Let’s start here…
Jack “The Manassa Mauler”
Dempsey, ran a hard training camp, one reflective of his already hard life in
logging camps.
Amongst lumberjacks he
picked up the habit of chewing pine-resin, the sap from certain coniferous trees.
These loggers, a rambunctious
bunch who loved their set-to’s swore by it—said it made your jaw strong,
increased your ability to take a punch.
A young Dempsey, had plenty
of opportunity to see fellow resin-chewers at work in a tussle and decided, “Yeah,
seems to work.” He carried the practice into his training camps.
Dempsey was not alone
in this resin-chewing practice, many an early pugilist, an early wrestler, an early
physical culturist [the drug-free bodybuilders of yore] adopted this practice.
All purported it to be
a good jaw-strengthener to take a punch, or in the case of the physical
culturists they chewed resin to sleep better and to improve posture.
Now, perhaps we can
get out heads around a little jaw-strengthening, but sleep aid? Posture
improver?
Stay with me.
Many Plains tribes
[and other indigenous peoples] had “chewing habits,” that is some local food or
semi-food item that was chewed not for sustenance but for health reasons similar
to those offered by our early boxers, wrestlers, and physical culturists.
We’ve come a long way
since this hoo-doo superstition stuff, haven’t we?
The
Shrinking Human Face
Since the advent of
the agricultural revolution and the migration to cities, the human face has
been narrowing [measured cheek to cheek and mandible to mandible] and
flattening [measured nose to occiput—back of skull] and chin to nape of neck.
These measurements
have been conducted by various anthropologists and this narrowing and flattening
hold true across civilized populations—reaching a peek narrowing-flattening in
the 19th-century and remaining so to our own 21st century.
Why the Diminishing
of the Human Skull?
It is surmised that “…for
the first time in history, humans could spend their entire lives eating nothing
but processed food—nothing fresh, nothing raw, nothing natural. Millions did.
Over the next few centuries, food would become more and more refined. Advances
in milling removed the germ and bran from rice, leaving only the starchy white
seed. Roller mills (and, later, steam mills) ripped the germ and bran from
wheat, leaving only a soft, white flour. Meats, fruits, and vegetables were
canned and bottled. All these methods extended the shelf life of foods and made
them more accessible to the public. But they also made foods mushy and soft.”—James
Nestor
Universal access to easily
digested food is an undoubted boon—no argument there.
But…the iatrogenic effect
[the unintended consequence] of food that does not require the same work to
chew, or the same length of time to chew over the course of a day led to this
facial and jaw narrowing.
This same time period
saw the rise in dental decay—due primarily to the addition of processed sugar.
But, sugar does not explain
the increased incidence of crooked teeth, sinus problems, sleep apnea TMJ and a
host of other mandible-facial related maladies.
“But, Mark, how
do we know facial narrowing is the culprit, perhaps this was universal for
humans across the board, and we were simply seeing a rise in diagnoses and not
a rise in incidence.”
And that is the rebuttal
to make.
But…Harvard anthropologist
Earnest Hooton, offered,
“Since we have
known for a long time that savages have excellent teeth and that civilized men
have terrible teeth, it seems to me that we have been extraordinarily stupid in
concentrating all of our attention upon the task of finding out why all our
teeth are so poor, without ever bothering to learn why the savage’s teeth are
good.”
[Savages is his word,
not mine. Different times but word choice does not render the observation useless.]
For over a decade
starting in the 1930s,… teeth, airways, and general health of populations
around the world were compared. Indigenous communities whose members were still
eating traditional foods, were compared to other members in the same community,
sometimes the same family, who had adopted a modern industrialized diet…
The same story played out.
Societies that
replaced their traditional diet with modern, processed foods suffered up to ten
times more cavities, severely crooked teeth, obstructed airways, and overall poorer
health. The modern diets were the same: white flour, white rice, jams,
sweetened juices, canned vegetables, and processed meats.
Before one gets on the
“Progress is a sham, and we need to throw out all processed food band-wagon”
Consider that the
traditional diets were all different.
Some were almost all
meat [primarily north of the Arctic Circle.]
Others were close to
vegetarian.
All else fell between
the two.
There was NO
magic diet.
The common denominator
it seems was…
It was the
constant stress of chewing that was lacking from our diets—not vitamin A, B, C,
or D. Ninety-five percent of the modern, processed diet was soft. Even what’s
considered healthy food today—smoothies, nut butters, oatmeal, avocados, whole
wheat bread, vegetable soups. It’s all soft. Our ancient ancestors chewed for hours
a day, every day. And because they chewed so much, their mouths, teeth,
throats, and faces grew to be wide and strong and pronounced. Food in
industrialized societies was so processed that it hardly required any chewing at
all... It’s one of the reasons so many of us snore today, why our noses are
stuffed, our airways clogged. Why we need sprays, pills, or surgical drilling
just to get a breath of fresh air.—Nestor
“Well, that’s
depressing, Mark, I fall into that category, got any good news?”
Yes, but first, let us
depress for another minute or two.
After the age of 30 we
begin losing bone mass, women will suffer more than men due to menopause.
Loss of
bone-mass in the jaw and face Sagging skin, baggy and hollow eyes, and sallow
cheeks all result from bone disappearing and flesh having nowhere to go but
down. As bone degrades deeper in the skull, soft tissues at the back of the
throat have less to hang on to, so they can droop too, which can lead to airway
obstruction. This bone loss partly explains why snoring and sleep apnea often
grow worse the older we get.—Nestor
You can stave off some
of these effects by exercise but the skull itself is not exposed to the stressors
that the rest of the body can enjoy in the gym.
“Mark, you’re
bumming me out, where’s that good news?”
Clench your jaw.
Right now, clench it
hard.
Feel the masseters,
those two hard lumps of muscle along the jaw hinge.
Keep it clenched, feel
the sensation throughout your skull as more than your masseters seems to be
engaged.
What is this additional
engagement?
Your skull sutures, the
cranial equivalent of tectonic plates.
These sutures
spread apart throughout our lives. This spreading allows the skull bone to flex
and expand to double its size from infancy to adulthood. Inside these sutures,
the body creates stem cells, amorphous blanks that shift form and become
tissues and bones depending on what our bodies need. Stem cells, which are used
throughout the body, are also the mortar that binds the sutures together and
that grows new bone in the mouth and face. Unlike other bones in the body, the
bone that makes up the center of the face, called the maxilla, is made of a
membrane bone that’s highly plastic. The maxilla can remodel and grow more
dense into our 70s, and likely longer. -Nestor
We can engage and
signal stem cells to build more maxilla bone in the face by engaging the
masseter—by clamping down on the back molars over and over.
That is, by chewing.
The more
we gnaw, the more stem cells we release, the more bone density and growth we’ll
trigger, the younger we’ll look and the better we’ll breathe.—Nestor
Which brings us back
to Dempsey and his pine resin—it did indeed do what the lumberjacks told him it
did.
The common denominator
in skull atrophy is ease of chewing.
The common denominator
in non-atrophied indigenous skulls was, again, not a magic diet, but time spent
under load, just as an athlete in a gym.
“So, Mark, does
that mean I gotta get hold of some pine resin?”
Not necessarily.
You can simply choose
to chew.
That is, when confronted
between a soft food choice and one that requires more work.
Pick the work.
The Double-Gum
Method
During each Unleaded Training
session I pop not one, but two [sometimes three] pieces of sugarless gum, and
chomp away until that day’s session is done.
It is my lazy man’s
way to appropriate some of that Dempsey jaw-toughening.
If we think of the jaw
and facial bones as the scaffolding upon which the visible face must support itself,
not only do we improve chances for clearer breathing which increases performance,
decreases anxious/depressive states, and keeps our aging skin a bit less saggy
for a wee while longer, we just may improve our evening’s sleep.
Oh, one more thing—chew
that gum with your mouth closed.
That is a universal
from both the Plains Tribe and the Physical Culturists of yore.
Never chew
with the mouth open.
Why?
Later.
Oh, and as for that
sleep and postural aid the physical culturists spoke of, does that hold water?
Turns out it does—and re-building
your posture may not be what you think it is.
Another day—We’ll make
all that info a Black Box Exclusive.
For deep in the weeds
Old School Conditioning that covers more than just the externals see the following
resources.
Why merely
read about it, when you can live it? Consider joining The Black Box Brotherhood
The Black Box Combat & Conditioning Training Warehouse
The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast
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