[alainchabat]

Having my tongue rest on the bottom of your mouth.

Proper tongue positioning is when you rest your tongue on the roof of the mouth and away from the teeth. It's been 2 years I've been "mewing"[1]. A good side effect for me: Now I stop snoring and I believe I have better posture. Some claim that it will improve your jawline but not for me, I guess I started too late. If I had started in my teen, I believe I would have had a great face today ?

[1] Check youtube videos for "mewing" or lookup JawHacks videos

[Nesco]

”Mewing” is just normal tongue posture. It will not improve your jawline. Usually it’s the reverse: if you need to “mew” / put your tongue on the roof of your mouth consciously and if you naturally snores it’s because of a problem.

Problem that is often genetic or more rarely that appeared during your development: either your face lacks forward projection or a part only is recessed (malocclusion: your upper and lower teeth don’t perfectly fit).

The only way to definitively cure it is to go through an orthognatic surgery. If not treated it might evolves into sleep apnea as you are getting older. You should check with an orthodontist or a maxillo-facial surgeon to make sure that’s what your are suffering from.

If your are lucky like me, ie you have enough projection and no malocclusion, a genioplasty might be sufficient to naturally seal your lips without muscle contraction by bringing them closer. In my case it’s what created the pressure differential needed for my tongue to stay in the roof of my mouth. If you are unlucky a BSSO, a Lefort I or both (Bimax) might be necessary. Some extreme cases might even require the three surgeries.

[Llamamoe]

While genetic/heritable factors play a role, the evidence is overwhelming that the main cause is weak jaw muscles and improper resting posture during childhood, due to soft diets and allergies.

I'd also like to add that even in absence of sleep apnea, Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome, where the airway collapses but the body partially wakes up before it progresses into an apnea, is likely, and often missed by diagnostics.

In general, maxillomandibular advancement is always more effective than genioglossus advancement during genio.

[Nesco]

Thanks for the precision! Bimax indeed best practice but performing BSSO comes with significant risk of nerve damages.

In my (light) case for example two independant surgeons advised me against as the risk outweighed the potential benefice

[Llamamoe]

The risk scales with BSSO distance, surgeon expertise(both quality of work, and especially how long the operation takes).

I wish more research was conducted into improving nerve healing using administration of stuff like Cerebrolysin, other neurotrophic, or cellular stress therapy - e.g. in fat transplantation, pre-op suction promotes vascularization and local growth factor release, dramatically improving fat graft survival rates, in skin/hair, microneedling works wonders through local growth factor release. Could we do the same to the nerves?

[mijoharas]

I'd not heard of this and so googled mewing. The first link[0] seems to imply that the research into it is somewhat lacking (or shows there to be no effect), and that the guy that invented it had his license stripped.

I assume now you have anecdotal evidence of it working for you for snoring, but what made you think it would work in the first place?

[0] https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/what-is-mewing

[fellerts]

Hard to tell, but I think this is the natural resting spot for my tongue. Now I'm curious, where else would you rest it?

[alainchabat]

The other (incorrect) resting position would be the tip of your tongue touching , and not your full tongue.

https://imgur.com/a/0BBXGUz

[Beaver117]

Wow, I physically can't do this. I can only touch the tip of my tongue to the roof. Guess I need jaw surgery.

[thih9]

According to GP, incorrect:

> on the bottom of your mouth

correct:

> when you rest your tongue on the roof of the mouth and away from the teeth

[machiaweliczny]

I also wrote about it. It’s connected to „infantile swallowing”. Seems like 3-4 year old child should change tongue placement but if you have alergy and runny nose then you might never learn it.

I suspect that for me it switched back later as I was very good in long distance running as kid and after one time beeing sick I never recovered to my previous form. It never occured to me that it was tongue placement :(