3 complementary exercises to wearing the FroggyMouth - Video for practitioners

Froggymouth is a passive functional rehabilitation device. Each practitioner has their own sets of exercises that can be used with the Froggymouth. Here are the three exercises most commonly used by Dr. Patrick Fellus, creator of the device.
No additional exercise is required for the first two weeks of use. During the second appointment, you should evaluate the engrammation and add an exercise to the protocol if necessary.
If the patient continues to drool, inhales noisily or if they still place the lingual apex in the space of the Froggymouth, then recommend the “wrestling exercise”.
It simply consists in creating the motor image of the elevation of the styloglossus, which is the elevator muscle of the lingual dome.
First select a mouth mirror, then press, at first lightly, on the patient's "V" region of the tongue, from top to bottom, so as to exert pressure on the posterior part of the tongue. Then challenge your patient to a tongue wrestle with the mouth mirror! It's up to the patient to win, by countering the force of your mirror with their styloglossus. Repeat 3 or 4 times, only in the clinic, this exercise will show the patient how to feel the involvement of the muscle.
An alternative version of this exercise consists of pressing, with your index finger, on the floor of the mouth, while asking the patient to swallow their saliva. This is simply in order to send the information to the tongue to go up to the palate. This exercise can be repeated easily outside the clinic, by a parent or spouse.
Once the engrammation has been acquired, the patient knows how to carry out the secondary swallowing movement, but has not yet made it automatic.
You are then on your way to your ultimate goal: automation.
It is essential not to settle for just a neuromuscular response to a given instruction, but to strive for the automation of functionally correct swallowing pattern and nasal breathing.
For the second exercise, you will need different scents. Have the patient take turns smelling them. After a few seconds, offer the same selection of scents, but this time in a different order. Will the patient be able to recognize them?
As you go, add scents to make the exercise more complex, thereby strengthening the neural circuits that manage nasal breathing.
For faster results, the exercise can be repeated outside the clinic to enhance the previously engrammed learning of tongue positioning with the use of Froggymouth. This will also help add another sensory layer to the passage of air and strengthen the exercise.
You are now on the verge of achieving automation of the new praxes. Several weeks of wearing the Froggymouth daily have passed, and you will now enter the final stage of treatment.
This is the elocution exercise.
It consists in inhibiting the old dysfunctional circuits in order to ensure the durability of the automation that you are in the process of obtaining. The objective of this exercise is to articulate the sounds with the lips, and to swallow thanks to the elevation of the tongue against the palate. And not the other way round! For this exercise, you do not need any equipment.
Ask the patient to count from 1 to 20, first through clenched teeth, mouthing the sounds only with their lips.
Then ask them to count from 1 to 20, this time more quickly, clicking their teeth between each number.
Pay attention to the position of your patient's tongue. Do you see them trying to break through the tooth barrier? Or does it stay in place so it can perform the swallowing function? This exercise can be repeated daily at home.
As soon as the patient carries out the exercise by articulating the sounds with their lips and by swallowing their saliva with their tongue while elevating it against the palate, then you can decide to end the treatment.
At this stage, expert practitioners recommend that the patient keep using the Froggymouth during the weeks after achieving the expected results, but only 1 to 2 times per week.
More information at www.polorto.com.pl