People Loved These Instagram Stories the Most
Out of all the random crap I share of interest to me, people have told me natural birth stories and myofunctional therapy had the most useful, direct impact on their lives
I treat Instagram stories as a YOLO place in which a mix of shitposting (posting things I find funny either because they are absurd, dark, nonsensical, or many-multi-layered), deep thoughts, random ones, beautiful artwork, and serious pursuits all intermingle at a rapid pace.
Stories are this weird part of the app where you can post your own ideas or share other people’s posts in just two taps of the screen, all of which disappears in 24 hours.
Lots of little jingles in there to keep us scrolling all day.
When I get on a certain idea I’ll generally:
Use Instagram as a search engine, taking a few key words or phrases and following them via their # hashtag
Post lots and lots of things I find fascinating about it to my stories as I learn about it myself
The two things that have garnered by far the most attention from people who follow me on Instagram and actually affected their lives are:
Birth stories/childbirth related things
Myofunctional therapy - the study of the development of jaws, skulls, and the relationship to the rest of the body
As I’ve written about before, nothing will radicalize you faster than diving into natural birth information. Funny that we have to call it “natural” birth, since when people think about birth today they think a medicated birth, which, to be fair, is the norm.
Controversial podcaster/author/psychiatrist/entrepreneur Kelly Brogan tells how back when she was a true believer in medication for pregnant women and was about to have her own first child, she did what she always did and dug into gobs of research. Kelly is one person, along with Robb Wolf, who I enjoy following because I will never be interested enough to learn how to read studies well, but I trust their nerdiness. Kelly discovered that the data supports homebirth over hospital birth, surprise surprise, and that discovery was part of what launched her into going against everything she used to promote. She has a fun first podcast episode, “25 Ways I’ve Become That Which I Judged”.
A few things I love to bring up when someone shows interest include:
The origins of birthing on our backs came from a King with a fetish of watching his wives give birth. Birthing on our backs limits the ability of the pelvis to expand as needed and is often very (unnecessarily) painful. On top of that, externally rotating the femurs causes the opening to narrow, whereas internal rotation helps it open. Women, given a choice, will choose a variety of positions to give birth in that are the most comfortable and intuitive for their bodies, including but not limited to squatting, one leg up, or on all 4’s. They’ll also often eat, drink, and …. not rush the birthing process. Sometimes they even experience orgasm during birth or other life-altering natural chemical cascades during an unmedicated life-altering event. Birth at home likely involves all care taken to ensure the comfort of the woman, like low lighting, privacy, soft music, silence, people she knows loves and trusts, water, lack of interruption, lack of intrusive violations of their bodies, and a familiar supportive bacterial environment to help them feel safe to drop into their most primordial animal bodies.
Most modern obstetric practices can be traced back to some man intent on “saving women” - an idea I am insanely skeptical of, given that women have given birth since women existed. Many of the examples you’ll come across are from men who aren’t even in a medical field, not that that improves things (from inside of my bias of questioning most standard education). Many of the examples have a condescending air to the very quotes of the originators.
Babies born via c-section may have compromised immune systems, as they didn’t come out of the vaginal canal and get a bunch of momma’s bacteria all up in their face. Some c-sections are now accompanied by “vaginal smears” in order to better set the baby up for health.
I can’t grasp how our culture got to a place where birth is assumed traumatic and most women come away with stories of how terrible it was (whether they blame the system or feel the system saved them) and it’s considered normal. We just watch women get abused and say oh yeah that’s fine, probably from a lack of knowledge that anything else is even possible. Most doctors have never seen a physiological birth.
The umbilical cord is a fascinating structure, incredibly slippery and amazing. It being wrapped around a baby’s neck at times helps it not to prolapse during birth, which could be dangerous, and the majority of the time it is not a problem, as babies are still attached to it and receiving blood, air, and nutrients through the cord and the baby is not “breathing” the way we on the outside of the placenta understand. In homebirth situations it is simply unwrapped, calmly, after birth. When let to pump and receive all the remaining blood and nutrients until it is gray, babies get their full dose of what was left coursing through it to their little bodies. Unfortunately many mothers and children are told the cord wrapped around the neck is an emergency and that they almost died, instilling more unecessary trauma to their birth story.
Myofunctional therapy/holistic dentistry is the study of the interrelatedness of our health and our teeth and jaws. Most I think would point to the work of Weston A. Price for origins. Price was a dentist who traveled the world in the early 1900’s documenting tribes from around the world. He discovered that even siblings with a modern diet would have poorer bone structure, breathing, and teeth compared to their siblings with traditional diets. Vitamins and muscles for eating contribute to these factors. Modern interventions include widening the skull structure through the palate to make room for teeth rather than the orthodontic route of moving the teeth. This movement of the skull has far-reaching effects on the rest of the body and is also attributed with making people more beautiful. Beauty is associated with health. It makes sense.
Most people responded to my myofunctional stories showing tongue posture, wider jaws, changes of bone structure, easier breathing, elimination of mouth breathing, “no chin” going to full chin via exercises, and diet. It’s a really fun and easily relatable rabbit hole to go down.
Relating the two, breastfeeding supports better bone structure than bottle feeding because the baby has to work harder to get milk out of a mother’s nipple than out of a bottle nipple. There are other factors for baby’s health like how there is a documented feedback loop between what the milk contains and the microbiome of the baby’s mouth and stress factors, or even time of day that milk is let down through the nipple.
I have not had a kid, so I can’t speak to all this stuff with personal knowledge. I can point to the sharpness of my friends’ babies who were homebirthed or birth-center-birthed and unvaccinated. There is a brightness and intensity of focus to their eyes I have never seen before in babies, not that I have a ton of experience with them. I can’t help but think that the traumatic elements of hospital birth change them, sometimes for good.
I have experimented some with myofunctional therapy, getting an assessment, buying a few trinkets, and doing exercises like sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth for time, chewing mastic gum, and trying different forms of toothpastes and powders. I have a stronger tongue for it at least lol. I own dental tools to clean and tend to look outside the medical dentist model now for wisdom. One new addition is looking into the quality of water I drink. I’m trying lots of types of spring or natural mineral waters looking for what literally tastes and feels the best, trusting the water that does to hydrate me well and reduce white hairs and strengthen my teeth.
Blah blah blah. Have a great day! God bless you and your food.