My Adult Tongue Tie

Welcome to my blog on Adult Tongue Tie! I started this website to share my journey with adult tongue tie, from discovery through to the tongue tie release procedure and beyond. I hope to help others find information on this life-changing procedure, and how to “Free Your Tongue, Relax Your World”!

Scroll down to learn more about adult tongue tie, or click on any of the headings across the top to learn more about that topic.

Thank you for stopping by!

What is Adult Tongue Tie?

Welcome to my blog on adult tongue tie! If you weren’t aware of adult tongue tie, or ankyloglossia,  until now, you’re not alone. When I told my brother I was tongued tied, he said, “Is that really ‘a thing’? I thought it was just a figure of speech!”

Frankly, I wasn’t that familiar with it myself! I had no idea that babies and toddlers were routinely having tongue tie releases these days. But now that I’m on the other side of my own tongue tie release, I’m SO glad they are. Having a properly functioning tongue is essential to your physical and emotional well-being. Check out this poster about life-long repercussions of tongue tie.

 

I’ve read so many blogs on other issues where the author provides several pages of background info on what his or her particular health issues were, before describing the benefits of treatment. Not here. NOPE. I’m going to explain to you right up front how an adult tongue tie surgery changed my life. You get to the good stuff right away. So read on! Later, I’ll relate the issues I’ve faced over the years, along with my continual search for answers.

But first, a disclaimer. I am not a health-care professional, a medical expert or anything of the sort! I’m someone who has an interest in good health, both physical and emotional, and who has suffered over the years from various aches and pains that weren’t readily explained by the medical community. So anything you read here is my personal experience, not medical advice or even a recommendation for you or others. Opinions and views expressed on this blog or website have no relation to those of any hospital, medical or health practice or any other institution. Exercises mentioned are geared to me alone and could be unsuitable, even harmful, to others. Please consult a doctor or other health care practitioner regarding your own particular situation.

What Are the Benefits of Tongue Tie Release?

So here we go! The potential benefits of an adult tongue tie release have been staggering for me. As I write, I’m 7 weeks in and still working through all the changes I’ve experienced. But more about that later.

First, what is tongue tie?  It’s a condition (also known as anklyoglossia) where an abnormally thick or short tissue attaches the base of the tip of the tongue to the floor of the mouth, restricting tongue movement. This lingual frenum can be surgically cut or ‘released’ (called a frenectomy) by an oral surgeon, or an ENT. Every tongue tie is different, so it’s important to consult with a qualified health care professional to have an assessment done.

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      So without further delay, here are the immediate results I encountered following my tongue tie release in no particular order (and after about a week of healing):

  • Life-long headaches are gone
  • No more neck pain from my shoulder to the right ear
  • Jaw loose and more relaxed
  • Can now chew on the left side (with better results!) 
  • Have greater quantity of saliva
  • Swallowing takes way less effort and is more effective
  • I am becoming a nose breather now!
  • The muscles and tendons around the upper esophagus are more relaxed
  • My spine stacks easily and it takes much less effort to sustain good posture
  • My head isn’t pronating forward nearly as much
  • If I look straight into a mirror, I can see both ears, almost equally
  • I breathe more from the diaphragm, not from the upper chest
  • My hips feel like they’re moving freely when I walk
  • I can feel circulation in the 3 smallest metatarsals in each foot
  • I have better articulation through the feet
  • There’s less numbness and increased circulation in my left thumb
  • Have not had any voice strain or laryngitis
  • Can allow lips to meet, while teeth stay apart, with little effort, clenching has been significantly reduced (that’s huge!)
  • Sleep is improving! (OMG!)
  • Nervous system is increasingly calm and relaxed
  • Feeling less anxiety, more confidence in my ability to weather life’s storms

Whew! That’s quite a list, isn’t it? How can a small body part like the tongue effect so much, you might well ask. Well, the answer apparently is that the tongue is connected to 31 muscles in the body – and those 31 muscles are connected to many other muscles – you get the picture! Fortunately, the body has a tremendous capacity to compensate for other areas that aren’t doing their jobs, so we can move and function, but it’s not always without discomfort or pain. Here’s what Dr. Malisa Gambacorta, who did my release, has to say about how tongue tie can affect us as adults:

Myofascial lingual restrictions (i.e. muscular and fascial restrictions under the tongue a.k.a. “tongue tie”) in the adult present with several dysfunctional postural patterns and habits that have developed over the course of that adult’s lifetime as their way of compensating for the tightness in the muscle and fascial at the floor of the mouth and their inability to elevate their tongue. In essence, they have compensated to make up for the lack of movement in their tongue. The ways they compensate are by leaning the head forward rolling the shoulders forward and inward, as well as using several other muscles that aren’t supposed to be used for tongue function. 

And unfortunately, since muscles have a tendency to default to the positions they’ve become comfortable with, these compensations can last a lifetime and become more painful as the years go by. 

So, that’s where I am now. It takes a great deal of effort to overcome this ‘muscle memory’. Sometimes, I’m moving in new ways and feeling like, wow, this is how Mother Nature intended it to be, other times, I’m right back to my old postural habits, especially if there’s stress involved. And, there’s this constant rather remote feeling that nothing is holding me up. I feel a little like a scarecrow with nothing inside but straw. This is very common with tongue tie releases, a few of my TT experts have told me. Apparently, when you’re used to a lot of tightness in the tongue and throat area helping hold you erect and then it’s suddenly gone, it can leave you feeling kind of unsteady.

And, I’m exhausted much of the time. My osteopath says that that there’s lots of ‘movement’ in my body right now and that my brain is working hard to sort everything out. So I’m just trying to stay relaxed, keep my tongue where it’s meant to be and do my tongue exercises. More about those later!