Associated Health Problems

Health Problems Associated with OMD

Tongue Thrust: When a patient swallows incorrectly, the tongue may press against the back of the teeth or push teeth out of place. For children, the pressure may even prevent teeth from breaking through the gums.

Facial Distortion: Known as malocclusion, patients may develop a misalignment of their upper and lower teeth. And when oral posture is incorrect, patients may also experience the following facial changes:

  • Dull, sluggish appearance (due to weak facial muscles)
  • Parted Lips
  • Facial grimace (the tightening of the cheeks, chin, and lips)
Mouth Breathing in general has been correlated with a number of health problems such as asthma, allergies, respiratory infections and ear infections.

A wonderful adventure for all ages.

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Lisp: When your tongue and lip muscles are abnormally postured, you may develop a lisp or have trouble forming sounds in regular speech.

Sleep Apnea: When orofacial muscles are weak or underdeveloped, they may disrupt regular airflow, causing patients to experience sleep disordered breathing (i.e. snoring or sleep apnea).

Both children and adults can benefit from Myofunctional Therapy.

At Crested Butte Dental, we believe that developing the airway is key to long term effectiveness of orthodontics and may incorporate myofunctional exercises into your orthodontic treatment. We have found that between ages seven and ten years is a great time to start myofunctional therapy and can really augment the success of your orthodontic treatment.

We recommend myofunctional therapy all the time for adults as well. Adults that we treat are normally suffering from poor sleep, headaches, and tiredness. Typically, we like each patient to take a sleep test prior to commencing therapy as a baseline. This way we know that there is not a severe apnea issue that needs to be treated immediately and gives us a baseline for where each patient is at.

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