I Corrected my Tongue Thrust - Without Speech Therapy

A tongue thrust is basically poor tongue posture which causes you to push your tongue against the inside of your teeth instead of up on the roof of your mouth. Everyone is born with a tongue thrust and almost everyone learned proper tongue posture on their own, without any assistance. Tongue thrusters do not. A common result of this is an anterior open bite where none of the anterior teeth meet and an opened appears.

This was my anterior open bite prior to double jaw surgery and prior to decompensation. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had braces at a younger age to attempt to fix the bite. With no attempt to fix the tongue thrust I just kept tongue thrusting and ended up relapsing to the point I was developing sleep apnea and TMJ disorder. I also had speech issues, chewing issues, mouth breathing, and other things that were out of the norm.

I believe two things fixed my tongue thrust.

1. Persistence to fix my tongue posture: I didn't go to speech therapy during this process, but I researched tongue thrust correction and used many youtube videos to help learn ways to correct my tongue thrust. It was very annoying, and at first you will start thrusting the second you stop thinking about it. Be persistent. It is a very difficult habit to break. 
2. Jaw surgery: When I had my jaw surgery I had both jaws moved and my chin moved. It was a big surgery to go through with a very tough recovery. I also had cysts removed from my nasal airway. Being able to breathe properly through my nose was a huge factor in correcting my tongue posture as it allowed me to keep my tongue at the top of my mouth while using my nose to breathe. 

I know a lot of people have relapsed after having jaw surgery for an anterior open bite. I had my surgery over two years ago and so far my bite as remained the same as it was post op. I will always try to be aware of my tongue posture and one day I will see a speech therapist to assure I am doing everything I can to avoid a relapse.

This is my bite post op:

Terra

Back To Toronto

It is cold, really really cold. I didn't realize how warm in was in Vancouver until I arrived in this deep freeze hell that is Toronto. I'm back in school and after two days of classes I now have three days off, which I will not complain about at all.

I got back in late although the flight was making good time. The arm that connects the gate to the plane was having issues and we had to wait for that to get figured out. Then my luggage got jammed on the ramp coming into baggage claim. I had to wait an extra 15 minutes before it started moving again and my hard shell luggage had a huge dent in it which I managed to bang out with my fist. I didn't take a lot back with me as I am moving out west and wanted to leave everything I could there. To be honest it's so cold here I would happily wear pjs and sweatpants the rest of the winter.

I hate flying. It's one of my most hated things. Not out of fear. I actually have no fear of the actual flight, I just hate jet lag and I get motion sickness. I usually force myself into a drugged up coma and try to numb the pain with reruns of whatever horrible sitcom they have available on those little screens. I watched Back To The Future and old episodes of Fraiser. That about did it for the flight.

I wanted to do a little jaw update since something weird happened when I got to Vancouver. My first day in I spent revisiting my lunch over the toilet, now a common ritual after flying and then spending 30 minutes in a car on ever changing elevations and winding roads. I pretty much avoided all food and stayed in bed when the nausea would pass. Once I got up I was enjoying a healthy lunch of skittles and my jaw did something really weird. I opened my mouth and got a really sharp pain not in the TMJ but a little in front of it. It was a really awful sharp pain like something cracked. Every time I opened my mouth I would get this sharp pain and cracking noise. I have no idea what it was. I pretty much avoided chewing and tried not to open my mouth and hoped it would go away. I have a history of having jaw issues arise when I am many thousands of kilometres away from my surgeon. I should call my surgeon about the plate and bring this up too. I'm getting pain in all the upper plate now. Not horrible pain, but still uncomfortable. I don't feel any sort of infection, but if I lean forward, or move my face a certain way I will feel an uncomfortable pressure in the plates in that area.

All the plates on my upper jaw are close to the surface and can be felt through the skin. There are three plates in my upper jaw. I had four but one was removed when I had a reoccurring infection in my sinus area. The surgery wasn't for plate removal, but it was removed while my sinus was being cleared of any material that got lodged in there. Jaws are such weird things, and it's crazy all the metal used to hold it all in place after surgery.

Oh I almost forgot. Weird breathing thing. So I had a lot of sleep apnea symptoms prior to jaw surgery. I would sometimes wake up in the night with my throat collapsed, unable to breathe at all. This all pretty much went away after jaw surgery. My fiancé woke me up a few nights ago because I was gasping for air in my sleep after struggling to breathe through my nose. Or so he says. If this is the case then I am really happy I am breathing through my nose in my sleep as I had a very bad tongue thrust. It took years, but I managed to force my tongue posture so often that it somehow stuck. I'll do a separate post on this.


Well I'm off to bed. It's midnight Vancouver time and 3:00 am Toronto time, which seems like as good a time as any to sleep.

Terra