and even blue light if you want to wake up the start of the day. And I really felt it. But it did break after about a year. And so ever since then I've been looking for another portable, light device. And I think a lot of the power is in the red part of the spectrum. And so this is what this light provides. It's only red light, but you could wrap it around your wrist, your arm, your thigh, your ankle, even your chest, your back your stomach if you're having digestive issues. And what I've been doing is just wrapping it around my torso and just beaming it right into my gut. And I think that red light therapy in combination with everything that I talked about even just using a few things to synergize like Vitamin E, and methylene blue, those two go really well with red light therapy. I think that red light is incredible at charging the body up just like a battery. And if I go too long without using my red light machines, I definitely feel different. I definitely don't feel as energized. People don't realize that red light actually fixes the engines of your cells the mitochondria. It's like souping up your engine, and so you have better fuel economy and fuel efficiency. And if you want to check out my supplement company, you can go to Mitolife.co. And there's a lot of exciting things in the works working on new products, half the product line is still sold out. But the vitamin E is still there as of this recording. And that's been going fast. Actually, a record number had been sold in the past few weeks. So get that while you can the mixed tocopherol Pufa protect that is a combination of mostly alpha and gamma tocopherol with a little bit of delta and beta tocopherol. And from the studies that I found, the gamma and the alpha isomers work together really well to prevent lipid peroxidation. And when you add medium chain triglycerides to it like MCT oil, there's even a stronger synergy. So whether you are raised on a lot of PUFAs not only from the seed oils that are talked about now in mainstream alternative health, but they'll talk about the dangers of canola oil and rapeseed oil and then in the same breath talk about the benefits of fish oil and Omega three DHA supplements like algae oil, or krill oil. The fact of the matter is, those are just as poisonous as the industrial seed oils. And nobody wants to say that because you're gonna step on toes. This is a multi million dollar industry, perhaps billion that is really profiting off of people's disease. I truly believe that the Omega 3 industry and the pharmaceutical and sick care and industry are in cahoots. Together, they're working together. I truly believe that. And when you throw vitamin E in the mix, as an antidote, as the studies show is you increase PUFAs in the tissue, you decrease vitamin E. I have a couple studies on the site, one from 2015 by (unintelligilbe) for vitamin E function and requirements in relation to Pufa and it goes into the specific ratio of milligrams of Pufa to Alpha tocopherol. And then I have another study from 1991 From Baszler on the problematic nature of vitamin E requirements, net vitamin E, and that study talks about the ratio of vitamin E to Alpha tocopherol as well. I'm really passionate about spreading the word about the suppressed vitamin called vitamin E, because I had never learned about it before discovering Atom Bergstrom and Dr. Ray Peat and no one ever told me that consuming omega threes as DHA, as algae oil, or krill oil fish oil, that that was going to deplete my vitamin E. And if I was deficient in vitamin E, then estrogen would go through the roof and estrogen my body would cause more damage, which is a stress hormone. It's not a female hormone. So panacea Shilajit will be back mid October. Appreciate your patience with that one. We've been going through some supply chain issues with the current world events. But resilien C is in stock Pufa protect, NAD power, dairy absorb and digest it all and vitamin K should be back in the next week. So keep an eye out for that. So thanks for listening. I release a new episode every Friday. Please share this with your friends if you enjoy it. And I'll see you guys next week. Stay supercharged