Tongue Tie

Everything You Need to Know About Tongue-Tie

Breastfeeding helps create normal feeding, breathing, and swallowing patterns. Because of this, it can be deduced that tongue-tie and other compensatory patterns may play a role in the development of children’s jaws. The direction and growth of this bone structure are affected by habits such as tongue thrusting, reverse swallowing, and using muscles in the cheeks and lips. An open-mouth posture, which leads to a lowered tongue posture, also influences how their jaws grow.

What It Is

Tongue-tie is an oral condition where the lingual frenum, which is the tissue connecting the bottom of the tongue’s tip to the floor of the mouth, is unusually short, thick, or tight. This limits a person's tongue mobility. It appears in two to ten percent of babies - with a male predominance of about three is to one. Most of the time, doctors may not notice that a baby has a short lingual frenum since it is not immediately evident.

How It Will Affect Your Child

As your kid continues to grow, having tongue-tie can lead to difficulties with breastfeeding, eating, and articulating. It is important to know how this condition affects your baby’s growth.

Speech and Language Development Problems

In the early years of life, limitations on oral motor movements present specific challenges that cause the ineffective development of oral motor skills. Difficulties in touching the roof of the mouth and pronouncing sounds like t, d, n, l, s, z, and r also become apparent. Correcting the restricting condition of having tongue-tie has been shown to have positive benefits.

Indirect Complications That May Arise

During your kid’s formative years, habitual dysfunctional oral posture and swallowing patterns can be firmly ingrained in the brain. Without proper intervention, tongue-tie may indirectly lead to other conditions, such as restricted jaw growth, mouth breathing, and crowded teeth.

Signs You Should Look Out For

Mouth-Breathing Problems Related to Over Breathing
Enlarged Adenoids and Tonsils
Snoring and Sleep Apnea
Teeth Grinding

Poor Quality of Sleep and Difficulty Concentrating
Forward Head Posture
Difficulty in Eating Solid Food
Pronounced Gag Reflex

The Effects of Tongue-Tie Later On in Life

The bodies of adults with tongue-tie were forced to adjust to the condition by focusing on significant bodily functions first to survive. Since feeding and breathing are some of the brain’s top priorities, the development of body parts that are less needed for survival will be affected, which may cause complications. Some examples of these instances include:

Back pain due to poor posture
Head and neck pain caused by a significant structural displacement of these parts
Severe sleep apnea because of underdeveloped jaws and airway
Tension in the front of the neck or the muscles along the side of the neck

Problems with speaking and swallowing due to tension in the bone and cartilage at the top of the throat
Stomach tension and acid reflux caused by tightness in the bone and cartilage of the throat
Jaw issues as a result of tightness in the muscles under the jaw
Poor sleep and chronic pain due to a constant state of stress

Find Out More

Get in touch with us at Myofunctional Health for additional information about tongue-tie and other orofacial myofunctional disorders. We would be more than happy to educate you about these conditions and their treatments.