[For Seniors] Oral Exercises to Keep Eating Deliciously and Enjoyably
Daily meals are important for staying healthy for years to come.
To help older adults enjoy their meals, try actively incorporating oral exercises into your daily routine.
As we age, it becomes harder to swallow food, and the risk of choking and aspiration increases.
To help prevent aspiration, simple oral exercises before eating are recommended.
In this article, we introduce easy pre-meal oral exercises recommended for older adults.
To improve swallowing, it’s important not only to exercise the mouth but also to loosen the muscles around the mouth, as well as the shoulders and neck.
Incorporate these oral exercises and enjoy your meals.
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[For Seniors] Oral Exercises (1–10) for Enjoyable, Delicious Eating—Now and Always
Swallowing Forehead Exercise
This exercise strengthens the throat muscles—the muscles essential for an enjoyable meal and for swallowing.
You place your hand on your forehead and apply force as if pushing back against that hand with your head.
This works the muscles of the neck and throat.
A key point is to focus on your forehead: this engages areas that aren’t trained by simply bending the neck.
If you touch your throat with your other hand while doing it, you can feel how the muscles are working, which helps you focus more on the movement of the throat.
Cheek exercises
These are exercises that strengthen the muscles around the face and cheeks—essential for chewing and swallowing.
By thoroughly training not only the inside of the mouth but the entire facial musculature, you can also develop richer facial expressions and clearer pronunciation.
The routine involves alternately inflating the cheeks with air to stretch the muscles, maintaining that state, and then releasing it.
Key points are to focus on the sensation of the muscles stretching and on the feeling of relaxation when the air is released.
By moving the air around inside your mouth, you can train areas beyond the cheeks and become more aware of your mouth movements.
Neck and shoulder exercises
To strengthen your chewing and swallowing abilities, it’s important to train not only the muscles of the mouth and throat but also the surrounding muscles.
In particular, because the muscles around the throat tense during swallowing, it’s recommended to train the shoulders and neck in a balanced way as well.
The exercises are simple—just bending and raising/lowering the neck and shoulders—but add mouth movements, too.
For example, when you raise your shoulders, slightly stiffen your facial expression as if lifting upward; when you move your neck, clench firmly.
Adding these actions helps you become aware of how the mouth muscles coordinate with the surrounding muscles.
[For Older Adults] Oral Exercises (11–20) for Enjoying Delicious Eating for Years to Come
Patakara exercises
This is an exercise that involves clearly pronouncing words to train the muscles of the face, starting with those inside the mouth.
By consciously focusing on mouth movements, you can strengthen your chewing and swallowing abilities while also promoting saliva production.
The exercise consists of repeatedly pronouncing each of the sounds in “pa-ta-ka-ra,” with key points being the movements of the mouth and throat muscles, as well as the tongue.
While the main goal is to improve swallowing function, the large mouth movements and clear articulation also help make speech more intelligible and enrich facial expressions.
Tongue exercise
To move food smoothly down the throat, it’s important to be mindful of the tongue’s muscles and movements.
If you train with awareness not only of the tip of the tongue but all the way to the base, it also helps you become more aware of how your throat moves.
A simple exercise of slowly moving the tongue from side to side is effective—the key is to move it slowly.
By taking your time, the tongue engages more strength, so while focusing on the tongue’s movement, you’re also strengthening the muscles.
This exercise not only builds the muscles used for eating, but also helps with clearer pronunciation.
Where are you guys from?
This is an exercise where you sing the children’s song “Antagata Dokosa” while paying attention to your mouth movements.
Instead of singing it as-is, you replace the syllable “sa” in the lyrics with “pa.” Doing so is expected to improve oral function more than singing normally.
The popping “pa” sound stimulates the inside of the mouth and helps promote saliva secretion, and because it engages the muscles well, it also brightens your facial expression.
If you sing along with hand claps and open your hands on each “pa,” it should make the exercise easier to understand and more enjoyable.
Throat-lifting exercises
This exercise focuses your attention on the normally unconscious action of swallowing food, helping you understand which parts of your throat engage and how to strengthen them.
As you swallow water, touch your throat with your hand to check how it moves, learn how the effort is applied, and aim to move your throat up and down.
The key is to gradually step up the practice—such as by reducing the amount of water—to develop a better feel for the movement.
Once you can move your throat freely, your swallowing will become more precise and smooth.
By actively moving the inside of your mouth, this exercise also helps promote saliva production.