hey it's dr amanda with straight smile solutions straightsmilesolutions.com i know you haven't
seen me in person in a while that's because i actually had my tongue surgery last week and
i've been preparing for it there's been a lot going on and i'm still really recovering from
my tummy surgery even just talking to you right now is kind of weird and awkward and
a little uncomfortable um i'll tell you a little bit more about where i am with that i'm one week
post-op but i'm six months into the whole um tongue released process so you definitely
should watch my other videos on the progress i had with my story with why i got the tongue release
what it's been like what the exercises to prepare been like how much it's cost so far um to watch
those videos you can go to my youtube channel put in or go to your youtube channel put in straight
smile solutions that'll take you to my youtube channel within there if you scroll down you're
going to see one playlist called um it'll say like omt myofunctional phase one had habits i
don't know i kind of lumped it all together and you can kind of flip through and see the videos
i had about the tongue release what it's like to get one as an adult and kind of how i'm feeling as
i go along my journey so i kind of fell into this like it wasn't something i had ever known i needed
or planned to do i just was doing some research as to how an oral myofunctional therapist can help
your orthodontic cases because certainly that was something i was always getting stuck on as i get
a patient that clearly had a tongue thrust was an adult um do you maybe want to have a fixed habit
of appliance wanted to hurry up and get into ortho and i'm like whoa we got to retrain your tongue or
we can't do your ortho and this happens like often often you know like quite a few patients and i
think it gets overlooked more than you guys know um if you do not do this the patient will relapse
and you know until you've had one i've had many that have happened where maybe i didn't realize
it now i've gotten a lot better about diagnosing and screening for habits especially tongue thrusts
airway issues tongue ties things like that that can affect the orthodontic progress so anyways i
mean really i probably should have this release done as a baby but this was not done in the 70s
so it's a relatively new thing now so for those of you who are watching this who might be consumers
or parents who are thinking about it i mean i think sometimes there's a little aggressive with
why people are doing it it makes me very nervous to get surgeries on a baby but as an adult who
has a severe tongue tie i can kind of tell you some of the symptoms i've been experiencing
for a lifetime and they've a lot of them have already gone away since i've had the release so
it's pretty fascinating price point also to get the release as an adult we're already up to five
figures so we're up to ten thousand dollars total i mean it is not cheap and i did not get
any discounts for being an influencer i think just because the local doctors who did it and
other people they didn't really know maybe the power that i have and i wasn't looking to get a
discount you know that wasn't it but i i really didn't realize how expensive it was going to be
um up to this point and very time consuming like i i don't i definitely feel like they've
they're getting what they what i paid for like i'm getting my money's worth but
it's very time consuming not only going to various appointments both virtual and in person but also
the exercises i have to do on my end i mean i'm a busy person and i'm not saying it any busier than
the rest of you but it's been it's been hard you know three times a day okay set aside 10 to 15
minutes to do your exercises so i just have to basically build it into my schedule um some of
the exercises i can do while i'm in the car and stuff like that or i'm in the shower other ones
i have to have certain tools and wash my hands and do this and that but um i i get scolded a lot but
my own teeth for not doing them right or maybe not doing correctly and you know i'm probably
no different than any other patient that needs to be compliant but i mean they're hard for me they
really are and even just talking right now i'm like still super sore after my surgery but yeah
let me tell you what the surgeon was like and kind of post off what i'm feeling one week i had it
well eight days ago today's friday i had it last thursday night last thursday afternoon but um yeah
the surgery was pretty brutal i had no idea um i went to a local periodontist who specializes
in tongue surgeries um tongue releases i mean she took it like super seriously i couldn't even get
the surgery scheduled till i could prove to her that my exercises were complete and that i could
do hold certain exercises for a certain period of time and then by time i even got approved it
took another month to get the surgery scheduled so now we pushed it all the way into june 2022.
um i kind of had this feeling was just going to be a quick little snip and a suture oh no no it
took like almost an hour um and it was so hard because there it didn't hurt during the procedure
i mean she did an awesome job numbing it up and but you have to hold your tongue in certain ways
like they can't hold your tongue for you right so you have to do like this this is called deep caves
and you can see how i can hold that you have to be able to hold that suction holding your
tongue back for a matter of minutes while she does dirt and things but i could do that but
it was so much harder when i was numb to do that i really couldn't do that when i was dumb
so it's a balance you know of not being able to hold and she was definitely having a she
was sweating she was having a hard time the recovery was freaking rough like literally i
think she used a very short acting anesthetic so like literally time i stepped out of the building
whoa and they don't give you any you they don't really want you using motrin
you know because of bleeding and stuff because the tongue is very vascular but then again the tylenol
was not cutting it so um yeah i mean eating bleeding i lost a ton of weight that's great
um but eating drinking just being was rough that was it was probably the one the worst surgeries
i've ever had from being an outpatient surgery it was not fun so i definitely i recommend that if
you get this done that you take several days off from work you can't even talk like you can that
weekend without three or four days afterwards don't even they want you talking but you're
going to talk so funny as you can see i'm doing that i mean you need to keep that in mind with
whatever you're doing that weekend you're not going to want to be out and about definitely
not going to be going to parties or anything like that so it would have been the perfect thing to
do and do during like major cobin because you have to really isolate yourself but anyways i'm
on day eight still very sore still doing today i have like literally hang out show you my list
so my omt has given me like a whole post-op instruction i won't show it to you guys because
it's her proprietary information but i have um exercises i had to do for day one through
three exercises day four through seven exercises day eight through fourteen which is now where i
am now i have to do it three times a day and it probably takes me about 15 minutes and i can't do
them in the car while i'm working they're actually like require hands and mirrors and stuff like that
um so it's definitely almost an hour a day i would say between and twice a day for the last week and
then another week i have to send my omt certain type of photos through her portal so she can see
exactly how i'm holding the exercises so um it's very time consuming anyways after that i have
to start going back to my cervical chiropractor so this is all included well it's all different
components but it's all required because the fascia that connects your tongue to the floor
of your mouth um your jaw bones and your neck is all interrelated with your cervical c-spine you
know c one through six and definitely one of the main reasons i wanted to do this procedure is that
every morning i would wake up with severe jaw pain you know like from here to here mostly left
side but both sides radiating into the ear neck stiffness just pain pain pain every morning and
it's so funny because i always thought it was just my tmj's i thought it was you know it's clenching
so i was getting night guards i was getting um masses for botox every six months or so like a lot
and you know price point on masseter botox for the quantity you have to get i mean it was like
at least a thousand dollars a couple times a year so for years and years and years so i've probably
spent 20 grand on just mastered about just pain relief master botox for the last decade
um i was like you know if i can cut that out you know how much money this is going to save me
not to mention just being pain-free i don't love the idea of injecting you know toxins into my face
on a regular basis i mean yeah fine for wrinkles and stuff but the amount you have to get for the
masseters is like four times more than you have to get just for the regular wrinkles it's very
expensive so last time i had the master botox series was last year i mean we're well over
maybe eight or nine months i'll have to check but it's been a long time and normally i'm in a lot of
pain by now i haven't had any pain none zero face jaw joints nothing like that i don't wake up with
headaches migraines i mean years and years and years of headaches gone i mean so far um pretty
excited the other thing i definitely noticed that's different um is range of motion of the
tongue just little things like i mean obviously i'm very aware because i've been doing exercises
but you know like when you're eating something and there's a piece of something that's stuck in your
i don't know labial your cheeks down here here certain areas i definitely couldn't get with my
tongue i mean ever since i knew so i always know i have to rinse out or whatever you have to go
pick it out now my tongue has so much motion i can do this could have been so useful in college
no okay sorry that was terrible but wow you know so much range of motion that i never knew i had
of my tongue it's so it's such a useful organ right so all right we're getting bad it's friday
um next topic but yeah that's definitely different the pain level is definitely different other thing
i noticed is like i used to always have stiff neck you know especially in the morning i'd be like
cracking my neck doing this and that um just had to you know just felt stiff i don't i can't even
crack it anywhere there's no no more stiff neck yeah there's not even any pops or anything which
is so weird like a lifetime of just getting up in the morning first thing you do is crack your neck
because it feels weird it feels stiff gone like there's nothing to crack if i go like this it
doesn't even make a noise that's so weird that has to definitely have to do with that you know so i'm
excited to get back to my cervical chiropractor to finish the whole process which is basically
once you've had the release of everything in your tongue everything is resetting right in
your neck bones the reason why it's important to do that is because your neck bones and i'm saying
this probably wrong if things are malaligned and i know i sound like a hippy dippy and i
never ever believed in this stuff i had family members who went to cairo's who swore by it when
i started going to the cairo and doing this whole process i can tell you flat out sleeping better
feeling more awake during the day needing a lot less caffeine during the day like literally the
amount of caffeine i've had has been cut out you know um a lot of weird things also just like
i've always been someone that's always been very very hungry you know and like snacking and like
always feeling hungry especially for sugars and things like that weirdest thing happens is that
i'm not as hungry anymore and i don't know whether it's just sleeping better cortisol loves being
the better like not needing feeling they need to snack i have literally melted weight off i mean if
you haven't you can't notice if you see me and i'm not like bragging myself or anything like that but
you you hear about these quick fixes you know where things happen and you know women are getting
older and it's so easy to put weight on and hey i'm definitely one of those i was like a size zero
in high school in college definitely wasn't one if you see me in the last few years um it just slowly
builds up bills up but it is like first time in my life then i can tell you i'm super healthy blood
work done everything it's melting off um so i feel good i look good energy levels are good
um way less pain i mean to me this is like almost like a miracle and i don't want to say it's gonna
be like a fixer for you but as a dentist you really should be aware of how all this
is interconnected and how much you can you know when you when you're screening your patients and
they're saying i've got pain here and this here and that here and you know i don't sleep that well
put the dots together because it could totally just be their tongue their airway but you can't
just do the clip it's a whole process with the cervical chiropractor it's a special specialized
chiropractor with an oral myofunctional therapist again and with the actual periodontist who does
the surgery and this shouldn't just be someone that does a snip they should really really
understand the process and if you i would get the way i got my periodontist even though i'm
a dentist and we know plenty peridot is i got mine from my omt my old my functional therapist
knew who was recommended for this procedure so first i went to the omt and then the omt
assigned me the right chiropractor and the right um periodontist that's who started the process and
she was like spot on with who she picked they totally knew what they were talking about they
they understood the process they understood how it was all interconnected so anyways i'm super sore
now from doing all this talking for 12 minutes um like my tongue feels like it's gonna fall out
of my mouth because it's still very sore so i'm going to end this video but i hopefully i inspire
you i will do another post-op video maybe in a month or two so you can see how i'm doing but
you can see how i'm doing lots of range of motion didn't have that before alright thanks so much