San Francisco and Marin CA
If you have a tongue tie, it is present from the time of your birth. However, this condition can affect you throughout your life without proper diagnosis and treatment. The team of dentists and oral health professionals at Glen Park Dental possess the training and experience to identify a tongue tie and provide treatment by performing a frenectomy using our precise LightScalpel laser. Today on the blog, we take a look at how a tongue tie impacts the life of an adult.
What happens when you have a tongue tie?
Clinically known as a restricted lingual frenum, a tongue tie occurs when the band of tissue that connects from the bottom of the tongue to the floor of the mouth is shorter than normal. This shorter frenum restricts the range of motion of the tongue. To be clear, this is not an issue that will go away on its own. A tongue tie must be diagnosed, treated and removed by performing a frenectomy – a surgical procedure that releases the restricted frenum and restores full range of motion in the tongue.
How does a tongue tie affect someone?
As mentioned earlier, a tongue tie is present from birth, but as time passes, it can cause more and more problems. Why? The mobility issues with the tongue quickly cause someone to develop negative habits to compensate. The longer someone lives with a tongue tie – even all the way into adulthood – the more harmful these negative habits become.
Symptoms of a tongue tie in adults
By the time someone with a tongue tie has reached adulthood, they have been living with these negative habits for decades.
An adult living with an untreated tongue tie may experience any combination of the following:
- Experiencing near-constant tension in the cervical vertebrae, neck and/or shoulders
- Frequent jaw pain
- Nutritional deficiencies from a lifetime of living with issues chewing and swallowing
- A speech impediment
- Often mumbling or speaking in a low tone of voice
- Digestive issues, including problems swallowing good of a certain texture, constipation and chronic stomach aches
- Frequently breathing through the mouth, both when awake and asleep
- Throat irritation and/or sinus congestion
- Obstructive sleep apnea
Someone living with a tongue tie does not need to experience all of these issues, but the more of them that are present, the more likely it is that they are dealing with a problem with the range of motion in their tongue.
Treating a tongue tie
Not all dentists have the training and experience to identify a tongue tie. For a professional who does possess that expertise, an evaluation can be completed in a matter of minutes. From there, the team at Glen Park Dental can release the tongue tie by performing a frenectomy using our LightScalpel laser. The frenum is released in seconds, and achieved with minimal bleeding, pain or risk of infection.
You may have been living with a tongue tie for your entire life to date, but that does not mean you have to continue to live with it forever. If you are experiencing a combination of the symptoms of a tongue tie in adulthood, schedule a consultation with one of the expert dentists at Glen Park Dental today. Just call (415) 585-1500 or contact us online.
