[For Older Adults] Games to Enhance Oral Function: Enjoyable and Easy to Do
Oral functions play an important role in daily life, such as eating and speaking.
We all want to keep enjoying meals and conversations as we get older.
In this article, we’ll introduce fun and easy activities that help improve oral function.
For example, are you familiar with vowel articulation practice like “a-i-u-e-o”?
It’s a simple and enjoyable articulation exercise, and in fact, it not only enhances oral function but also helps strengthen your abdominal muscles.
We also introduce exercises that are essential for health management, so please try to find some that you feel you can do!
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[For Older Adults] Games to Enhance Oral Functions: Enjoyable Activities (21–30)
Swallowing exercises you can do in 3 minutes
Aspiration is when food accidentally enters the lungs instead of the stomach.
Aspiration pneumonia caused by this can have a major impact on older adults’ health.
To enjoy meals and live healthily, how about trying these swallowing exercises? First, take a deep breath in over 3 seconds, then slowly exhale over 5 seconds to engage the lungs and trachea.
Gently stretch your neck and shoulders within a comfortable range to loosen the muscles around the neck.
Focusing on your breathing while doing this helps stimulate the lungs.
Finally, practice moving your tongue in and out and touching the corners of your lips to the left and right to strengthen the ability to move food toward the throat.
Doing these exercises before meals is especially effective, so we highly recommend them.
Please give them a try.
Pronunciation practice with the vowels a-i-u-e-o
The most popular hiragana vowels: a, i, u, e, o.
This time, we’ll introduce an oral-motor exercise you can do using only these sounds.
It’s simple: just say “a i u e o.” But it’s not just saying them.
Say them while opening your mouth as wide as possible, say them in a low pitch, then in a high pitch, say them as slowly as you can, then quickly—the variations are plentiful.
Once you get used to it, you can mix up the order, like “i e a o u,” to keep it feeling fresh.
Anyone can do it, regardless of age or gender, so enjoy it while helping maintain your oral health!
[For Seniors] Games to Enhance Oral Function: Enjoyable Activities (31–40)
Click-Clack Brain Training Exercises
To stay healthy, you need adequate nutrition, and the ability to eat—especially chewing power—is essential.
With the “Kachi-Kachi Brain-Training Exercise,” you can strengthen your chewing while also stimulating your brain and enjoying the process.
It’s simple: open your mouth wide and close it, biting so your teeth make a clicking sound.
Bite 15 times while silently counting 1, 2, 3 in your head, and clap on every multiple of 3.
Just this alone helps maintain overall oral and dental health and stimulates the brain.
It’s recommended because you can do it anytime, anywhere, regardless of the number of people.
Throat training with a rubber ball and a plastic bottle
Aspiration pneumonia, which is common among older adults.
Aspiration pneumonia is an inflammation that occurs when saliva or food accidentally enters the windpipe, allowing bacteria to invade the lungs.
The movement of the Adam’s apple, which is important for preventing aspiration, is said to decline from the 60s to 70s.
Here, we introduce training exercises that are expected to help prevent aspiration.
For example, you can hold a rubber ball under your chin or grip the mouth of an empty plastic bottle (with the cap removed).
It’s great that you can train using familiar items without any special equipment.
Let’s work on daily exercises to help prevent aspiration.
Patakara Card Game
The Patakara exercise is one of the training methods used to prevent aspiration.
By pronouncing “pa-ta-ka-ra,” it strengthens the mouth and tongue with the goal of maintaining and improving eating and swallowing functions.
This time, we’d like to introduce a card game that makes the Patakara exercise more fun.
Create cards with letters/words using “pa-ta-ka-ra” as the keyword and place them on a table.
Flip over the top card and read the letters on it as quickly as you can.
Once you’ve read it, pass the turn to the next person.
When the next person draws a card, they read both the previous card and the new card quickly in sequence.
The third person, fourth person, and so on will have more and more cards to read.
The more players there are, the higher the difficulty—but the more exciting it gets.
Use this to help maintain your oral health!
Whole-body relaxation exercises
Let’s relax the muscles throughout the body and improve oral function.
Some of you may wonder, “Are whole-body muscles related to oral function?” It’s said that by relaxing all your muscles and getting into a calm state, blood circulation improves and mouth movements become smoother.
Relaxing your whole body doesn’t mean doing strenuous exercises that require lots of movement.
Sit in a chair and move your upper body to the right and left.
Once you get used to it, gradually start moving up and down and diagonally.
The key is to release bodily tension and move freely.
Because it can be done while seated, it seems suitable for many older adults.
Massage to increase saliva and make eating easier
Saliva has functions beyond just making it easier to swallow food.
It helps keep the mouth moist to prevent dryness and also washes away debris and bacteria in the mouth.
However, as we age, we tend to drink less water, and medications can also make it harder to produce saliva.
In addition to staying hydrated, try exercises that encourage saliva production.
These are massages that stimulate the three salivary glands in the mouth.
A decrease in saliva can lead to cavities and gum disease, so please give it a try.