Hi folks. I am a guy from Brazil. 29 years old, VFX designer. Not a ugly guy or one of some those deeply depressed, I have just been obcessed with beauty and anatomy and proportions since I`m about 14 or 15. I have a class II maloclusion, not severe but a have a slightly recessed bottom jaw. Straight teeth since always, never used braces. Discovered the ~Mewing~ stuff last years and adding that to what I had previously researched, here is what a had found out:

-Oral posture (sorry, calling that mewing is just too hilarious) works. For kids and to some extent to teens. But for adults it works so slowly that you probably wont fix your deformity (in case you have one) in a lifetime. It is excelent for kids and for those who already have a great development to maintain it, and will prevent your maxilla to "melt down" and maybe retrude it back a little, but dude, that wont fix anything. Maybe when Mike Mew develop some adult appliance, but oral posture today is just oral posture. good to have a good one.

-Stop pulling and thumb and whatever weird stuff you are trying to do. What makes your jaw grow forward is maintaining your mouth shut with teeth slightly together. Keeping the teeth together work as a guide to your bone remodellation process, and again, that is SLOW.

-Keeping the tongue in the roof of the mouth is who is in charge to widen your palate, but, AGAIN, you probably wont see that shortly. Some short-term benefit to this is the slightly growth in the masseters due to the compensation they have to exert full time against your tongue. Chewing greatly might help on this topic and accelerate the palatal expansion THEORETICALLY. Dont forget that the masseter is a muscle and as any other muscle you have, it needs to rest, so chewing all day will not bring a positive result.

-Zygomatic/cheekbones are attached to the maxilla so as the palate expands the cheekbones expands too. Geometry stuff. There are some cephalometric studies on this you can find in the internet.

-Chubby cheeks are not only because of buccinator. From what I have realized and from what I have seen in maxilomandibular advancements, chubby cheeks often happen because of retruded faces. If a tissue is stretched, it might look thinner. if your bones wont grow, your cheeks will automatically look fatter. Melt down a face plus a hugely retruded mandible and unless you are reeealy lean you will look like you have huge baby cheeks. I honestly do not believe in this buccinator stuff that Mike Mew says, but looking at people eating we can find some conection, though still anedotic to make a statement.

-Genetic has a role in your features! Its not that everyone has a superman chin and sadly was unfairly damaged while a kid, its just that everyone has their features. What is percevable as environmental is the malloclusion itself, the crooked teeth, the meltdown face, etc. Flea, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers bass player, has a full grown face and still ugly as fuck (and cool as fuck, I love him). I have a very non proeminent cheek bone which I think would add so much to my face, but that is who I am. Maybe a palatal expander before my jaw surgery but only if needed (will bring that later). I look exactly like my mom in my eye area. I'm getting back to the gym, and losing some weight might help on this (I had them looking much better before when I was lean).

Mike is a great guy but I should add that he exposes all of this as if you, who look completely "ugly" should have been "handsome" and starting doing that would fix it. To be fair he does not state that, but for those who are depressed and are involved in lookism and so on, that is the message. His statements leads to that unfortunately. Just read the people that comments in his videos. There is a lecture in youtube in which he starts to look at actresses like Angelina Jolie and Keira Knightley and says how probably they rest their tongue based on their appearances. That is not logical at all. Regardless, I'm really thankfull for all the work he develops, just think it could be a bit less intense the way he puts it as uninformed adults watch his videos and start to take pictures everyday from the profile and expect to see changes every week.

So, if you are an adult, what to do?

If you are and adult and have some kind of bone deformity, you can go to surgery. Even Mike Mew says that. If we lived 5000 years I would say to get the correct oral posture and that is it, but we do not. You can check with a doctor if you are suitable to a MMA advancement. In case you dont know Hermann Sailer, just do this favor to yourself and checkout his wonderful work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ng2MsEpMLU

If you have a class II like myself, you can decompensate your teeth using braces (your teeth tend to point lower to the upper ones, so you have to shift that) then get an orthognatic surgery. Depending on the subject, you can try a Herbst appliance instead of surgery. A herbst appliance will force your mandible and grow it forward. My orthodontist said that at my age it is not stable and as I have a healthcare that might cover the surgery, I chose it. If you have a class III maloclusion, you probably can do the same, but with the maxilla instead of the mandible.

Talk to your orthodondist if that is the case and explain your needs. Dont need to argue in case you dont agree with something, just look for another on.

I am going for invisalign to decompensate teeth, bottom jaw surgery and retainers then. Thankfully I dont have to mess with the maxilla - apparently a have a forward grown one. =)

Of course in any ocasion oral posture helps. It cant lead to wrong results. And help the retainers after all the work!

Hope I could help. My point is just to you guys stop believing shits will shift in your face, because it will not. Not in this decade, it will just look like a reward in the future, like someone who eats properly everyday then stays in shape and do not develop diabetes.

Best regards

P.S.: The Orthotropics community on Reddit is a complete joke