I think the skull mostly grows through bone remodeling, not sutural growth. Sutural growth moreso affects how malleable the skull is, which is why if you have more open sutures it's easier to get change, not because a more open suture responds better to growth but that a skull with more open sutures requires less force to get remodeling. New bone is grown at the sutures but that's not what's driving facial growth, bone growth at the sutures is just a necessary consequence of remodeling, it wouldn't make sense for the sutures to not grow new bone, if the sutures didn't grow new bone they would just split apart.
If you look at this image from Dr. Belfor's website -- it is showing bone growth in one of his Homeoblock patients that aren't really at where I think there are suture lines (IMO):
Worth noting, Dr. Belfor seems to send this kind of analysis work out to a department at the Mayo Clinic (noted in this article of his: https://drtheodorebelfor.com/services/increasing-airway-volume-with-a-removable-orthodontic-dental-appliance/). So if we believe that a 3rd party did this analysis, this is verification of bone growth and development in response to the forces that something like Homeoblock sets up throughout the entire cranial structure.
Agreed. As my mandible as retruded due to bad joints it brought my entire maxilla back with it. Now that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve but it is remodeling due to forces applied (bad bite)
Why does the bone need to grow? Why can't it simply re-model it's own shape and stretch out forward?
Agreed. As my mandible as retruded due to bad joints it brought my entire maxilla back with it. Now that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to achieve but it is remodeling due to forces applied (bad bite)
You think the mandible brought the maxilla back? That's interesting. I know you're working with a pretty good TMJ ALF provider - is that something he agreed with?
Some of the TMJ folks with see it as the opposite. They see the mouth-breathing causing the pressure from the cheeks to be unopposed by the tongue in the roof of the mouth, so the upper arch form starts to collapse inward ... and once that starts happening, the mandible may start to retrude and the lower teeth tip inward as a compensation in order to maintain a functional occlusion.
But I could see it in my case - bad joints here too. So maybe my mandible started to retrude, and then the body started to retrude the maxilla in order to try to maintain a functional occlusion for me. If so, this gives me a lot of hope for my treatment we're about to start - we've untrapped my mandible over the past year with a bite splint, and my condyles are centered now ("barely") ... but now I have a posterior open bite (makes me dependent on the splint to eat, which is really frustrating). We're starting with a Schwartz appliance for saggital/forward only for a few months to try to remodel the maxilla back down and forward a bit to get the occlusion back between upper and lower ... and then we'll finish all the remaining expansion work with DNA after that.
How's your progress coming along by the way? Has Dr. Bronson been able to reverse any of how much you think your maxilla had retruded back?
Why does the bone need to grow? Why can't it simply re-model it's own shape and stretch out forward?
Interestingly enough, I had heard a theory recently that that might be why even with lateral expansion you often get a little bit of forward growth as well. Maybe only a couple millimeters. But the theory I heard was that the forces from the zygomatic buttresses restrict some of the lateral expansion force, so the body compensates by remodeling forward a bit instead.
Skull and Jaw Correction
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