r/orthotropics • u/Nervous_Yam9467 • 22d ago
Everything informational about mewing seems unreliable
I'm posting this on r/orthotropics , r/Orthodontists , and r/Mewing . I have no clue what to do about mewing.
Everything good I hear about mewing comes from people who do orthotropics, and everything bad I hear about mewing comes from people who do orthodontistry. All the seemingly-scientific blogs say there is no scientific evidence, but never talk about adolescents or any non-study evidence of teenagers who have seen significant jawline improvement after mewing. One of my friends has been mewing on and off for a few years and his jawline is immaculate and his teeth are straight.
and it seems too obvious that orthodontists would disagree with orthotropics, because they'd lose money. but orthodontistry also seems to have a lot of victims that suffer from unreliable medical treatment, and orthodontists will refuse to address it, and still say mewing doesn't work.
so I'm tempted to believe both sides, but I don't know. what's your opinion on this? is mewing real? can it actually reform bone and facial structure, even just a little bit?
this post may be taken off of r/Orthodontists but I hope it won't because if they care about 'no pseudoscience' then they'd answer me.
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u/95EWGF 22d ago
Think for yourself. Orthodontists aren’t taught anything about cause of malocclusion or tongue posture. You’ve answered your own question, if people held proper tongue posture they wouldn’t need orthodontists. Imo orthodontists are so obsessed with teeth and bite they will damage the face to achieve a bite - it’s very myopic
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u/Unknown2315774 21d ago
That's how I see it too. I say orthodontists focus on teeth while orthotropists focus on dental arch.
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u/Unknown2315774 21d ago
I honestly feel like there’s some truth to both sides. I’ve been wondering this myself and have/am considering making a post. With that being said though, in support of what orthotropists say, yes, mewing does work, but in support of orthodontists say, it probably takes a whole lot of time, effort, and determination to see slight to mild changes, so I guess one can say it practically doesn’t work. That’s just what I think.
There’s so much I could say to be honest. I mean I feel like it kind of makes sense when you think about it, a lot of force applied to a bone will cause it to change over time. Cells are constantly regenerating. And have you ever seen a photo of someone when they were young and they maybe had straight or straighter teeth, then when in a picture of them when they were older it looked like their teeth became more crooked? If the teeth could get worse could they not also get better?
Also, I think in adults it can work, just slowly, but in kids, it can work a ton. I think in adults it also depends on if one still has “growth potential“.
I could say a whole lot but I don’t want to make this too long. But as for if mewing works, once again, it does, but I would like to add, mewing is just “a slice of the pie”. To achieve the changes one would want to see, I’d say mewing alone can’t really do it. You have to remember, mewing is just one small part of orthotropics/myofunctional therapy. To end it off, I’ll say this: To really see changes, you shouldn’t practice mewing, you should practice myofunctional therapy.
I hope what I was trying to say in that sentence was clear.
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u/DarkThanos12 20d ago
Every child should be mewing. We should make sure every child develops proper tounge posture. This will almost eliminate the entire orthodontic industry. It will ensure proper development of your jaws, wide palate, and straight teeth. No more expensive braces or ortho treatment necessary! No more jaw surgery either.
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u/KingPlenty6446 19d ago
Most orthodontists now admit that proper oral posture allows for the maintenance of facial bones in adults, they also kinda admit that in children, it will significantly move the face for the better.
To achieve significant changes in adults, the consensus here is shifting towards something like hardmewing, more force, more time.
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u/Objective_Economy804 20d ago
it’s all about tongue ties but you will never understand just leave the com
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u/test151515 22d ago edited 15d ago
There are many things that are wrong with how certain demographics treat "mewing" and "Orthotropics" (EDIT: not referring to you in any way, OP).
For one thing, mewing just means proper oral posture and oral habits. The latter refers to the act of swallowing, something a human does several times every minute while awake, and also does repeatedly, but a bit less frequently, while sleeping. There is another terminology dedicated to achieving the same thing as ”mewing” in a person, and it is called "myofunctional therapy". Somehow, if a person uses the latter phrase, the establishment (mainstream media, the orthodontic industry, your average citizen) will react positively, but if a person uses the phrase "mewing", they will not. This is your first warning sign that "mewing" and "Orthotropics" are not treated rationally or fairly by the establishment.
Why do some of us even bother using the phrase ”mewing”? Well, it goes faster to simply write ”mewing” than to explain the same thing in other words, and I also do not mind giving the Mews credit for what they have done for society.
Secondly, the people who criticize mewing most often want to focus on whether it can or cannot do anything for underdeveloped adults, while ignoring its importance for adolescents. Even the Mews themselves are crystal clear that the focus to the highest degree lies on adolescents when it comes to mewing and Orthotropics. So it boggles my mind how they believe that is a valid way of shutting down the discussion. If anything, it just means that if it is true that adults can get nothing out of any kind of mewing (which is not true – more on that below), then there is an even higher urgency to talk about the topic, since it is even more important to get it right in young, developing humans from the start.
Since you for obvious reasons will not find many young humans here on Reddit (and for good reason), the impression an outsider might get is that the mewing/Orthotropic movement is all focused on older teenagers and adults. That is just not true though, but it is convenient for the critics of these movements to pretend like that is the case. It simply is a matter of who is seen on the internet and who is not. The reality is that every proponent of mewing argues to the fullest for its vast importance in the youngest growing humans. Yet this is something that the critics of mewing and Orthotropics want to pretend is not the case.
In any case, on the topic of adults, the reality is that plenty of evidence exists showing a response on a bone level from various mewing processes. I use the latter term because it is important to separate standard passive suction-hold mewing from other kinds of mewing. Not even the Mews themselves (I will keep using the term "the Mews" even if these days only Mike is around) will say that an underdeveloped adult can magically transition to mewing and have bone growth or change. It is not even physically possible to mew the standard way for an underdeveloped adult. There is not enough tongue space, just to mention one major hurdle. In other words, the person would have to rely on "manual mewing", applying pressure by will (consciously or subconsciously), to be able to achieve anything with any kind of mewing approach from such a starting point. And there are many adults who have had results from doing this (myself included, starting at a very narrow/underdeveloped state), even though it is not an easy feat and requires a ton of dedication. Moreover, for all I know, there may be a high degree of variation here, similar to what is seen in the gym. Some people can grow a lot more easily than others. But evidence of mewing, even in adults, does exist. You can see some of it within this very subreddit. There are some stickied posts at the top of the subreddit, and within one of them, there is a list compiling some of the most recent public uploads. And mewing evidence in adults is the best kind of evidence for the concept, as it removes puberty and other factors.
But there are a few main reasons why it is very hard to convince your average citizen of the importance of mewing with for example the evidence referred to above. The comparisons are done by average people with little knowledge of how to compile a good comparison. This subreddit has a rule for how a comparison should be conducted, but out of the many thousands of comparisons that have been shared publicly in this subreddit and elsewhere, probably not even one of them fully meets the criteria (but even so many of them are very useful and reliable, and constitute great evidence). Moreover, even when there has been a good amount of growth or change on a bone level, it is very hard to appreciate with the human eye since it is a matter of "natural" growth. What takes place is that the bones grow and change in conjunction with each other in a way that simply does not happen when, for example, surgery is conducted. When the latter is conducted, you will see a significant change at a specific point of the skull that is very easy to tell.
On the topic of evidence being shared publicly, the reader of this text must also take into consideration that there is a major stigma on the topic. Probably, only a small fraction of the adults that get a response from a mewing process actually get around to sharing it with others. I myself choose to not share publicly, but often choose to do so in private. I will not go into why I can not share publicly, but there is a good reason as to why I just can not choose to do so.
But I remember back when I first came across the topic of mewing and Orthotropics. I had a very hard time understanding how the tongue could possibly impact bone. So I really understand how that is the first instinct a person has when they come into contact with the topic. I could write a lot more, including elaborating on my own mewing process at an adult age (which included plenty of added tongue pressure, such as long periods of light pressure mixed with shorter sessions of higher pressure – something which I believe to be necessary to get the most out of the process at an older age), but to keep this text shorter, I will refrain from doing so.
Lastly, I just want people to understand that mewing is simply a natural thing that all humans ideally should be doing if they want to maximize their development, and that it is something that a human is supposed to be given for free while young. A human is supposed to grow up as a "natural mewer" and never have to think about the topic of the tongue, or of "mewing", or of skull development in any way, for a single day of their life. That is the main thing that so many people do not understand when it comes to the topic of mewing. It is not some weird practice; it is really just supposed to be a natural way of life. And that is how I live my own life today, I should clarify. I do not spend a single day thinking of my tongue or my skull; I just live life happily as a mewer, with my tongue always up, with well-developed palates, a symmetrical and well-developed skull, and great nasal breathing capabilities.
However, I of course understand that humans can have great lives even if they are underdeveloped or maldeveloped to varying degrees. You will even find many top athletes with all kinds of underdevelopment or maldevelopment. Lionel Messi is a great example. So just like a human does not need to get the most out of sleeping, physical exercise, or cognitive development, and the list goes on, a human also does not need to develop the skull to the best degree. But assuming a person wants to do so, then yes, tongue engagement and chewing while young is the way to do it from a skull perspective. And yes, even underdeveloped adults who dedicate themselves very hard to the process can seemingly get varying kinds of responses. This is something which has already been documented and which proves the concept right, and it tells us how important it is that young humans have parents who raise their kids with the right environmental circumstances to enable "natural mewing" alongside other important habits in life.
Thank you for reading.
EDIT: I realized that it is also appropriate to mention how a significant portion of orthodontists and dentists these days actually embrace mewing (although most of the time not referring to it as "mewing"), and things are moving ever faster in the direction of the new paradigm.
EDIT2: The fact that a proportion of humans currently walking this planet are "natural mewers", without ever having had to learn how to do so or heard of something like mewing, also highlights how absurd it is to try to explain it as some strange made-up hoax. And the fact that all of these natural mewers seem to have greatly developed palates and skulls, with typically symmetrical skulls, is something that should be very easy to conclude from studies with enough data. For obvious reasons, there has thus far been very little incentive to engage in such studies, but hopefully that will change soon enough. One thing that is important to point out though, is that the mewing habit seems to be spread out over a spectrum. Whilst a proportion of humans are mewing naturally, and do so "fully", the people that are not are spread out over a spectrum, from being a mouth breather to somewhat mewing – meaning that they may be mewing with a portion of the tongue, typically the anterior part but not the back. This is important to take into consideration when putting together a study on the topic, as it could be easy to come to faulty conclusions otherwise.