Janet M. Bennett

How many times each morning do you press the snooze button? Once, twice, five times, or more? Maybe you are one of the many who intentionally set multiple alarms each morning. While setting multiple alarms is not necessarily harmful to your health, the practice may be telling of a real issue in your life - you are not getting enough sleep. 

If you wake up tired, groggy, and feel like you cannot hit snooze enough times to shake the feeling of sleepiness, you may need to make some subtle changes to your lifestyle. When you feel like there is not enough coffee in the world to keep you going through the day, the amount and quality of your sleep are likely the culprits. In this article, we want to provide some tips to get better sleep and feel less tired throughout your day. You might be surprised at how much the final step can improve your sleep and restfulness.

Keeping up with our bodies is a lot like maintaining a vehicle. You have to change the oil, rotate and change the tires, replace the transmission fluid, and take dozens of other maintenance steps. Similarly, we have to maintain ourselves. We have to take medicine when we're sick, visit the doctor for a physical, and keep up with our dental care. When things get out of alignment, you have to make adjustments to correct issues at the source. When it comes to overbite, you want to make sure you are not merely correcting it cosmetically; you need to take steps to help ensure it doesn't happen again. Here is what you need to know about overbite and how it might be related to tongue thrust.

What is an Overite?

Overbite and overbite refer to the same condition where a person's top teeth stick out over the bottom teeth. With an overbite, your teeth never fully close together. This can affect the way you speak, the way you chew, and potentially even the way you breathe. Overbite can often be caused by tongue thrust.

What is Tongue Thrust?

Each time you swallow, your tongue exerts up to six pounds of pressure wherever it pushes during the swallow.. As you swallow, your tongue should press on the roof of your mouth, just behind your upper teeth. "Tongue thrust" occurs when your tongue pushes against the back of your teeth or protrudes between your teeth as you swallow.

How Does Tongue Thrust Cause Overite?

The average person swallows 2000-4000 times each day. If your tongue is resting against your top teeth, you are putting upwards of six pounds of pressure on them every time you swallow. Over time, this can result in pushing the top teeth outward, leading to an overbite.

How to Correct Overite and Tongue Thrust

Braces are likely the best way to treat the overbite itself, but your dentist/orthodontist will be able to answer whether or not that is the right direction to go. If you end up needing braces, they can be costly. It may be quite a financial investment to straighten your teeth with braces. However, when the braces are removed, if you still have tongue thrust, it is powerful enough to cause the overbite to return. So, before the braces come off, you need to correct the tongue thrust.

Our Correct My Tongue Thrust Program walks you through a series of exercises that will help you strengthen your tongue. You will retrain your tongue to fit correctly in your mouth and give yourself the best chance at preventing the return of overbite and overbite. Check out our seven-week program if you're ready to fix your tongue thrust today.

Do you feel like you have a fat tongue? If you're not familiar with the phrase, it refers to the feeling that your tongue is larger than it should be and does not fit properly in your mouth. For those that may not know whether they have a fat tongue, here are a few signs.

Signs You Have a Fat Tongue:

You, as a parent, usually don’t hear the term “tongue thrust” until your child goes to see their dentist or orthodontist. When you hear it, you probably don’t know what it means and of course, you wouldn’t know what to do about it. Hopefully, you are referred to a speech pathologist who can explain what a tongue thrust is all about. Let’s say that your child is a 5-year-old in Kindergarten and you ask your school speech pathologist if she can help him with tongue thrust in children. School officials will not allow school speech therapists to treat a tongue thrust because it is not considered an educational problem. Rarely will a school speech therapist recommend that you take your son to a private speech pathologist.