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Mewing results: what actually changes, what does not, and how to measure it

Last updated: September 2026

Mewing is keeping the whole tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth, lips closed, teeth lightly together, as a habit. The claim is that the pressure moves the maxilla forward and up over time, which would widen the palate, lift the cheekbones, sharpen the jaw and improve the eye area. Here is what the evidence supports, what the photos are showing, and how to measure your own face before and after so you know rather than believe.

What the evidence supports

• In children, tongue posture and nasal breathing affect how the palate and midface grow. This is established in orthodontics and it is why mouth breathing in childhood is treated. The window closes as the facial sutures fuse in the late teens.
• In adults, there is no controlled study showing that tongue posture moves the maxilla. Adult bone remodels under sustained orthodontic force measured in hundreds of grams over years; the tongue at rest does not supply that. The before and after photos that circulate are not measured and are mostly the items in the next section.
• Posture and soft tissue do respond. Holding the tongue up tends to close the mouth, straighten the neck and pull the head back, and a closed, forward posture changes how the jaw and chin read within days.

What the before and after photos are actually showing

The last row matters. Most mewing transformations are teenagers photographed two to four years apart. The face grows through the late teens whether or not the tongue is on the palate. A 16 year old who mews for three years and a 16 year old who does not will both look more adult at 19.

Is it worth doing at all?

As a posture habit, yes: nasal breathing, lips closed, tongue up and head back is good posture, costs nothing and reads better in photos. As a bone-changing protocol, no: there is nothing to wait for, and the risk is spending a year on it instead of on the things that measurably change a face. If you are under 18 and you breathe through your mouth, see an orthodontist; that is the one case where the underlying idea has real treatment behind it.

How to measure instead of guessing

1. Take a baseline photo today: front-facing, camera at eye level, arm's length, even light, neutral face, hair off the forehead. Note where you stood and where the light came from.
2. Run it through the jawline test (jaw angle and width), the facial thirds test (midface and lower third), and the facial fifths test (cheek width against the eyes). Save the result images.
3. Retake the same photo in three months with the same setup and run the same tests. Bone change would show as a change in jaw width, midface length or cheek width that survives the same camera position. Posture change shows only in the photo, not in the ratios.
4. If the ratios have not moved, you have your answer, and you have three months of a good posture habit, which is the part that was ever going to work.

What changes an adult face

Body fat, which changes definition everywhere; the masseter, which chewing grows; skin, which a routine and sun protection change over months; hair and brows, which a barber changes in an afternoon; and posture. Bone changes with orthodontics, surgery and age. The jawline guide ranks those by what shows, and the looksmax guide puts them in order for the whole face.

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