How Many Hours A Day Should You Mew?

If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably read about mewing, so you know that it’s a practice guided by orthotropic dentistry that people use to improve their facial structure (especially the look of their jaw) and their overall health. Now you want to know how long you should be mewing each day, and how much you need to mew to get results.

Ideally, you should mew all day, ie, you should mew for 24 hours a day. Mewing is about improving your tongue posture, and just like with your regular posture, you want to maintain it as much as possible. It will be quite difficult to remember to mew all the time, but the more you mew, the more results you will see.

There are ways to help you remember to mew more, and there are other practices you can add to help you speed up your results. To learn more about how to mew, see here. Otherwise, lets jump in to how many hours you should be mewing.

How Long Should I Be Mewing Each Day?

I say it all the time, and so does Dr. Mew: mewing is not a quick fix. If you want a quicker fix, then you will need to see a dentist who specializes in orthotropic dentistry and possibly consider surgery.

What mewing will do is change the structure of your face, over time. ‘Over time’ is key here, and that has to do with how the bones of the face grow and develop. Believe it or not, the sutures in the skull don’t fuse until you’re about 70, and until these sutures fuse, you can still add bone to your face (source). The practice of mewing pulls from Wolff’s Law, which says that the bones of mammals adapt to the loads under which they’re placed (source). With mewing, you use the force of your tongue to affect and grow the structure of your palate, which has a big impact on your overall facial structure.

If that sounds crazy, think about it. We swallow 600 times a day. And believe it or not, each time you swallow, you place two pounds of force against your palate (source). So your tongue is more powerful than you think.

The thing is, bones are much more susceptible to light, long duration forces than you might think. Even fine blood vessels in the brain can leave little grooves on very tough cortical bone. “It always surprises me just how moveable bone is,” says Mew (source).

Related Post: Mewing While Sleeping: Is It Possible?

So, the idea is that when you are mewing properly, ie, when you are maintaining good tongue posture, you are using your tongue to exert pressure on your upper palate. Overtime, this will cause your entire facial structure to come up and forward. Learn more about where to place your tongue to achieve these results here.

The more frequently you can do this, the faster you will see results. Mewing here and there won’t do much. But building a practice whereby you eventually get to a place where you’re always maintaining proper tongue posture – that’s what’s going to lead to the long term effects you want to see. That’s why you need to try to mew all the time.

The biggest problem you’ll likely run into is remembering to mew. It’s incredibly difficult to change your tongue posture. As soon as you stop thinking about it, your tongue will probably slide back into its usual resting place, at the bottom of your mouth.

So in the beginning, to ensure you are mewing for enough hours every day, you are probably going to need to set yourself some reminders. Maybe you can remember to mew each time you open a door, or check your phone, or go to the bathroom. Think of something that you do regularly throughout the day, and try to attach a self reminder to mew when you do this activity. The more you can do, the better.

And Cam Jones from Goal Guys, who famously saw results in just one month, set a reminder on his phone. Each time the reminder went off, he started mewing. Learn more about his journey here:

Ultimately, you want to get to a place where you are mewing 24 hours a day. But don’t freak out about it. It’s incredibly difficult to permanently change your posture. This is a lifelong practice, and it might take you some time to get there. Do what you can, and the more you consciously mew, the quicker you’ll be mewing all the time, even when you’re not thinking about it.

What’s The Fastest Way To Get Mewing Results?

So, mewing is important and beneficial and it will give you visible results, in time. But if you would like to speed up the process, you should seek out a dentist who specializes in orthotropics. If your dentist understands facial development, they should be able to help you with removeable expanders and other non-invasive interventions. They will also be able to help guide you on your options for surgery, which may be necessary in some cases.

But not everyone has the resources or the desire to go that route. So if you would like to speed up your mewing results, then you want to include jaw strengthening exercises to your practice. And the easiest way to do this is by adding hard chewing to your day. Mewing practitioners (like me) swear by something called Falim gum, which is super tough and sugar free (you can find it on Amazon here). Just be careful with adding in hard chewing. You can hurt your jaw if you do it too hard or too long, especially at first, and you can do damage if you are not also doing mewing to strengthen the muscles of the midface. Remember, the key in mewing and in all things is balance.

You can also try Mew’s technique of ‘tongue chewing,’ which you do with regular gum.

If you really want to amp up your mewing game, try what many people call ‘hard mewing.’ This is basically like hitting the mewing gym.

And be sure to follow Mew’s principles for swallowing, which is another great way to add the right type of muscular activities to your day. Ultimately, you want to eat harder food as much as possible (think carrots, not oatmeal), and chew your food until it absolute mush before swallowing.

Mewing and maintaining proper tongue posture is a practice that will serve you throughout your entire life. Even if you get a ‘quick fix,’ you should still consider working on your tongue posture. And you should always try to breathe through your nose, period, another tenant of mewing.

“You want someone to fix you. I’m not here to fix you. I’m here to help you fix yourself,” says Mew (source).