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I am a 24 year old male, and have always hated my face/jaw/lack of chin. From reading various sources related to orthotropics I seem to have a quite severe case of facial dystrophy. Reading this blog post, my face seems to be even more recessed than the extreme example given. Both my lower and upper jaw/maxilla seem significantly recessed. My lower jaw seems fairly wide though, which I guess is good?
https://www.aljabri.com/blog/case-analysis-recessed-versus-forward-faces/
I don't have trouble breathing through my nose, and don't think I mouth breathe very much, though I may have done so more as a child. However it's hard for me to put my whole tongue on the roof of my mouth, particularly the back part/root, I think because my palate is too small though I haven't measured it yet. At 24 what hope is there for me? Will mewing exercises alone do anything for me, or do I need an appliance(s) at this point? Would appliances even do anything? I feel like my case is extreme. Is it OK to see a normal orthodontist about this, or should I specifically see one of the people listed in the reddit FAQ here?
Speaking of orthodontists, I had braces/appliances as a child, and now I'm wondering if that is what caused my dystrophy to be so bad? Apparently oftentimes braces will just push the lower and upper jaw further backward to get the teeth to fit? My brother did not have braces, or at least not to nearly the same extent as me, and his face has no dystrophy, or at least no noticeable compared to mine? That's a pretty fucking depressing and angering thought if true. I also used to read as a child lying in bed on my stomach, with weight on my chin at the edge of the bed, reading a book on the floor next to it, which I suspect had a pretty bad effect on my face, though I stopped it years ago now.
I also have TMJ problems on my right side particularly, I have a mouthguard/splint to wear to help that but I'm not sure what effect it has on orthotropics/if I should continue wearing it. This doubles as a retainer for my upper teeth, I had a retainer I was supposed to wear after braces but the TMJ splint does mostly the same thing. What should I do about this? Also as you can see my jaw is significantly unbalanced/tilted to the left, which I suspect is a major reason for the TMJ problem.
Anyways here is a dump of pictures of my face
@the_feodora_tripper I know these kinds of comments might seem tiring, but I just have to say: To me, you don't look as bad as you describe yourself. You are recessed yes, but you still look okay. I am quite inexperienced myself, so I won't be able to adequately answer your questions, as I am sure someone else here will. So in the meanwhile, try to not judge yourself to harshly.
I think it is worth saying that regardless of how much mewing will improve your appearance, it still has health benefits. And I assume that it at least will prevent your case from getting worse as you age. This should be of your concern, what ever way you go about your face. I am the same age as you, and while I am unsure if I will change, I have decided to stick with mewing for those reasons I stated. Hope you do too!
Best of luck
Dude, do not take photos of yourself like this. Being this close to the camera creates distortions of perspective that make it impossible to tell what's going on. They are useless for observational purposes and make you think things are much worse than they are.
Get yourself in a fully lit room with neutral light (ie, not a strong natural light from one side) and get yourself at least 2 feet from the camera. Hold a phone and take a mirror shot if you need to. Mike Mew has a good tutorial called How to Take Extra Oral photographs that should help you get a more useful, and probably more encouraging, set of images.
Here are new pictures, unfortunately I just have an iphone to take them with, this is at as close to arm's length as I can manage. I can't get mirror shots to work. I could try for even better but it would take me a day or two to set it up and find equipment
Taking these does not give me any relief or inspiration though, they make me look worse than the old ones. My face honestly looks terrible, IMO. I guess I could stand to lose some weight, but beyond that I don't really see any sign for hope
In other news, I checked the measurement from this thread
And for me it's like 52mm or so
I understand your feelings. My own mandible is actually much smaller/recessed than yours is. I encourage you to have a look at the before and after photos of Progress in his "progress of Progress" thread. He's about your age, and it's a real testament to what's acheivable with dedication and hard work.
While working on skeletal changes, there's a LOT you can do with myofunctional therapy and face exercises to change the way you look. You can build volume over the cheekbones, reduce volume under the chin, shorten the philtrum, fill out the upper lip, and tone the jaw. Your cheeks and lip shape suggest to me that you'd benefit a lot from myofunctional exercises--tone looks a little low, so likely "waking up" this area would make a big difference.
You can see a professional myofunctional therapist online, or if that's financially out of reach you can self-guide with exercises found on the internet. There are roughly a million folks on youtube with face exercises. Personally I would avoid the douchey bodybuilder guys, because it's no fun receiving advice from someone who's already perfect. I like an older Australian lady named Peta--I think her channel is called Facercise, or maybe facerobics, and her stuff really works.
Yooo! I got the same type of dark circles around my eyes too.
It is gonna take time broo but we all area together in this journey!
Good luck!
Reading your post, I was expecting to see a severe case of chin recession. Then I looked at your pictures, and changed my mind.
Yes, from the side profile, you do have a recessed chin, it's not extreme, but it's definitely visible.
However, your front profile isn't that bad actually. You got lucky in this respect for 2 reasons:
Biggest flaw in your front profile is the long midface, which can be improved my mewing.
I am not 100% certain, but I believe mewing has made my midface a tiny bit shorter, which is what I needed
Reading your post, I was expecting to see a severe case of chin recession. Then I looked at your pictures, and changed my mind.
I'm glad you're seeing this, Brody. We are all much harder on ourselves--totally irrational levels of judgement that we might be deformed, when we can easily see in others what looks perfectly normal.
Reading your post, I was expecting to see a severe case of chin recession. Then I looked at your pictures, and changed my mind.
Yes, from the side profile, you do have a recessed chin, it's not extreme, but it's definitely visible.
However, your front profile isn't that bad actually. You got lucky in this respect for 2 reasons:
- good chin length. Short chins on a man are unattractive and unmasculine, yours is not short
- Wide-enough jaw. Another positive and masculine trait. If you were to have a recessed chin and a narrow jaw, that would have really sucked (google 'st blackops2cel' for such an example)
Biggest flaw in your front profile is the long midface, which can be improved my mewing.
I am not 100% certain, but I believe mewing has made my midface a tiny bit shorter, which is what I needed
Thanks to you and others for reassuring me. How likely is significant improvement of the midface/maxilla through mewing alone at my age? Like I said my MIL is about 50mm, maybe slightly more, and my IMW is about 37-38mm, so not that narrow, but could be more. If I work on expanding the IMW through mewing, does that produce forwards/upwards movement of the maxilla by itself? What is the ideal target IMW, like 45mm or so? Are there any appliances which push the maxilla forwards/up directly or just intermolar expanders?
There are are appliances that move the maxilla forward, like the AGGA or DNA. Accessing them is really a matter of if there are practioners in the area, and if if you have the money. My uderstanding is something in the range of 7,000-12,000 USD, which can be really worth it for people who have serious health problems related the CFD like migraines, TMJ pain, or disordered sleep.
As for likelihood, I don't think that anyone can give actual odds on if you will see significant experience. All we really know is, it has been done. And from what we hear on this forum it takes a very dedicated, multipronged approach--oral posture, body posture, sleep habits, diet, supplements, hard chewing...the most successful folks make these things a part of their everyday life.
