We all want better sleep; between work, school, our personal fitness, hobbies, dating lives, and everything else that’s going on we can be exhausted at the end of the day. Unfortunately for many of us our sleep quality doesn’t allow the full recovery we need. Myofunctional therapy is a clinically proven way to improve overall sleep quality through a program of specific exercises that strengthen the facial muscles and tongue through targeted muscle activation.
I wanted to give the inside scoop on 10 major sleeptime benefits that you will see with
myofunctional therapy. My hope is to give the best information available so that you and your family members can experience the life changing benefits that only myofunctional therapy can bring. If any of the symptoms below are bothering someone in your family contact me today for more information.
#1 Reduce Snoring
Snoring can affect not just our own sleep negatively but if it is bad enough we can even keep our loved ones up. By exercising the oropharyngeal muscles of the face and tongue, myofunctional therapy will improve tongue posture and reduce airway blockages. This habit-forming muscle activation will retrain the face and throat to promote proper tongue posture and noticeably reduce snoring through therapy.
#2 Less Brain Fog (Grogginess)
Brain fog can be devastating, it reduces our ability to focus and perform on crucial parts of life such as work or school. Individuals with sleep disordered breathing can stop breathing for 10-30 seconds at a time, which can happen dozens of times a night. Scary right! If left untreated and turns into full blown sleep apnea these “events” can happen hundreds of times and in severe cases 400+ events in a single night. Because of this individuals can go years without ever reaching a deep level of sleep. Imagine going through life and not being rested for 10, 14, 25 years at a time! Well there are millions of Americans in that group, and that is just the kind of person MyoMatters can help.
#3 Increased Oxygenation
At its simplest level, getting under-oxygenated is no fun. It causes restless sleep and results in carbon dioxide buildup. In the morning under-oxygenation will result in headaches, fatigue, and tiredness. My training the tongue proper posture myofunctional therapy will simply allow you to breathe better and promote proper oxygenation for your body’s blood and organs while simultaneously enhancing nitric oxide production through deeper breathing and regulate carbon dioxide in the bloodstream.
#4 Reduce Sleep Apnea Symptoms
So, I’ve got some good news and some bad news, bad news first. Obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) is a sleep disordered breathing condition that affects roughly 4% of Americans, and 7% of men. That is 18-20 MILLION people, YIKES! The scariest part is that up to 80% of cases go undiagnosed. Ok, so, the good news. Myofunctional Therapy will help! In studies from Portugal to California, Singapore to Argentina patients who have undergone myofunctional therapy have seen up to a 50% reduction in apnea related symptoms for adults and up to 67% in children!
#5 Reduce Dark Eye Circles
In 2018 and 2019 American spent $13.9 Million on anti-fatigue cosmetics! If only they had known that all they needed to do was nasal breathe. All that under-oxygenation from sleep disordered breathing can affect our skin and overall appearance.
One of the spots that is most affected is under and around our eyes. As myofunctional therapy works to reduce the effects of sleep disorder breathing, many clients will see a reduction in undereye dark circles and will look overall less fatigued. You might even be surprised who will notice!
#6 Promote Muscle Health
One of the most important ways that myofunctional therapy helps people sleep better through the habit forming techniques that will allow your body to course-correct months, years or even decades of non-optimized breathing. By retraining your muscles to rest and function naturally those pesky morning headaches, and neck pains will be reduced, well, unless you fall asleep on your sofa binge watching your favorite streaming service.
#7 No More Dry lips
You don’t go anywhere without your Chapstick and still those cracking, irritating dry lips
are there every morning. It's not a fair fight if you can’t breathe through your nose at night. Mouth breathing dries out our lips and since we spend 8-9 hours a day sleeping this can counteract all the positives we do for lip health during the day. Also, fun fact: the more we lick our lips the drier they get. Teaching proper tongue posture will help the lip licking obsession.
#8 Reduce Heartburn
Having your tongue in an unnatural position can double as a vacuum for the hydrochloric acid in our stomachs. This can be devastating and lead to many issues such as gout, reduction in the lining of the esophagus and an inability to eat many of our favorite foods. Luckily by training the tongue where to rest in the palate this can be alleviated reducing heartburn, additionally the nasal breathing that myofunctional therapy will assist with also reduces the effects and severity of heartburn.
#9 More Energy
Every child hears from their mother to get a “good night's rest” on school nights, so it should come as no surprise that improving our sleep will give us many, many health benefits. After all, mom knows best right? In this case, she definitely does. Improving sleep quality through myofunctional therapy at MyoMatters helps patients achieve deeper more restful sleep by opening the airway and keeping our minds from going into fight or flight mode in the middle of the night. Many myofunctional therapy patients even report more vivid and memorable dreams for the first time in years, proof of restful, deep REM sleep and an overall improvement in sleep quality.
#10 Better Quality Sleep
For some of us it can be years between one “good night's sleep” and the next. Improving our sleep can be the most transformative and healing thing we do in our adult lives to regain
our health. While the therapy and exercises that orofacial-myofunctional therapy utilizes can benefit a patient in many ways, the improvement in overall sleep quality for clients is HUGE!!! It’s just one of the ways MyoMatters will comprehensively customize a package to help you and your loved ones get that full night’s rest that you deserve.
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