Have you ever noticed people who breathe through their mouth instead of their nose? These are your family and friends with nasal congestion, open mouth posture at rest, chapped lips, lip color change, large tongue, long face, forward head posture, shiners under their eyes, sagging cheeks, wheezing, and/or snoring.
Nasal breathing is important because the nose acts as a filter and humidifier, so that the air that reaches your lungs is clean. Read more about the importance of nasal breathing and how myofunctional therapy can help on our blog titled Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy.
Open mouth at rest posture is a symptom of open mouth breathing. Open mouth breathing can cause structural changes to your mouth and face. These changes include long face syndrome or your face growing vertically, weak facial muscles, and more. Open mouth breathing can negatively affect your posture. Read about it in our blog: What does Posture have to do with Breathing?
Open mouth breathing may lead to greater digestive problems and a potential for choking due to poor coordination between breathing, chewing, and swallowing air. Since open mouth breathers don't breathe through their nose, they can't breathe when their mouth is full. Essentially, you have to decide if you're going to chew or breathe. So you end up chewing with your lips apart. Chewing with your lips apart is faster, nosier and less efficient than chewing with your lips closed.
You might also see changes involved in swallowing such as your tongue moving forward and/or pushing against your teeth during a swallow, noisy swallows, muscle contractions of the muscles that wrap around the mouth and head movements during swallowing. You might notice lots of saliva in your mouth and a lisp. A lisp is a speech sound distortion characterized by placing your tongue between the front teeth during sound production of /s/ and /z/.
We specialize in retraining the nasal breathing using neuromuscular techniques, respiration techniques while focusing on proper oral rest posture and swallowing. Schedule an orofacial myofunctional appointment Now!
Have questions: Email us or Call us: 214-997-1106