What are the benefits of Treatment?

There are a number of benefits of treatment that will have a positive impact on you and your family.

Initially, it will be the ability to undertake the primary function of feeding or improved speech function.

However the long-term benefits of the release of Lip and Tongue tie cover a range of jaw and facial formation that impact on breathing, mouth, jaw are outlined below.

Immediately after the procedure, infants are encouraged to be breastfed.

Treatment can help infants gain weight more steadily, and drink more comfortably as well.

However, it is recommended that you also see a lactation consultant.

Without treatment tongue-tie can cause the tongue to stay lower in the mouth than normal, causing the lower jaw to become more ‘V’ shaped than ‘u’ shaped.

This can cause the obvious aesthetic physical change, as well as causing swallowing to become more difficult, teeth to be more crowded, and therefore more likely to be crooked, and also for the upper and lower jaw to become uneven.

In persistent cases of tongue tie, the child may have certain speech problems

In infants, tongue-tie can cause ‘greedy’ eating, where the infant swallows milk excessively fast.

This can, however, be an attempt by the infant to be able to breathe more rapidly.  In slightly older cases, the lower-held tongue makes swallowing harder and mouth breathing more likely, with the latter being bad for the tonsils and lungs.

Low tongue posture is a very common result of being tongue-tied.

This, however, has a range of negative impacts. It can cause the jaw to become more angular, and can also cause mouth-breathing and the jaw to become more cramped.

Tongue-tie can cause innumerable speech related problems as an infant grows older, as the limited movement of the tongue can limit pronunciation.

If the tongue can’t reach the roof of the mouth, letters such as ‘l’ and ‘d’ cannot be properly pronounced, and if the tongue cannot arch on the bottom of the mouth letters like ‘r’ cannot be pronounced. Tongue-tie treatment easily nullifies these issues.

Tongue-tie can also lead to long-term issues such as snoring, noisy sleep and sleep apnoea.

This can cause disrupted sleep for the infant or child with tongue-tie and, in the case of older persons, can also cause disruptive sleep to that of the partner.