Myofunctional Therapy For Adults and Children

Some oral habits such as mouth breathing and thumb-sucking have negative impacts on facial growth. We offer mouth and face exercises aimed at developing better orofacial habits to reduce the need for orthodontic treatment and/or stabilise orthodontic result.

What is Myofunctional Therapy?

Myofunctional therapy for adults and children is a non-invasive treatment that involves a series of exercises designed to condition orofacial muscle tone. It can help reduce the negative impact to facial growth and hence teeth position from poor orofacial habits. It may stabilise orthodontic results to prevent relapses that occur due to poor breathing and swallowing patterns.

Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy includes behaviour modification techniques and orofacial myofunctional exercises to improve the strength, tone and mobility and/or coordination of orofacial structures (tongue, lips ,cheeks, pharynx, and jaw) focusing on the airway, rest posture and oral awareness. These exercises may be combined with the use of silicone mouthguard-like trainers such as a myobrace. It can also correct detrimental habits like thumb sucking that lead to protruding or ‘thumb sucking teeth’.

Benefits

  • Good oral posture from a very young age can decrease your child’s chances of needing orthodontic treatment, it will also allow the face to develop to its genetic potential and reduce instances of mouth breathing face.
  • The exercises increase orofacial muscle tone and can help to reduce snoring.
  • Stabilise post-orthodontic treatment results. Myofunctional therapy can be applied in conjunction with orthodontic retainers to improve the long-term stability of the final orthodontic result.
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How We Can Help You

  • Mouth breathing – allergies or past ear infections and asthma may have caused your child to develop a mouth breathing habit. This affects for development of facial muscles, leading to what’s known as ‘mouth breathing face’. Continued into adulthood, mouth breathing is also known to be associated with high blood pressure. Myofunctional therapy can help by introducing exercises to increase nasal breathing.
  • Tongue posture – the tongue position plays an essential role in stimulating the growth of the upper jaw growth in children. Myofunctional therapy can help correct poor tongue postures and help your child improve their facial growth pattern. Myofunctional therapy exercises are recommended after a tongue tie release to reduce the chances of reattachment.
  • Weak orofacial muscle tone can present as heavy night-time breathing or snoring. Myofunctional exercises can help tone up the muscles at the back of the throat to reduce muscle collapse during sleep.
  • Mild jaw joint pain – some TMJ jaw joint pain can be relieved with myofunctional therapy exercises by strengthening and relaxing different facial muscle groups
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Get In Touch

Find out more and if it’s right for you etc.

Call The Clinic

(09) 975-0333

Clinic Location

12/35 St Johns Road, Meadowbank, Auckland 1072, New Zealand

Contact Us

[email protected]

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