So I've been seeing an orofacial myologist as part of my total treatment and things are going well. She has me do several exercises with my tongue and also how to eat/drink properly and keeping my mouth closed.
For one exercise, before bed, she has me curl my upper and lower lips around my teeth while placing my hands on my clavicles, and tilting my head back (supported) to get a "platysmal" stretch. This is supposed to help correct my lip incompetence and allow me to keep my mouth closed easier. After doing this 5 times for 20 secs each, I then tape my mouth shut in a criss-cross pattern using special medical tape and I can then sleep with my mouth shut which alleviates snoring, dry-mouth, and mouth-breathing at night.
This works very well for keeping my mouth shut and moist and I can sleep comfortably, but I have some concerns. First, will stretching my lips cause my upper lip to lengthen? I do not want this to happen, esp since its not a short upper lip I have but rather a long anterior maxilla (which will be fixed via surgery). Also, as I do these exercises before surgery, I fear the soft tissue planning for surgery will be based off of these newly "stretched together" lips and once I stop doing these exercises post-healing, my lips will revert back to where they were and ill have lip incompetence once again.
Lately I've only been curling my lower lip (for the stretches) around my teeth prior to taping because of this concern.
What do you think? Are my concerns legitimate? Is what I wrote clear?