The Fundamental Flaw in Mewing is Easily Correctable
There is a very simple reason why many 'Mewers' don't make progress and it relates to the 'curve of spee'.
The youtube version
There are probably millions of people out there that have tried Mewing at this point.
It is by far the most mainstream thing that has come out of this whole dental/biomechanics world and it is massive with Gen Z.
There are thousands of videos plastering social networks like Tiktok, Youtube and Instagram like this one below. And they’ve gathered views that are well into the billions.
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This one has 12.3 million views and there are videos that have gone far more viral.
Today i’m going to quickly recap what ‘Mewing’ is but also then quickly get to why it is flawed.
And more importantly to all of you closet Mewers out there… I’m going to tell you how to correct this flaw easily.
Hint Hint… correcting the flaw may include using a Reviv One. lol
So what is Mewing?
Mewing, popularized by orthodontist Dr. Mike Mew, involves maintaining proper tongue posture by keeping the tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth.
You can watch the video above at around the 16:00 mark to have him describe it in full detail.
The core movement is:
1- Suck the tongue to the roof of the mouth such that it creates a sort of vacuum with the roof of the mouth.
2- Swallow while keeping the tongue up, thereby pushing the saliva backwards down the throat.
He makes a big science of how to do this.. but i think that part is all BS.
The technique asserts to improve facial structure, breathing, and overall health through consistent tongue positioning.
And I generally agree with all of these conclusions that he says because it’s essentially the same thing i am saying except i think this stuff even goes much further, ie. i believe these biomechanics are at the root cause of disease, aging and beauty.
Mike and John Mew will never make such a conclusion because mewing will plateau early. And my ‘fast method’ is what breaks through that plateau.
Mewing is part of the ‘Looksmaxxing’ movement
If you look at the videos online you’ll notice that it’s not the TMJ crowd that is doing it. It’s not old folks wanting to look younger.
No, it’s mainly young people doing it for cosmetic reasons.
Mewing has become a cornerstone of the "looksmaxxing" trend among Gen Z, who obsess over facial optimization.
The practice has become so mainstream that even elementary school children know about it - my 10-year-old's class has a special hand signal for it, turning their head and sliding their index finger along their jaw when taking photos.
I even catch my son doing this in the mirror sometimes. And when I do I yell at him “your papa is eventually gonna make swiss cheese out of this Mew guy and his flawed ideas!” hahahaha
It's gotten big because some folks notice that it works
The massive following isn't accidental - some ‘Mewers’ show seemingly impressive before-and-after results.
Although the vast majority of them are simply the person tucking their chin before and then extending it more in the ‘after’ photo. Or perhaps taking photos in different light.
But some of them do look like legitimate change.
And if Mewing were completely ineffective, it wouldn't have gained such widespread adoption. The movement has transcended its origins with Dr. Mew, becoming a cultural phenomenon in its own right.
But it doesn't seem to work for everyone
Results seem to vary quite a bit.
I heard that younger people, particularly teenagers and early twenty-somethings, report better success rates.
Many others see no improvement despite consistent practice like the guy who made this post above on Reddit.
Some even report injuries from aggressive mewing attempts.
Mewing is stretching the same soft tissue i talk about in this blog
It is why me and Mike Mew are saying some of the same things in terms of the effects.
And i’d even say that mewing creates more of a stretch than the Reviv One does while you are doing it. But how long can you continuously mew for?
A lot less than you can just wear a rubber mouthguard. Especially since you cannot mew while you are sleeping.
Also, my ‘fast approach’ that i talked about in the past is probably 10-20x faster than mewing. How do i know this?
Well, i did mewing quite a bit back in 2015-16. And even a bit in the years afterwards. It was at the foundation from which i started from when i learned the ‘fast approach’ i talk about.
How do i know my ‘fast approach’ is faster than Mewing?
Simple. Because my stretches are able to break the skin everyday. Meaning after i do my stretches the skin of my scalp and face break and i have skin flaking off (a bit like dandruff but often bigger chunks). And the skull sort of inflates/widens a bit as a result.
And obviously these mewers are not achieving this otherwise they’d be talking about it in their videos.
Breaking the soft tissue is how you truly remodel your skull and achieve cranial symmetry in my experience.
What’s the difference between what i do and what they do? Well..that secret stays with me for now.
I first want to take things to ‘the end’ and show you what it looks like.
In part to show that it is not any different from what the very best ‘mewers’ are supposedly achieving. I was simply starting from a far lower base because i’d completely rolled up my entire profile back in 2020 when i kept an open posterior bite for almost a year.
But i guarantee you this… when we look at true skeletal change I will have beaten any of the millions that have done mewing. Because true change requires ripping thru skin.
Why are some Mewers getting results and others are not?
So if you’re a keen logician you’d notice that i’m basically saying that Reviv works on everyone whereas clearly a lot of people are saying that mewing doesn’t work for them.
And this comes down to two main things.
1- Expectations: I do not position Reviv for trying to achieve an amazing face/profile even though it is key to doing so. Rather I more position it towards fixing health issues.
This is mainly because I do not want people to think they’re going to completely restructure how their face looks. Because this takes a lot of time and both Reviv One and mewing are going to be relatively slow.
It is going to take you years to stretch this soft tissue and remodel your skull.
2- Mewing only ‘really’ works when you also wear some type of mouthguard.
This mouthguard can be a Myobrace like the Mews sometimes give to their patients. It can be a Reviv One or any other rubber mouthguard. Or it can be a flat plane splint.
If you do not wear one of these appliances to sleep, your progress regresses. And you fall into the ‘hamster wheel’ trap.
And now i’ll explain why.
My experiments with the tracking splint shows how this works
I explained in this earlier post how I used to experiment with what i call a ‘tracking splint’ for years. So i won’t repeat all of that here.. it’s easier for you to just read that article:
But let’s lay out the logic in brief…
I would drill the surface of a flat plane lower splint such that all back 4 upper teeth on either side had even contacts with it (i used occlusal paper)
Mewing and my ‘stretches’ would change the dental contacts on the splint, which i would see by seeing that certain occlusal marks were gone afterwards.
But then if I did not wear any mouthguard at night, within a couple days the contacts would go back to where they were before I did the mewing.
However if I did wear an appliance (i wore the Myobrace A1 at the time) then I would hold my gains. Visible by the fact that the same contacts that were missing after Mewing were still missing.
Or potentially I would even improve upon my gains, which was visible by the fact that I was always drilling on the front of the splint, ie. creating MORE of a curve of spee.
So essentially it was like a hamster wheel. You'd improve when you are mewing, but then regress when you stopped IF you weren’t wearing a rubber mouthguard.
And then you would need to Mew again to get your progress back.
Mewing will ALWAYS work if you wear a rubber mouthguard with it
So this should literally send shockwaves into this whole mewing and looksmaxxing community.
Their results will be MUCH FASTER if they wore a rubber mouthguard to sleep.
Because they will hold their gains and then compound when they mew again the next day.
Also… you will start to see consistency of results. If people stick with the rubber mouthguard literally EVERYONE will see results with mewing.
And so you’ll stop having people complaining that it doesn’t work.
Why this is the case?
The reason why your mewing results regress if you don’t wear a rubber mouthguard (like Reviv One) comes down to the curve of spee that I talk about here:
Basically when you are mewing, you are improving the curve of spee.
Which by definition means that you will start to have a bit of an open posterior bite as your upper jaw lifts up off of the lower one.
If you were using a tracking splint you would see this in the increased curvature of the back of the splint (like the splint on the right side in the pic above).
But then if you sleep without supporting the posterior open bite, the curve of spee flattens as ive talked about before.
This is also why I suspect the most successful mewers are probably also using nighttime appliances like Myobrace and just not knowing that it is foundational to their results.
Closing thoughts
Having observed the Mewing phenomenon for years, I understand both its mechanism and its limitation.
The technique works by stretching soft tissue, but without nighttime support, progress will typically regress.
By adding a simple solution - wearing a rubber mouthguard like Reviv One during sleep - ‘Mewers’ can maintain their progress and consistently improve.
Why does Mike Mew still not know this relatively simple thing after nearly 15+ years of preaching about “mewing”?
And how is Mike Mew so exact about how you need to do Mewing when he misses the obvious flaw that causes you to regress?
Could it be that he is more marketer than substance?
I’ll let you answer that one for yourself ;)
PS If you’re interested I also wrote two other articles related to the Mews:
Someone close to the Mewing community mentioned that kids and teens benefit the most.
And i bet that is because Myobrace is mainly marketed towards kids & teens.
Follow the patterns... and root cause begins to emerge :)
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing this data. I'd like to share with you an interesting (perhaps) corollary with what you share and Chinese medicine meridians, and with Chinese martial arts.
In the Daoist (internal) martial arts systems (perhaps others too?) one is taught to place the tongue exactly as you describe. For several reasons they state: this will help increase saliva production (it is true), and also because it helps connect two meridians within the body. Namely the Du Mai and the Ren Mai. The tongue arch/connection helps with the flow and you're helping to bridge the gap. There is also the Chong mai (the 'Central' channel) in the same region of the mouth. Might be some interesting connections for you there, in reading about those meridians.
Many years ago, as I began my martial arts practice, one of the first really noticeable places to feel Qi flowing was, my tongue. Just interesting. That is commonly reported by others, too. Intense tingling that will begin, lasted several months for me, best I recall.