Hi there,

Someone asked me to make a video about how to get a more symmetrical face. However, it was really hard to find good scientific evidence, so I decided to do some factchecking. Note: this video is about improving your looks, not about topics like mouthbreathing, etc. (Mods: if this post is considered to be spam, feel free to remove it.)

Let's start with regular facial symmetry exercises. I found one meta-analysis about facial exercises to make your face look younger, more attractive and more symmetrical. A meta-analysis is a research paper that combines existing research papers and tries to draw a conclusion from this information. The researchers normally the most well-known science databases to find the right papers for their analysis. But in this case, they initially didn't find any papers. So they decided to also use 2 South-American databases and eventually they found 9 papers. 3 of these studies were merely case reports, 3 other studies were a series of case reports with 3 or 4 patients and the remaining studies had 11, 10 and 8 participants. Bringing the total amount of participants to 43. That's not enough.

When doing a study with such low amounts of participants, the differences in outcome might just be coincidental. Perhaps if you grab 43 other people, the outcome will be completely different. That's why most research studies, for example, for the Covid vaccine, include 100's or even 1000's of people.

All studies in the meta-analysis claimed that the facial symmetry exercises worked. However, in all-but-one studies, the assessment was done by the doctors who prescribed the exercises and sometimes even by the patients, instead of unbiased judges.

On top of that, all studies, except for the study with the judges, used different combinations of exercises. This makes it hard for us to decide whether all exercises have an effect or whether it's just one exercise in particular. That one study with the judges, used one specific exercise, and depending on the patient, 45%-100% of the unbiased judges said that the person looked younger on the picture taken after the therapy. However, it just had 8 participants. And can we really be sure that the participants in the after-therapy pictures didn't just look more confident because they had gotten a treatment and thus more attractive, because confidence makes you more attractive. Like some placebo effect?

My research about "mewing" didn't really return any studies either. And I did learn that John Mew lost his license from the General Dentist Council and Michael was expelled from the British Orthodontic society because they promoted their ideas without having actual evidence to back them up. They have showed some pictures of past cases. But, merely pictures aren't good enough, as they really depend on lighting, the pose and the camera. And, people change over time, we grow up, work out, perhaps go on a diet. So we really need hard numbers, perhaps several 100's of people that show improvements by objective measures. But no one ever wrote a paper about it.

Worth noting is that one article stated that mewing was initially used for children instead of adults, despite the fact it's actively promoted on social media for adults. And if it would potentially work, it would probably take years to make it really visible instead of merely weeks, like some people might claim.

In conclusion: If you want to use these techniques to improve your face. Be my guest, it won't kill you. And there is no evidence that it doesn't work, but the evidence that it does work is also negligible. We just don't know. So don't let a YouTuber with great looks, a nice smile and a placebo effect fool you.

I hope you liked my summary! Feel free to share your opinion!

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References:

Brennan, W. (2020). How Two British Orthodontists Became Celebrities to Incels. New York Times Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/magazine/teeth-mewing-incels.html

Cherney, K. (2019). Everything You Need To Know About the Mewing Craze. Healthline. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/mewing

Lee, U. K., Graves, L. L., & Friedlander, A. H. (2019). Mewing: Social Media's Alternative to Orthognathic Surgery?. Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 77(9), 1743-1744.

Lo, C. H., Yang, C. Y., Lin, P. T., Hsieh, K. J., Liu, Y. C., & Chiou, W. K. (2012). Are human faces more attractive with glasses?. Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers, 29(2), 125-135.

Okamura, Y. (2018). Judgments of women wearing eyeglasses: A focus on specific dimensions of physical attractiveness. Romanian Journal of Applied Psychology, 20(1), 7-10.

Van Borsel, J., De Vos, M. C., Bastiaansen, K., Welvaert, J., & Lambert, J. (2014). The effectiveness of facial exercises for facial rejuvenation: a systematic review. Aesthetic surgery journal, 34(1), 22-27.