Undoing orthodontic work

This is a good account of your terrible tale. Your observation about how orthodontic appliances change tongue posture is particularly acute. I suffered orthodontic treatment as an adult for the same problem. I think the braces on my lower teeth changed my oral posture and because of the time they were on when they were removed I did not revert. I think this probably did quite as much damage as the braces. Also I was advised to retain the change in my teeth by a wire stuck along the back of my lower incisors. The orthodontist advised that I should keep this permanently. I did till it fell out, many years. I think this too changed my oral posture in causing my tongue to retreat back into my mouth.

You have identified a change to your lips. It is undoubtedly a consequence of the change in your teeth. There are currently a couple of threads on the main forum about lip posture leading the change we seek in the teeth. I think you would do well to put some effort into trying to hold your lips as you did formerly even though it will not be natural without the support of the teeth. This combined with proper tongue posture should provide your fastest route to righting things. 

This is slow work but do not heed those who suggest that change  is barely possible after 25 years old. In your case it sounds like your jaw and teeth have already shown a will to return to how they were before the extractions. Good luck.

Thank you for your kind words and the suggestion that I should try to hold my lips as I did before braces. That makes sense.

I too have a permanent (wire) retainer on the back of my lower incisors. It covers the front 6 teeth (lower arch only). I hope this won’t stop me getting any improvements from mewing. If at any point I feel that the retainer is causing problems I will go and get it removed. I have completely stopped using my removable Essix retainer.

I think a similar retainer caused me the trouble I described because my tongue was positioned in my lower jaw. If you are mewing it won’t cause that problem. Still you are wise to keep it under review.

@lizzybennet “Experts” hey, very sorry you went through all that  ☹  

My new dentists, who is otherwise great, tried to talk me into getting invisalign for the slight overcrowding I have and I am very glad I decided against it. Very worried about my son though, and experiencing no small amount of guilt for going ahead with braces. He’s had 4 teeth removed, and the braces have remodelled his teeth significantly, but not a single word from the orthodontist on how this is all meant to stay in place except that he’ll need retainers “for some time”.

I’ve got a thin plastic mouthguard that was made to stop me teeth grinding which like your retainers is going to be a good gauge on whether I’m getting some palate widening. I am rather looking forward to it not fitting and showing that to my dentist  😉 

I measured my intermolar distance using my upper retainer to see what my starting point is. It is 41mm (inside measurement of retainer is 39mm and the plastic is 1mm thick). Last night I caved and put my Essix retainers back in (after 5 days of not using them) because when I tried them they felt tight, and I got scared that it was because my teeth were getting crooked. Of course, there is a possibility that my retainers felt tight because my arches were widening, but I couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to take the chance. I am looking for a way to measure tiny changes in the intermolar distance, so I can mew without putting my retainers in for a week, then measure the intermolar distance to see if it has increased or reduced. If it has reduced I can put my retainer back in immediately before my teeth has had a chance to move too much. If it has increased, I can continue to mew without putting my retainers back in. However, I can’t see a way to measure the kind of miniscule changes that could happen in a week. And I don’t want to leave my retainers out for more than a week at a time in case my arches narrow to the point where the retainers no longer fit. I am stumped.

That is SUPER SCARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Yes…. if you widen, your palate will drop and it needs to be allowed to.  If it is not allowed to widen, it jams up the nasal area.  Met a woman holding a cardboard sign just last night with similar issues.  She had a functional appliance for about a year and it was never shaved down.  See more on this at the bottom of my post about aborting treatment.  Hoping and praying it closes back up nicely.

@lizzybennet The retainers question is a big one isn’t it, and one I’ll be hitting with my son soon when he gets his braces off. I guess the question is whether we can put our faith in the orthotropic premise – that the tongue and the lips will keep the teeth in a balanced position, and so act as a natural retainer. I completely understand not wanting to lose any of what you’ve gained through 3 rounds of braces, it’s a big concern!

But it seems to me that key aspect to making that premise workable is being able to place the tongue comfortably against the palate, so it can just sit there 90% of the time and act as a built in retainer. I certainly can’t do that right now, my palate is too narrow, and my teeth are pretty sharp on the inside, so every second day or so I’m in quite a bit of pain by the end of the day!

You said on my progress thread you’re having similar troubles, though your palate is actually a fairly good width, I wonder if it’s more the depth in your case? Do you have your wisdom teeth still? Tongues are pretty flexible, but they still have to fit into the available space, so it’s width x depth, and even x height as well, that is more vaulting of the palate might be good in some cases if it helps the tongue fit.

So I’m totally spitballing here, but I wonder if mewing with your retainer in could help you get more room by pushing the maxilla up and forward, but without widening your palate and risking your teeth alignment in the process.

Bigger question is whether we have the whole story yet, given most of the experts in orthotropics are working with children, and thus are trying to get in before any other orthodontic work is done, and especially before teeth are removed.

I think the tongue space problem for me is a combination of two factors:

1. Depth is definitely the biggest problem. I don’t have any wisdoms, I have only 24 teeth. Hence, my back to front distance is very short. This means I have to widen and shorten my tongue in order for it not to stick out past my front teeth.

2. My mandible is set to the right of my maxilla (also a problem caused by braces) and the tongue is attached to the mandible. So when I put my tongue up to the roof of my mouth, it lies on the right side of my upper arch. So, the left side of the tongue fits ok inside the arch, but the right side grazes against the right molars.

I think I am veering towards what you said about mewing with the retainer in, hoping to move the maxilla up without moving the teeth themselves (and hence risking moving them in the wrong direction). I would consider it a success if I could even just shift the mandible back to the centre so that it lines up with the maxilla rather than being skewed to the right. 

Having read some accounts of people who stopped using their retainers, relying on their tongue to keep their teeth from crowding in, and ended up with teeth crowding / arch narrowing, I don’t think I would like to take the risk, not for the time being anyway, since I am only just over a year out of braces. 

So, to summarise, I mewed without retainers 04/02-08/02/2019,  and mewed with the retainers thereafter until now. Even in the 4-5 days that I didn’t wear my retainers, my teeth shifted quite a lot. When I put the retainers back in on the 5th day, I got a really bad pressure headache and sore teeth for 3 days. That really worried me. Given that the shift in teeth was not big enough to correctly ascertain which direction my teeth had moved, I could only guess from analysing which parts of the arch hurt the most, and how the retainers had to bend to fit over the teeth. From this, it seemed that my upper arch had widened slightly (of course, we are talking a fraction of a millimetre here) and my lower arch had narrowed! As I said, this is only a guess, so I could be totally wrong. Or maybe this happened because of the way my lower arch and my upper arch do not correctly line up against each other.

Since you are interested to know for your son who will be in a similar situation, I will give updates on this thread as to whether mewing with the retainers achieves anything.

@lizzybennet Thankyou, I would definitely be interested in hearing how you go. 

I’ll also post up the conversation I have with the orthotropist when I take my son post braces – be pretty interesting to hear his opinion on if/how to wean off retainers.

That would be great. I will follow your thread with interest. We can share information as we go.

I seem to have some changes. Since it’s been only 10 days since I started mewing, I am actually a bit perplexed that anything would happen already. But I noticed this change as I was flossing my teeth half an hour ago, and wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me. So I took some photos to make sure.

The change concerns my midline. After braces my lower arch midline was more than a millimetre to the right of my upper arch midline. In the 14 months that my braces had been out, this had not changed. Initially when my braces were taken out at the end of my orthodontic treatment, I noticed the midline mismatch, and I thought maybe over time it would fix itself, but it did not.

Well, now I can see that the midline difference has reduced, and is now less than a millimetre. The top photo was taken mid-January 2019, and the bottom photo was taken mid-February 2019 (today). This change only occurred AFTER I started mewing because I examine my teeth regularly, when I floss, etc. Since it had already been 14 months after getting the braces out when I started mewing, this can’t have been a spontaneous shifting of teeth just from the removal of braces.

Hi Lizzy,

Wonderful how you have approached with such gusto rectifying the unfortunate orthodontic treatment/extractions you got.

I am curious why you have not considered opening up the extraction spaces.    This is what I am attempting to do now, in my fifties, after having been hit with consequences of my own extractions:  jaw pain, tinnitus, neck and back tension, and frustration with tongue space.

I also wonder why your doctor told you you cannot remodel your bone now–when he remodelled it at age 38!     The reason most people with premolar extractions cannot remodel is because they had extractions as children, and their jaw bone stopped growing at that time.  The jaw only grows as far as the teeth are.

In your case, the maxilla was fully grown when you had it, so was not affected.  What is causing the sagging is the missing teeth, not the missing jaw bone.  This is very lucky news for you.

I know it’s been 3 times with braces and that’s enough.   But I wonder if getting back tooth and arch structure–even mini-implants–could help you.  The arch of the teeth can be changed with opening spaces.  In your case (and at your age), I wonder if the palate did not change, but just the teeth arch: it’s easy to confuse the two.   I wonder why your ortho did not give you that suggestion.  Usually they do not offer it because opening spaces is complicated and few are willing to do it.

Again, I am not a doctor, but someone struggling with the same thing (but worse, as the jaw bone did not grow).

@entelechy

Hi, I did consider it (briefly!), but I cannot imagine going through braces again at this age. And even I could force myself to get them again my husband would never let me (no bjs with braces – I just can’t do it for constant fear of cutting him, not to mention, it is hard to feel or look sexy with a mouth full of metal). Marital harmony aside, I don’t think I could do it anyway. It stopped me going out and being social, especially when there was pain, and all the hassle around eating, speaking (weirdly), etc, plus looking awful. It turned me into a hermit and got me quite depressed at times. The fact that my husband hated it (for the reason mentioned above, and the social aspects as well), and b*tched and whined about the restrictions on our conjugal relations made it even worse. If I told him I was getting braces yet again, I actually think he might divorce me (no joke).

As to whether I think my orthodontist was telling the truth about it not being possible to remodel the bone – perhaps it is easy to lose bone but hard to rebuild it? By extracting teeth, the bone that became redundant got resorbed and disappeared. This kind of process happens all the time around our bodies. To build new bone in your 40s, on the other hand, must be quite hard. Maybe that’s what he meant?

Hello, it’s been a while since I was on here. I stopped being active on this site because I couldn’t find a way to reconcile widening my arch with wearing a retainer, the whole point of which is to keep your teeth fixed in position. So I gave up on mewing and decided that I should just be happy that my teeth are straight and that I should endeavour to keep them that way rather than attempting to improve the arch and potentially ending up with crooked teeth on top of the narrow arch!

So, why am I back? Well, one week ago the permanent metal wire retainer (across the front 6 lower teeth) broke right in the middle, i.e., in between my front two incisors. I was travelling at the time so wasn’t in a position to go straight to my orthodontist to get it fixed, and given that it’s been almost two years since I got my final set of braces out and my teeth seemed to have been static for a while, I thought that it would be ok to just leave it broken. Well, how wrong I was! Within, TWO days, the lower front two incisors that were no longer held together by the metal wire moved towards each other, so that one incisor was forced to move in, the other to move out, and now they are overlapping.

What’s worse is that the two teeth have been jammed together with such force that the one that has been forced inwards  looks like it’s actually been cracked by the other tooth jutting into it.

So now I am freaking out. I have no idea how this has happened and what I should do about it. My upper arch seems to be unchanged but the lower arch must be collapsing inward for this to have happened.

I happen to have a Myo Munchee at home, which I bought ages ago and never used. I am wondering if using the Myo Munchee could straighten out the overlapping teeth at all? I would appreciate it anyone who has experience with a Myo Munchee can give any feedback.

Thank you.

Hi Lizzy,

It is worth taking a look at the work of Dr. Bill Hang. His clinic and website are called Face Focused. He has helped a lot of people by reopening extraction spaces. He is a very kind professional and aligned with the teachings of Orthotropics, in favor of expansion and no extractions. The information he provides in his website is very clear and straightforward, so that you can decide yourself the best way to go. There you can find accounts of people who could only solve their problems by reopening those spaces.

It is easy to understand your frustration and why you are reluctant to get another treatment, but I believe that Dr. Hang is someone you can trust on this. You could try to find a doctor in your area who is aligned with his teachings. By the way, being in your 40’s is still very much possible to revert something which is more related to alveolar bone.

Unfortunately, some things can’t be undone by mewing and posture alone. Sometimes a wise decision is to get some help with the right professional. I really wish you the best and wisdom to take the right step!

So, since my permanent retainer broke almost a fortnight ago I have decided not to get it fixed but to leave it as is, and also do away with my Essix retainers so that now my teeth are free of all retainers apart from the lower lateral incisors that still have the remnants of the permanent retainer attached to them. I don’t want to go to my orthodontist to get them completely removed, because if I go, he will want to replace the broken permanent retainer with a new one, and I don’t really want to have to explain to him why I don’t want it replaced because I want to mew, and so on and so forth!

Anyway, now that my teeth are pretty much free of retainers, I will mew to achieve the following objectives:

1. Get rid of the asymmetrical midline: The midlines of the upper and lower central incisors do not line up. They are off by 1.5mm.

2. Get rid of the overjet. My top teeth protrude further than my bottom teeth to a minor degree.

3. Bring forward the lower jaw / chin: As well as the overjet, my chin is also retruded, and sits way behind the upper jaw.

4. Improve occlusion: When I bite down my molars only meet on the right side, not the left.

5. Straighten minor crowding in lower incisors: Lower central incisors overlap slightly (photo two posts up). 

Problems 1., 2., 4. and 5. are interrelated. Because my lower jaw is shifted to the right the midline is off and the molars on the left side don’t meet. And because the lower jaw is shifted to the right, the left side of the lower arch is trapped behind the left side of the upper arch and is therefore prevented from moving forward, hence the overjet. This is also causing the left side of the lower arch to collapse inward, resulting in the crowding of the lower central incisors. If I can somehow shift my lower jaw to the left, all four of these problems could be resolved, at least to some degree.

As for problem 3., I don’t know how to bring the chin forward. Perhaps mewing will help, perhaps not, but I am not prepared to undergo surgery for this, so, if mewing doesn’t improve this issue, then I suppose it is what it is.

What I am doing:

1. Since 28/10/2019 I have been mewing without my Essix retainers. I have been mewing on and off for the past 12-18 months, but while wearing both the permanent and Essix retainers. This is the first time that I am mewing without any retainers. I do a combination of soft mewing (just comfortably resting my tongue on the roof) and slightly harder mewing (applying a bit more active pressure but not ramming it up there as hard as I can or anything).

2. At the same time I am improving my overall body posture and am chin tucking. I try to stand tall and straight with everything aligned all the time. Obviously sometimes I catch myself lapsing, but as soon as I realise this, I fix it. For the chin tucking, I just try to do it as much as possible – when I am sitting at my desk, when I am on my stair climber machine (I do one hour on this machine each day, 6 days a week), etc.

3. I am taping my mouth at night to stop mouth breathing while sleeping; I sleep on my back on a medium to firm latex mattress bed without a pillow. I start off with my chin slightly tucked, but I can’t hold this all night while I am sleeping. I have been recording myself during sleep to see if my snoring has improved, but so far I don’t really detect much change. Maybe the snoring is slightly reduced, but I am still snoring! Not sure how I can snore despite my mouth being taped shut, or how to fix this.

4. I chew a Myo Munchee twice a day for 15 minutes each time, as directed. The Myo Munchee is supposed to help with asymmetries by lining up the top and bottom teeth while you chew on the device.

I am hoping that the combination of the above measures will help me achieve my five objectives. I am not interested in doing anything more drastic than what I have laid out, such as reopening extraction spaces, using palate expanders or getting surgery. I am 44 years old, married, and my teeth and jaw problems are not exactly the end of world in the grand scheme of things. While I was using my retainers over the last two years my upper IMW increased by 1mm, so my current upper IMW is 42mm. I never measured the lower IMW, so I don’t know whether it was wider previously and have narrowed over time, resulting in the sudden crowding of the lower incisors, but currently it stands at 38.5mm which is 3.5mm narrower than the upper IMW. I did some research on the relationship between the upper and lower IMWs, and it seems that the ideal is for the two IMWs to be the same. One study I read showed that out of the sample studied, female adults with normal occlusion on average had a lower IMW that was 1.5mm narrower than the the upper IMW. This would suggest that I would need to increase my lower IMW by at least 2mm to be considered ‘normal’.

My biggest issue, and the one that I want to improve the most, is my retruded lower jaw. When I tongue swallow with my chin tucked, the back of my tongue almost completely blocks my airway, making it very uncomfortable. I really hope mewing and swallowing with my chin tucked will move the lower jaw forward, opening up the airway and also improving chin projection.

I will be documenting any changes on this thread every few months. I hope I see positive changes!

It’s been ten days since I started my new regime, and so far the following have happened:

1. The overjet has disappeared. When I bite down the inside edge of my upper incisors are now in contact with the outside edge of the lower incisors.

2. The occlusion has become more even. When I bite down the molars meet equally on the left side and the right side.

Nothing else has changed (that I want to change). An unintended side effect, however, is that my masseters are growing. The Myo Munchee is surprisingly tough to chew, and in my beginner’s enthusiasm I have been chewing more like 25-30 minutes twice a day rather than the prescribed 10-15 minutes twice a day. I am chewing the Myo Munchee in order to improve symmetry, crowding, jaw strength and occlusion – growing masseters was not one of my objectives! I also didn’t realise my masseters would grow in size so readily. Well, despite the fact that I  have been using the Myo Munchee for only twelve days my masseters are definitely larger, and my jawline is becoming squared quite noticeably from the front. I am a very small female (5’2″, 98lbs) with a small face and head, and quite fine features. These square jaws look ridiculous on me! They make everything else on my face look smaller, and I do not like it. Just in case I was imagining it, I actually palpated the areas of my face where the masseters are, and the areas are now thick and firm whereas before it was just skin on bone (I have a particularly thin face with hollow cheeks). When I press down in a massaging motion I can feel the sore muscles. I have decided to back off and chew only 10-15 minutes twice a day from now on. If the masseters keep on growing I will cut back even more.

Oh, another surprising side effect (this one positive) is that I feel much fitter despite the fact that my exercise and activity level hasn’t changed at all. My posture used to be terrible – hunch back and forward head. Since I have been practicing better posture I feel lighter on my feet when I am walking around. I live on the fourth floor in a block of flats with no lift, so have to walk up and down the stairs to go anywhere or to collect the mail etc. It used to be a real chore, and I’d be huffing and puffing the short flight of stairs coming up, but now it feels as easy as walking on flat ground. I think this is a combination of correct posture and nose breathing. I breathe only through my nose these days even when I am exercising, and also when I am sleeping since I tape my mouth shut. I am really happy that quite significant benefits are coming through so soon.

I am 28 years old and am currently in the process of reversing extraction orthodontics (only my upper first premolars were extracted). It has been 1 year and I have been able to gain 5 mm of space between the canines and premolars, and another 3 mm between the incisors and the canines which is now being closed by moving the canines forward, which will result in 8 mm of space between the canines and the premolars where the implants go. I do not know if the mandible is as flexible as the maxilla, but the earlier comment by odys that it is barely possible after 25 is quite simply false. Space can be reopened, you need a competent orthodontist. 

@mewology

Good for you! This looks like it will be an amazing success. I am much older than you and at this stage of my life doing something like this would just be overkill, so I have decided to just mew and see if I can achieve some minor improvements over time. I applaud you for taking the plunge to make your face right. Looking forward to seeing the final results.

@lizzybennet hello, how are you doing now? anything new? good or bad?

I am lucky to have started reversing my ortho work with only extractions on lower palate. But despite having all my 16 teeth fit together with reduced palate size, I started at low 30s in my imw. My cheekbones have widened a lot but my palate hasn’t widened as much. My Hawley doesn’t fit but it isn’t that much narrower. I think my palate has stretched forward if anything but somehow my face is a lot wider with a narrow palate. 

So you have great progress is you are at 41mm and don’t even have all your teeth. I have all my upper teeth and I sit at maybe low 40s or high 30s. For a guy that is low. Do you have a wide face?