r/orthotropics

I'm 29 and have been trying to understand what kind of structural changes are realistically possible through orthotropics/mewing after the main period of facial growth.

I previously tried mewing for a while but eventually stopped because I wasn't sure whether I was doing it correctly or whether I could realistically expect noticeable changes at my age.

More recently, I've become interested in this because my dentist recommended expanding my lower dental arch to address crowding, and there are also practitioners in my area who combine expansion with myofunctional therapy. This made me want to understand the distinction between conventional orthodontic approaches and the principles discussed in this community.

What I'm particularly interested in is what can realistically happen to the jaws, dental arches and overall lower-third development in an adult around 29–30 through orthotropics, proper oral posture, chewing and/or expansion devices.

For example, can meaningful changes in chin projection or overall lower-third development still occur at this age, or are adult changes mainly limited to dental/alveolar changes and posture? And how much does myofunctional therapy contribute compared with simply developing proper tongue posture and chewing habits?

I'm not asking anyone to assess my own face or tell me what treatment I should have. I'm trying to understand the potential and limitations of orthotropics in adults before deciding which approach makes sense for me.

I'd particularly appreciate experiences or before/after cases from people who started around their late 20s or 30s.

Ts is genuinely so fucking depressing I’ve been nose breathing all my life and I’m still so chopped, I’m still so chopped after soft mewing consistently, I’m now trying to hard mew but now I realise that I have a narrow palate and I bite my tongue, the hyoid muscle is inflated like a balloon everytime I hard mew, it hurts so much but not as much as being so chopped for the amount of time I’ve spent trying to looksmax.

I wanna rope, but the funeral pics would be chopped as well, no one would cry (but my family), the girl I think of day and night certainly wouldn’t, and doesn’t even consider my existence.

Anyway Imma continue hard mewing cus it gets better right?✌️🫩
(At least the base ain’t so bad)

Started putting my tongue on the roof of my mouth for over a year because mine usually rested against the back of my front teeth, and I read that this could contribute to diastema. So I technically started ‘mewing’ by placing my tongue on the roof of my mouth and not touching the back of the front teeth (not hard mewing).

 Problems:

1. Ironically, I think it widened the diastema (I did read anecdotes on this as the palate expands, but I wasn’t sure which direction to go since my tongue was pushing against my teeth anyways). I wear clear aligners now (mild case).

2. My bigger concern now is that my lower face looks wider/squarer in photos, and I also notice some asymmetry I hate. After looking at photos and reading other experiences, I started wondering if I developed masseter hypertrophy.

 

While trying to fix that, I noticed something: I have a habit of holding/elevating my jaw (rather than resting it and keeping the teeth separated) and combined with the tongue posture (which to my surprise was an easy habit to develop), it probably added more work to the masseter constantly. I hate the result though. I also then learned the existence of masseter botox and then wonder why would any woman want a wider jaw with mewing. Clearly, the botox is there in the market because women want the opposite.

Then, I realized that when I relax my jaw, the tongue naturally rests at the right N spot which made me wonder if the reason my tongue tends to rest on the back of my teeth is because I don’t release/rest my jaw. I feel like the tongue shouldn’t be the focus, it’s the jaw. People often talk about the tongue position, and that often leads to forcing the tongue instead of the jaw resting which naturally puts the tongue where it should be. I guess when you force the tongue, you unconsciously also stop relaxing your jaws and that combination exert constant force on your masseter and lead to the widened jaw result which seemed to not be what the original goal of mewing was. I'm no expert, but I read that one of the goals was to help with nasal breathing.

Now, I want to reduce this masseter ‘hypertrophy’ by practicing relaxing my jaw (so that the masseter is 'off') while keeping my teeth separated and my tongue away from my teeth.

Then, I ran into a contradiction. What is the correct mandible position in mewing practice? If it’s also a relaxed position, then I’m doing the Mewing steps again (correctly this time I guess with a relaxed jaw) while trying to do the opposite (I don’t want those strong jawline, I just want to reduce this masseter.

I’m lost and am absolutely confused.

 TLDR: How to stop using the masseter so that it is not overdeveloped. I honestly don’t care about mewing per se, my original concern was just my tongue touching my teeth. And now it’s the masseter being developed. Basically trying to reverse what others are (I assume) trying to achieve without letting my tongue going back to touching my teeth (wrong resting position).

I've had a less than positive experience with mewing. I feel like my breathing has changed; I'm short of breath all day, and I also clench my teeth a lot when I sleep and have an annoying crackling sound in my ear. The doctors say I'm fine, but it's bothersome. I've been like this for two years

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.

I know this group is mostly to discuss about facial issues but I was also wondering, how to deal with the frustration of knowing that my parents could have done better with me when I was a child and they never corrected my mouth breathing, allowing my face to have recession, the frustration I have to them is quite annoying

My palate isn't super narrow but my tongue is slightly too big and it wraps around my back teeth a bit and i think thats preventing me from getting a good suction hold. Any ways to do this other than fingerpulling? I'm skeptical and would rather hear a technique studied by the Mew Family.