A Viral Trend With Teeth
Mewing? Really? The name sounds like we should be sheep, cats, or maybe stuck in some “dog-fight.” Yet the online world has decided this quirky term is worth obsessing over.
At its core, “mewing” refers to a belief that you can “grow your face” into a more esthetically defined, movie-star jawline by adjusting tongue posture and oral habits. Because of that promise, hundreds of thousands, even millions, have now adopted the method as part of their daily lives. Curiosity spread like wildfire.
And so, we go down the rabbit hole together.
A Documentary That Revealed More Than Expected
A colleague urged me to watch the Netflix documentary “Open Wide.” I did not rush to hit play. I rarely spend time glued to a screen. Yet she remained adamant.
Eventually, early 2024, I watched it. Wow. The parallels between what holistic providers face and what Dr. Michael Mew is enduring felt painfully familiar.
The film tracks the legal storm surrounding Dr. Mew, a British orthodontist whose practice centers on facial growth and airway development. The dispute involves threatening to remove his ability to work entirely. According to reporting, “as of December 2024, they have succeeded,” attempting to strip both his dental and orthodontic credentials, essentially erasing his livelihood and his patients’ access to care.
The Roots: Orthotropics and the Mew Family Legacy
His father, Dr. John Mew, created the BioBloc appliance and a philosophy he named “Orthotropics.” He believed in orthopedics for the face, in helping nature grow forward, not simply retract and camouflage.
This is where culture becomes key. “Dr. John Mew is English.” Their way of discussion, humor, or how they talk about a device as a “torture device” in their own living room can be shockingly misread by American viewers who take everything literally.
Their remarks about experiment-like treatment or joking about family trials may seem alarming. Yet, as any advanced practitioner can attest, we often take higher education or advanced residency training specifically to help our own family members when traditional approaches fail. I did exactly this for my own daughter after TMJ trauma. That effort prevented invasive jaw surgery and, still today, allows me to help patients worldwide find non-surgical relief.
Sometimes people call us “lateral thinkers.” Others say we are “outside- the -box thinkers.” Either way, dogma dislikes disruption. “Dogma takes a very, very, very long time to catch up.” Conventional thinking can lag 17 years behind new research. No wonder anyone who refuses to act like a “proverbial sheep” gets labeled the “black’ sheep.”
It does not make them wrong. It makes them early.
The Reality Behind “Growing a Face”
The documentary lightly referenced a major truth: real orthopedic growth takes time. “It could take up to 4 years to ‘grow a face’ and there may be a bad phase.” I prefer the “ugly duckling” phase. It is not bad. It is transformation in motion.
Traditional “Ortho”-dontists straighten teeth. “Ortho” means straightening, “dont” means tooth. Teeth. Only teeth.
Orthotropics considers the skeleton beneath:
• the airway
• nasal passages
• tongue space
• pharyngeal development
• breathing disorders
• forward jaw growth
Those scientific pillars were barely shown in the documentary. Instead, we got a family conversation filmed casually at home. If this had been a scientific production, peer-reviewed backing would have been prominent. In fact, when Dr. Michael Mew lectures, his slides show extensive data.
Still the critics cry out: “what the heck are you doing?” or “they’re crazy!”. Some even warn parents, “They don’t know what they’re doing. You need to sue them”. “You need to get your money back and ‘I’ll fix this’ … blah blah”.
Meanwhile, the panicked parents cry, “oh my God what have you done”.. “I’ve made my child worse.”
This frenzy ignores the truth. We are not just correcting smiles. “We’re fixing faces. We are fixing airways.” We are developing jaws once deemed too small and retruded.
If they listen to mainstream advice, children wait years for orthognathic surgery. Jaws get broken, set forward, and wired shut. Social stigma, teasing, low oxygen, poor attention in school, chronic fatigue, and sleep apnea follow them through childhood. Why?
All because helping them grow earlier was called radical.
The Price of Quick Fix Dentistry
Another conventional “solution” is to extract teeth, retract jaws, and finish quickly. Yet as I often explain: that reduces airway volume, tongue space, and facial balance. That “quick fix” leads to long-term dysfunction.
Tongue ties, mouth breathing, allergies, tonsils, nutrition, and myofunction all require attention. “All of these steps follow a sequence, and this does take time and yes, finances.” But the payoff is natural health, not lifelong compensation.
And this applies to adults too. I have an 85-year-old patient who chose non-surgical nasal and airway expansion. Her snoring vanished. Her tongue and teeth finally had room. Science claims sutures fuse in childhood. Reality says, “Nope, they only fuse when you’re dead.”
Is It Really Science? Or A Threat To Business?
Critics latch onto a line from the film: “6 twins of studies does not make it science” …
Maybe not absolute science, but it begs a logical next question: “why was this so successful then?”
Orthotropics has demonstrated identical genetic siblings aging differently when only one receives growth stimulation. And look around you:
• narrow jaws
• deep palates
• retruded profiles
• dark under-eye hollows
• crowded teeth everywhere
The evidence walks past us daily.
Yet science often follows after clinical success. Unfortunately, medicine has a history of discovering harm after decades of use. When holistic prevention suggests a safer alternative, it gets labeled fringe.
But the children who breathe better and thrive tell a different story.
Why not ask, “What are you doing that helps and how can we learn from you” instead of sharpening knives?
Perhaps the answer lies in economics. As the documentary notes, orthodontics “has now become an industry.” Aligners sold online, treatment sold in bulk, “teeth straightened” while airways collapse silently.
Who benefits from surgery? Who profits from trays? And who loses when a child avoids both?
Why People Turn To Mewing
Then comes the viral verb itself: mewing. “They’ve even created a verb after his name, it even went viral … Can billions of people be ‘wrong’?”
Humans want solutions. They want health and beauty. They want to breathe through their noses and sleep without suffocating. When experts refuse to explore new ideas, people find answers on their own.
Now imagine the outcry if the establishment continues punishing the very physician whose work inspired a global health movement.
“How’s that going to make them look – huh. I wonder?”
The Future Of A Movement That Refuses To Die
This battle is far bigger than one dentist.
It is about whether we allow innovation to evolve our healthcare or cling so tightly to dogma that we sacrifice progress. It is about whether children wait in pain for surgery because that is how “it has always been done.” It is about whether airway health finally gets the attention it deserves.
Orthotropics, airway dentistry, functional facial growth… they connect deeply with what I teach in Health Connections Dentistry®. Our teeth and faces influence the entire body. It is all connected.
Sadly, Dr. John Mew passed away on June 25, 2025, at the age of 96. His legacy, however, lives on in every family seeking hope.
And for those curious where his son stands today, see for yourself:
➡ https://www.mewingapp.co/
Final Thoughts
I have never believed healthcare should be a “dog fight.” We are stronger united. The profession should strive to “get the patient better as a whole,” not defend outdated methods at any cost.
The world is awakening. Better breathing, better sleep, better faces, better lives. Why would we fight that?
Maybe it is time to stop mew-bashing and start mew-listening.
Because sometimes the “black’ sheep” is only black because the flock has not caught up to the light yet.
