Tongue tie is more than just a metaphor for stumbling over your words. It is an oral condition that can cause issues right from infancy like difficult breastfeeding, impact your child’s airway(breathing and sleep) and affect speech, posture and dental health. In adults, it could lead to Orofacial pain and TMJ dysfunction, snoring, headaches, pain in the shoulder, neck and back.
A tongue tie is a condition wherein a string of tissue restricts the tongue’s range of motion. This tissue is known as the frenulum. The frenulum connects the floor of the mouth to the underside of the tongue. This can suppress movements that are vital for breathing, breastfeeding, sucking, eating, drinking, chewing, swallowing, digestion, speech, jaw growth, and postures.
Sleep disorders can worsen with age. As such, taking action at an early age is important. The traditional approach to treat sleep apnea was CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure). However, today, several methods can be used alongside CPAP to treat OSA, including Breath Retraining, Oral Myofunctional Therapy, Airway Orthodontics, Correction of Tongue Function & Mobility and Dental Sleep Appliances.
Oral Myofunctional Therapy involves strengthening the tongue and orofacial muscles. As a tongue exercise program, it is used to correct the irregular function of the tongue and facial muscles. In this therapy, individuals learn how to tone and use their muscles to achieve vital functions like nasal breathing and swallowing. By training the muscles in the face to act in their best biological way, muscle memory can help with teeth and jaw alignment as they grow and develop.
Myofunctional therapy is utilised as a vital adjunct before and after tongue-tie surgery (Functional Frenuloplasty) to achieve complete success. Before surgery, the therapy conditions the muscles, re-educating the tongue to implement its functions, thereby preparing the tongue to undergo the release procedure. Like physical therapy aids in training bodies after an injury to get back to their optimal shape. Likewise, Oral Myofunctional Therapy is a tongue exercise for sleep apnea that helps train the soft tissues of the tongue, face, neck, mouth, and throat to function at the best of their ability.
A functional frenuloplasty is an effective method for the release of tongue tie and lip tie. It includes surgical removal of the fascial tissue along with the blunt dissection of the fascia to improve the tongue’s range of motion
The main goal of breath retraining is to adjust every aspect of the breathing pattern, including the heart rate, rhythm, volume, mechanics and use of the nose for all situations like when the body is awake, during exercise, at rest, during eating, and speech. Breath retraining helps achieve physiologically normal nasal breathing throughout the day and night. It is used as an adjunct to treat tongue ties, sleep disorders & airway orthodontics for children and adults. In our practice, we use the Buteyko Method of breath retraining.
In general, sleep and breathing disorders are caused by the backward position of jaws and incorrect tongue resting posture. Airway Orthodontics recognises this fact and focuses on bringing the jaw growth forward and making it wider, so it expands the airways which help correct the tongue and spine posture, leading to healthy sleep and breathing patterns.
Depending on the diagnosis, an airway focused dentist will recommend a suitable dental sleep appliance to treat sleep apnea, snoring, and OSA. This will help alleviate the symptoms of OSA and reduce the unhealthy effects of sleep apnea & snoring.
Being well-informed about how tongue-tie causes sleep apnea, this can help you make the right choices. You can read through our blog on myths and facts about obstructive sleep apnea to learn more. Also, if you have any queries related to tongue tie and sleep apnea, connect with us. Our team would be happy to assist you.
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