Does Mewing Actually Work?

Mewing is a technique devised by Dr. Mike Mew in which a person places their tongue on the roof of their mouth and holds it throughout the day. It’s claimed it can develop facial features, improve breathing, and fix crooked teeth.

Despite the large amount anecdotal evidence there is no research or scientific data to back-up these claims. So, just how useful is mewing? How do you mew properly? and will it save your face or is it just a waste of time?

Well I gave it a try.

My Experience

I started mewing for two reasons.

1. To improve my facial aesthetics.

2. To improve my breathing.

And after 1.5 years of mewing I’ve seen results in both areas…

Facial Aesthetics

Mewing can definitely improve your facial aesthetics, but in my experience it isn’t going to entirely change your face.

This is me, and these pictures of me were taken exactly 1 year and 5 months apart. As you can see mewing absolutely made a difference. It specifically made a difference in my sub-mental region(neck area below the jaw) tightening up the area, fixing my turkey like appearance.

Unfortunately, it didn’t really change any of my bone structure. My cheek bones are still low set, and not very prominent, and my maxilla didn’t really move either. Potentially it helped with my hollow under eyes, but I think that was mostly better sleep. Mewing may of helped with the better sleep though(read breathing section below).

For context, I was 21 years old when I started mewing and it’s widely known the younger you start the bigger the difference mewing can make. If I was younger, there may have been more of a bone structure difference. Although despite me being well past puberty it still made a significant difference.

So, from my experience mewing did improve my facial aesthetics but unfortunately it did not turn me into Henry Cavill. My facial bone structure remained basically the same.

Breathing

Although theres no videos or pictures I can show to prove this my nasal breathing abilities have improved since I started.

I used to breath through my mouth regularly just to maintain a comfortable amount of oxygen in my lungs. Now I pretty much exclusively breath through my nose outside of when I’m exercising.

My sleep has likely improved because of this. Mouth breathing is known to hurt sleep quality, and since I now breath through my nose it’s likely my sleep quality improved. Honestly though, I have no objective metrics to track this as I didn’t use a sleep tracker of any kind when I started.

How to Mew Properly

So now that you know it works you probably want to know how to do it.

Well first you need to understand what mewing really is. Mewing is when you’re tongue is pressed against the roof of your mouth.

To understand it fully though you need to understand that at it’s core mewing is fixing your facial posture. Mewing is the face equivalent of standing up straight, and like standing up straight the benefits are only seen when done consistently. By consistently I don’t mean a couple hours a day, I mean every hour of every day.

For the first couple months of me trying to mew I could not figure out a way to comfortably do it throughout the entire day, which is critical.

Eventually though, I stumbled across one piece of advice that changed everything. The best way to achieve correct mewing posture is to…

Swallow your saliva with your tongue by using your tongue to scoop and push the saliva down your throat. Then with your teeth closed and tongue up against the roof of your mouth say the word “sing”.

Correctly following these steps will seal your tongue to the roof of your mouth until you open your teeth. Meaning you won’t have to worry about using your tongue muscles to continually push your tongue up.

To make sure you mew while you sleep I recommend a head-strap of some kind to keep you mouth closed while you sleep. This is the one I use and I just do the method above before putting it on before I go to sleep each night.

Is Mewing Worth Doing?

In my opinion, obviously. Mewing is completely free and takes basically no additional time out of your day meaning there’s basically no downside. Despite it not being quite life changing the upside is there and substantial.

Let me know if you already mew or will start after this article in the poll above, and as always, I’ll see you next Thursday.