H.M. Systems Inc.

Tongue-tie

The Tongue

The most important articulator for speech production is undoubtedly the tongue. During speech, the amazing range of movements the tongue can make include tip-elevation, grooving, and protrusion.

Relatively short at birth, the tongue grows longer, and thinner at the tip, as we get older.

As well as having a speech function, the tongue is needed for sucking, chewing, swallowing, eating, drinking, tooth and gum health, kissing, sweeping the mouth for food debris and other particles (such as hairs), warming the air during mouth-breathing, and oral play (for instance, poking the tongue out and waggling it about for fun).

Tongue-tie
ANKYLOGLOSSIA or SHORT LINGUAL FRAENUM

In anatomy, a fraenum (or fraenulum) is a small fold of tissue that checks or limits the movements of an organ part. Everyone has a lingual fraenum (lingual fraenulum) under the tongue. It is a thin, vertical fold of tissue with attachments to the under-surface of the tongue and to the floor of the mouth.

The terms ‘ankyloglossia’, ‘short fraenum’, ‘short fraenulum’, or ‘tongue tie’, refer to a restricted lingual fraenum due to a consolidation of tissue, usually leading to reduced mobility of the tongue.

It is commonly observed that a person with tongue tie cannot protrude the tongue tip beyond the edges of the lower incisors, or to the maxillary alveolar ridge (behind the upper incisors). Sometimes when a person with tongue tie attempts to protrude the tongue it forms a characteristic ‘W’ shape. Parents of infants and toddlers with tongue tie are sometimes advised that the tie will “stretch”, or “break” permitting a free range of movement, as the child grows.