Long time mouth breather, first time poster to ELI5.
I’m in my late 30s, and I realise l’ve been chewing and swallowing food wrong my whole life, and am bugging the heck out of my loved ones with questions… but I still need answers, so please take a moment to help me out.
When you chew food, do you use both sides of your mouth equally?
Do you swallow an entire mouthful’s worth of food in one go? Or does it slide down your throat bit by bit as you are chewing?
Where does your tongue go while you’re chewing?
Do you chew up and down or kind of grindy side to side?
I know I sound like an alien or an Al but I’m just an undiagnosed tongue tie kid with a weirdly high palate whose tongue has been hanging about the bottom of my mouth like a slug for the last few decades.
In: Biology
You’re gonna have to elaborate on how exactly you’ve been chewing for us to understand what you need to correct
I have a habit of eating mostly on one side, but I try to switch it up a bit. Sometimes I’m alternating sides during chewing a mouthful.
Consciously, I swallow to do it in one go. But without me doing anything, food seems to just go down the throat bit by bit during chewing.
I’m not really sure where the tongue goes. It’s kind of constantly moving, pushing food towards one side, pushing it toward the other side. Etc.
Chewing motion is up and down AND side to side. It’s kind of like rolling your jaw in a circle. Biting helps with crunching and breaking the food, and grinding helps with breaking it down. So it’s a mix of both.
I agree with the other commenter, we need a description of your chewing before we can offer any real advice?
I guess here’s my explanation?
1. No, I tend to favor one side but will switch for maximum flavor
2. Usually one go if the bite is small enough
3. usually adjusting the food as it is being… processed. getting it out of weird mouth dips.
4. it’s supposed to be both, thats what our teeth are designed to do.
dude that’s wild but don’t worry everyone chews differently . usually you wanna use both sides kinda equally. I think you swallow when it feels like mushy enough. tongue chill on the roof kinda but it moves around. it’s like grinding and squishing all at once. so just keep practicing man. we all learn at our own pace right
I realised some of the noisiest eaters I know keep their tongue engaged the whole time while they are eating. For me the tongue is like an arm on a conveyor belt- it comes in when it needs to, shuffles the food to the side, and then goes back in to rest position.
I have tried eating the way these food French kissing people do, and you do taste the food more but christ!
I kind of go back and forth, side-wise. I don’t like feeling like I can’t breathe thru my mouth if I absolutely have to. Can’t do that with food on both sides.
I usually try to temper the size of the swallow, if what I have in my mouth doesn’t seem like too much, I’ll swallow all of it. Sometimes half first, then the rest.
My tongue pushes the food back towards my teeth while I chew. I’m pretty sure that is something that takes time to get down.. if it wasn’t learned young.
Again, a mix of both.. up and down + grinding motions.
I hope that helps
1. I chew mainly on my left side. I switch to my right sometimes arbitrarily.
2. After im done chewing I swallow It all at one. Not once in my life has food slid down my throat without me actively swallowing.
3. Unless im using it to get food out of my teeth or to move the food to the other side my tongue is resting on the roof of my mouth.
4. A mixture of up and down and side to side. It doesn’t go straight up and down like a nutcracker and it doesnt go super side to side like a llama.
Not sure your budget, but this might be worth a couple sessions with an occupational therapist. They can watch you chew and teach you how. OT is normally for children or adults with motor, physical, or mental delays, which this might be categorized as just that. After a session or two, get homework to continue practicing on your own.
dude you’re not alone. chewing can be super weird. i usually just kinda mash the food up using all my teeth. sometimes both sides but not always.
so when i swallow it just kinda goes down in a big blob. my tongue is just chillin on the roof of my mouth while i chew. it’s a process man. and hey, at least you’re trying to learn. that’s dope
I notice that my mouth favors savory foods on the left and sweet/sour foods on the right, so those are the molars I tend to use while chewing depending on the food. My tongue moves the food around my mouth so I get all the taste sensations.
>Do you swallow an entire mouthful’s worth of food in one go? Or does it slide down your throat bit by bit as you are chewing?
“Mouthful” is kind of vague. I only put in my mouth maybe a teaspoon of food at the most at a time and chew until it’s ground into mush, swallow and repeat. For me, that’s a “mouthful”. I don’t load my mouth with as much food as it can hold. Part of the chewing and grinding process is to mix the food with saliva so it slides easily down my throat.
>Do you chew up and down or kind of grindy side to side?
Some of both. I chew straight down to break up bigger stuff. Like a large crouton in a salad, I’ll crush it up/down, then pulpify it by more crushing and grinding.
>tongue tie kid with a weirdly high palate
You may have more “work space” than the average person, so can fill your mouth with more food and it’s still “workable” because you have room for your teeth to grind it and for your saliva to mix with it. However, the general pattern is to put a spoon or forkful of food in your mouth, chew, and swallow. It’s never to put multiple spoonfuls in your mouth, or to put so much it takes multiple chew/swallow cycles to clear the food out of your mouth. Each time you open your mouth, there should be a chew followed by a swallow, and then it’s on to the next spoonful.
>tongue has been hanging about the bottom of my mouth like a slug
This sounds odd. When most people eat, their tongue moves around to better taste the food. Do you not move your tongue when eating?
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