Our tongue is something we typically just take advantage of ... we just assume that if it is there, in our mouth, it is doing its job appropriately, right?! We also assume it has a fairly simple job - help us to eat our food, taste, smell ... basic stuff!
In fact, our tongue is quite intricately connected to our body and actually is incredibly important to our overall wellbeing.
Posture
When we were an embryo our tongue (which is a muscle) came from the same cells that help to make up the back of our head, a connection continues throughout our life. Another connection the tongue developed when we were an embryo, and is also lifelong, is our tongue's connection to our hyoid bone and the hyoid muscles - suprahyoid and infrahyoid.
These two strong connections allow our tongue to be involved in our head posture, particularly, but not only, through the suprahyoid muscle. Additionally, the hyoid bone has a connection to the fascia in our neck, providing another round-about-way for your tongue to be involved with our posture.
Your tongue is ALSO connected to our sternocleidomastoid muscle - this is the diagonal muscle on the side of our neck that is prominent when you turn your head AND it is even connected to the muscles around your collar bone.
Digestion
The suprahyoid and infrahyoid muscles both help us with chewing, swallowing, and talking. The hyoid muscle also helps us with chewing and swallowing, however, it does not seem to play a role in talking.
Breathing
This is where our hyoid bone plays a part - it moves in a very specific way which assists in our breathing, as does the back of our tongue. Interestingly enough, the front portion of our tongue does not seem to play much of a role (if any) in breathing, but has an important role in other tasks.
If our tongue is not working properly, if say one part is weaker than another, this can have an impact particularly on our breathing because the hyoid bone will not function properly.
Complex Connections
These connections are just the start of how connected our tongue actually is, with the rest of our body.
It has an incredibly important role in many things, including your posture, swallowing, breathing, eating, chewing, tasting, and more.
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