What Is Myofunctional Therapy? Everything You Need to Know

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Most people don’t think about swallowing or breathing through their nose — unless, of course, these automatic, vital functions are challenging.

Myofunctional therapy treats orofacial disorders that disrupt these actions, as well as conditions like obstructive sleep apnea, snoring, and speaking or chewing difficulties, to name a few.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, you might wonder, “What is myofunctional therapy?” and who can benefit from orofacial myofunctional therapy exercises?

As a compassionate, expert myofunctional therapy Colorado provider, Sanitas Family Dentistry is dedicated to offering treatment options that help patients of all ages.

In this guide, we’ll discuss myofunctional therapy, the disorders it treats, myofunctional therapy tools, orofacial myofunctional therapy exercises, their benefits, and more.

What Is Myofunctional Therapy?

Myofunctional therapy (also known as orofacial myofunctional therapy or OMT) enhances tongue and facial muscle function via specific orofacial myofunctional therapy exercises to improve breathing, eating, swallowing, and orofacial disorders like TMJ and obstructive sleep apnea.

During guided exercises, a Certified Orofacial Myofunctional Therapist helps a patient strengthen or retrain muscles in the mouth or face, or become aware of proper ways to move or rest these muscles.

Focus areas include exercising the tongue, cheeks, jaws, and lips to improve oral rest posture and facial functionality during certain activities.

What Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders Do Therapists Treat?

Healthcare providers, including dental hygienists who become certified orofacial myofunctional therapists, treat various orofacial myofunctional disorders (OMDs) via specialized exercises.

Examples of orofacial myofunctional disorders include:

• Mouth breathing – You might do this if you can’t get enough air through your nose. Chronic sinus issues, nasal congestion, allergies, enlarged tonsils or adenoids, a deviated septum, and sleep apnea are some of the reasons why people have challenges breathing through their nose. OMT encourages proper nasal breathing to decrease the frequency of mouth breathing.

• Snoring – Snoring occurs when air flows through narrow, relaxed tissues in your mouth, throat, and nose. Doing mouth, tongue, and throat exercises to strengthen these muscles and promote proper tongue posture can help reduce or prevent snoring.

• Malocclusion – Also known as a misaligned bite, this issue occurs when your upper and lower teeth don’t line up properly with your mouth closed. Genetics can cause this issue, along with childhood habits like thumb sucking and pacifier use, which may affect the way a child’s teeth and jaw develop. Also, losing teeth too early, teeth grinding, and teeth or jaw injuries can cause alignment issues.

• Teeth clenching and grinding (bruxism) – When you clench or grind your teeth subconsciously throughout the day or while you sleep, it can cause headaches and jaw pain. Stress or anxiety can bring on or worsen grinding. OMT seeks ways to improve resting lip and tongue posture. Therapy can also balance and strengthen facial muscle functions to help decrease the severity and frequency of teeth clenching.

• Tongue thrust – This condition usually occurs in children when they push their tongues against the back of their teeth while swallowing, speaking, or at rest. It can impair swallowing and speaking and cause mouth breathing and teeth protrusion, among other challenges. Research shows that OMT techniques can help correct tongue thrust.

• Open-mouth posture – Open-mouth posture issues can affect your tongue, jaws, and teeth because your mouth stays slightly open at rest, rather than in a natural, sealed lip position. OMT helps correct your oral posture so that your tongue rests lightly against the roof of your mouth.

• TMJ disorders – TMJ stands for the temporomandibular joint. Disorders affect the muscles and ligaments surrounding these joints and can cause chronic pain, difficulty chewing, jaw locking, facial pain, headaches, eye pain, jaw tenderness, and more. OMT decreases jaw tension, improves alignment, increases the jaw’s range of motion, and improves joint stability.

• Neck tension and facial pain – OMT helps alleviate these issues.

• Post-jaw surgery recovery - OMT can help make eating easier during post-jaw surgery recovery.

• Post-lingual frenectomy (tongue tie) recovery – Doing OMT following tongue tie release surgery can help improve tongue range of motion, making eating and speaking easier.

How Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy Helps Obstructive Sleep Apnea

In 2019, research findings estimated that “936 million adults aged 30-69 years (men and women) have mild to severe obstructive sleep apnea, and 425 million (399-450) adults aged 30-69 years have moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea globally.”

That’s nearly one billion people around the world who suffer from OSA, a condition in which “a blockage or narrowing in your airway keeps air from moving through your windpipe when you’re asleep.”

Oral myofunctional therapy goals aim to strengthen muscle function in your upper airway to help keep airways open. Treatment may also focus on repositioning your tongue and improving nasal breathing — also to open your airways.

Common Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy Exercises

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So, what is orofacial myofunctional therapy? Simply put, myofunctional therapy is like physical therapy for the mouth, tongue, face, and throat.

There are no known risks to performing OMT, and the exercises always target each patient’s specific conditions.

Healthcare professionals — including dental hygienists who are trained or certified in myofunctional therapy — can recognize orofacial issues and help guide patients through specific orofacial myofunctional therapy exercises to address, reduce the intensity of, and alleviate the concerns above.

For instance, if you struggle with snoring, your OMT provider may create an exercise plan that works on strengthening your tongue. Exercises may include:

• Tongue push-ups

• Tongue stretches

• Tongue slide

• Tongue aerobics

You can also do mouth exercises to help alleviate snoring. They target your cheek muscles, lips, and soft palate, such as:

• Lip purse

• Side-to-side jaw movement

• Cheek hook

• Open and close your mouth

• Button hold

Throat exercises for snoring focus on strengthening the muscles around your airway. Doing these regularly makes your airway muscles less likely to vibrate or collapse while you sleep (which can cause snoring).

Throat exercises include singing or pronouncing vowel sounds (A E I O U) — and drawing them out — such as holding the sound for several seconds.

Regularly doing nasal breathing exercises encourages nose-breathing to keep your airway open while you sleep. They include breathing through your nostrils, one at a time, with your mouth closed.

More examples of myofunctional therapy exercises include playing a wind instrument, holding a small object between your lips, and lifting or extending your tongue in certain ways.

Examples of Myofunctional Therapy Tools

Hand weights and resistance bands are standard physical therapy tools that help strengthen your arms and legs. By comparison, myofunctional therapy tools help strengthen your lips, tongue, throat, and facial muscles.

Some of them may look fun, like bubbles to practice mouth posture or a straw to strengthen lips and encourage mouth closure.

More myofunctional therapy tools include:

• A mirror to watch how facial muscles move

• Small sticky dots to help a patient achieve proper tongue placement

• A large mouth model

• Tongue depressors

• Tape for lip closure exercises

• A pencil for tongue exercises

• Bite block – to help stabilize the jaw

• Small elastic bands (like those used in orthodontic treatments) – used to guide and achieve tongue placement

This list offers examples of common myofunctional tools that can be customized to address individual needs.

An Orofacial Myofunctional Therapist Creates a Personal Exercise Plan

A certified orofacial myofunctional therapist can recognize a variety of orofacial myofunctional disorders and recommend which OMT exercises can treat them best.

In creating a personal exercise plan, your provider will decide how long each OMT session will be, how often you will do the exercises, and how long you will continue treatments. The frequency and duration of treatments will depend on the condition treated.

Many treatments range from six to 12 months. Some patients do exercises with their providers in a dental office or clinic and continue doing exercises at home.

Myofunctional Therapy Offers Multiple Benefits

In understanding what myofunctional therapy is, knowing there are multiple potential benefits of OMT for children and adults can inform and encourage you. They include:

• Improving lip or tongue position to help teeth alignment

• Improving chewing and swallowing

• Providing post-surgical support for jaw surgery

• Reducing or eliminating mouth breathing

• Reducing nail biting and thumb sucking

• Making nasal and nighttime breathing easier

• Supporting orthodontic goals and treatment

• Decreasing snoring

• Promoting better sleep quality

• Getting better, more restful sleep that can help improve focus

• Making speaking and communication easier

• Boosting self-esteem and confidence

Our Team Is Here and Happy to Help

At Sanitas Family Dentistry, we are here and happy to help address your questions and concerns about orofacial myofunctional disorders and myofunctional therapy. Our Certified Orofacial Myofunctional Therapist, Reilly, has extensive knowledge and training to offer the best treatment options for you or your children.

Our team is committed to working together to deliver quality dental care that fosters lasting relationships and treats each individual person with compassion and kindness.

Contact us at (303) 449-8875 to schedule a consultation at our Boulder office.