How Long Does Mewing Take?


how long does mewing take

Mewing requires extreme dedication for long periods to get results. Remember, bodybuilders take years to change their bodies, and you can’t expect bones to change overnight. But people are impatient and naturally, everyone wants an exact time frame. We will try our best to estimate exactly that in this article.

For bone changes, mewing can take anywhere from a few months to a few years, depending on your age. However, a transition to nose-breathing and improvement in the submental region can happen in a few months.

In this article, I will assume close to normal craniofacial development. Things such as a narrow palate, recessed face, improper bite, or other problems can severely slow down your mewing results.

Hyoid Improvements

The submental area under your jaw is the first thing to change with mewing. This is merely a postural change, meaning that you can see what this looks like right now by just mewing properly. With proper mewing technique, the hyoid muscles get activated and this pushes the tissues under your jaw upwards into your face, defining your jawline.

It starts to look even better and the soft tissues start to change the longer you hold this posture. It becomes something you don’t have to think about the longer you do it. The muscular tension in the tongue and hyoid muscles increases and you begin walking around like this permanently.

Here are some examples:

mewing before and after

Hyoid improvements from mewing can take just a few months.

Nose Breathing

This benefit of mewing is extremely underrated. You breathe 17,000 times per day, which is around 6 million times per year. So you have to make sure you’re doing it correctly. Humans are meant to breathe through our nose. It’s harder, yes, because the nose provides 50% more resistance to airflow than the mouth. But the result is that your breathing pattern becomes deep and slow. This has a profound impact on your stress levels. Mouthbreathing is meant for intense stressful situations, like running from a lion. Stress is a risk factor for almost every disease and impairs the optimal functioning of your body.

Furthermore, the nose acts as a filtration and humidification system. The mucus and fine hairs in your nose help trap debris and particles as small as 0.5 microns (Schwab et al, 1998). This becomes exceedingly important in today’s polluted world where everyone suffers from allergies.

When mewing, the transition to nose breathing takes a few weeks. Start incorporating nose breathing into your cardio. You’re going to have to slow down, but over time your body will adjust to utilizing oxygen better from nose breathing.

“Nose breathing imposes approximately 50 percent more resistance to the air stream, as compared to mouth breathing. This results in 10 to 20 percent more oxygen uptake.”
~Ruth, Allen (Irish Health Repository)

Bone Changes

The changes in the bone structure, on the other hand, can take a long time. The exact amount of time depends largely on age. Kids’ bone are still highly malleable. They are essentially made of jello as far as orthodontists are concerned, which is why devices and palate expanders can work. Kids’ palates can be expanded as fast as 0.5 mm. every day with traditional palate expanders (Bacetti et al, 2001).

In adults, treatment takes longer and the expansion comes from moving teeth around, and less from actually growing new bone. This is because the midpalatal suture closes after puberty, which is responsible for new bone growth in children. But this suture doesn’t fully close until as late as 32 in some people.

Significantly altering your bone facial structure is no longer possible after you’re done growing. There is a huge difference between guiding growth as a kid and trying to get bones to remodel by pushing on them as an adult. As an adult, you stop laying down new bone, and if anything, you end up losing bone.

Bone changes in adults are still possible, but takes years, if not decades. And, we’re talking about micrometers of bone change here. That being said, you should still mew no matter what. It has numerous health benefits and will stop you from getting uglier.

Children

This is who stands to benefit the most from mewing. Most of Dr. Mew’s patients are children because they can achieve the best results without surgery. Here are some examples of changes that occurred in children with solely just posture work:

Mewing Device

In children, bone changes from mewing can take just a few months.

Teens

Teens are in a great spot for mewing. True, mewing is more effective in children, but teens are still developing. Using mewing to guide growth is perfect at this stage. Even after puberty when growth slows down, the bones still remain somewhat malleable.

mewing young
16 year old
mewing asian
20 year old

For teens, bone changes from mewing should be obvious in one year. 

20-25 Year-Olds

By this stage, bone growth has slowed down and you are essentially an adult. However, people still clearly get results. Take a look at some examples:

mewing 20s
22 year old
mewing results
22 year old

For 20-25-year-olds, bone changes from mewing should be obvious from anywhere from 1 to 2 years.

25-30 Year-Olds

This is where it gets harder. In ancient times, your life was essentially done at 25. The sutures are closed and the bone remodeling rate is at an all-time low. However, you still have malleability. Bones still remodel. Remember that bones exist as living structures inside of our bodies. They have cells, nerves, blood supply, pain receptors, etc. You simply can’t think of bones as they exist outside the body (rock hard fossils).

mewing results adult
28 year old
mewing 29 yrs old
29 year old

Even still, at this stage, changes are still possible.

Getting good bone changes from mewing for 25-30 year-olds will take 1-3 years.

30 Year-Olds+

This is unknown territory for the field of mewing, as it’s just too young. At this point, there are not enough progress pictures for people that started this late. However, I suspect that this is simply because most people believe it to be impossible. But ultimately, if mewing works for 18 year-olds when growth is already done, it should work for any age.

You can expect that getting good bone changes from mewing after 30 can take several years. 

Just remember that your face is changing whether you like it or not. See the aging skeleton (Eduardo et al, 2017):

Some change will happen regardless. That’s not even up for debate. But it’s on you to decide the direction of that change.

For more info about mewing and how to do it properly, see our Ultimate Mewing Guide.

For sources and more information about the progress pictures in this article, see the Mewing Before/After Photos.

If you want mewing to go faster and not take years, make sure you avoid these key mistakes.

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