Myofunctional Therapy
Discover tailored solutions to enhance your oral health and well-being.
What is this all about?
Myofunctional Therapy is a process of daily exercises that help create positive changes. Its focuses on the muscles of the face, mouth, tongue, and lips.
When there is proper strength and balance your body is allowed to function as it should eliminating pain, discomfort and disfunction.
At its core, myofunctional therapy is about teaching your nerve new pathways for long term positive change.
With time and repetition, the body builds new neural pathways to our mouth & facial muscles and re-pattern them to improve tone, mobility and overall function. This typically takes a year for your body to build these new nerve pathways.
How ?
You start out meeting with me for an initial assessment online over live video. A customized plan is then created for you, followed by a series of therapy sessions over the course of 12 months. The first 6 month is where the most progress is made, leaving the last 6 months for fine tuning, working on stubborn habits and keeping you seeing the progress. Each session introduces a series of exercises based on individual needs to practice at home, which take about 7 minutes to complete. The goal is to do these exercises 2-3X a day
We start out with an assessment to have a baseline of where you are today allowing us to set taylored goals of what you want to work towards. We will meeting over virtual visits going over your customized exercises weekly for the first 2 month. I will be there to cheer you on, show you your progress and keep you engaged on your myo journey.
Common Oral Health Issues
Discover the challenges many face with their oral health.
Tongue
Get the best results when correcting tongue ties. Gain the function needed with exercises, avoiding a release.
- Tongue Tie
Myofunctional therapy provides targeted therapy for the tongue supporting a tongue tie release.
Infants are now screened in the hospital for tongue ties. Many ties when addressed as a baby it needs to be release again around age 5 or older. To get the best results when having a tongue release is to do 5 weeks of exercises prior to the release. This allows the treating doctor doing the release to see the areas of restriction more clearly providing you with the best results. It is helpful to strengthen the tongue, gain position awareness and maximum stretch before the release. One the release is done I support recover with 3 sessions. The goal is to make sure now that the tongue is release, it learns how to use its new freedom of movement and utilize it to
- Tongue Thrust
With a tongue thrust present, myofunctional therapy focuses on improving the tongue position during the swallow pattern.When you swallow, it is ideal that the tongue goes up to the roof of the mouth. With a tongue thrust, the tongue pushes on the front teeth leading to possible gaps, teeth not touching, jaw pain and lysp.
This is one of a few leading causes I have seen in ortho relapse that is not discussed when braces are removed and teeth do not stay aligned nice and straight.
Mouth Breathing
The primary source for breathing should be our nose. When our mouth takes over this job, it can cause a lot of health issues to follow. It can take three breaths through our mouth to equal one breath through our nose.
With mouth breathing our tongue is typically on the floor of our mouth and not on the roof as it should be. This leads to teeth that lean in, high and narrow roof of mouth, and higher chance of needing orthodontics.
Mouth breathing is also a trigger for:
- Increased cavities
- Gum disease
- ADHD-type symptoms
- Poor sleep
- Getting sick more often
- Bad breath
Sleep & Snoring
Myofunctional Therapy is a very effective adjunct to helping with sleep apnea and sleep disturbances. With mild and moderate cases, teaching the tongue where to rest and increasing muscle tone helps support a open and healthy airway. With severe cases where a c-pap is worn, doing myofunctional therapy allows the possible option to use less pressure in time as your body gains muscle tone to keep the airway optimally open more of the time.
Signs of sleep disturbances & sleep apnea
- Loud snoring
- Gasping for air
- Clenching or grinding teeth
- Poor sleep and daytime tiredless
- High blood pressure
Braces & Crooked Teeth
The tongue when in proper place is a natural retainer for your teeths preventing orthodontic relapse. The tongue is a strong muscle and controls a lot of how straight your teeth will stay after braces are removed.
It is ideal to start myofunctional therapy before braces are placed, but can be done at any point before, join or after braces.
Habit Elimination
Thumb sucking, nail biting, sippy cup habits can all be a setback to proper oral function. Before myofunctional therapy sessions can be done, it is best to remove any oral habits that would prevent proper progress being made. It is not ideal to to teach your lips to stay together while they are still trying to suck a thumb or bite a nail.
Face Pain
Headaches, Jawpain and TMJ pain can be decrease.
The tongue has a major role in how our jaw moves and stabilizes. Pain in the face and jaw can come from clenching, grinding, and improper muscle balance. Many times pain can not be completely solved alone with myofunctional therapy. It is a multifaceted with the help of other providers getting to the root cause. Nightguards made by dentists can help with the clenching and grinding helping to support our lip and tongue posture along with the neck.
Sleep appliances for mild or moderate apnea cases area ideal with a c-pap for advanced sleep apneas.