Abstract
Lip muscle strength has been shown to influence daily functional activities such as facial expression, speech production, and eating. In this review, recent literature regarding lip strength and exercise training responses are summarized, highlighting the influence of sex, age, and disease (e.g., stroke). A search using five electronic databases was conducted. Twelve studies were identified from the search, which included five studies using healthy adults and seven studies using patients with diseases or chronic ailments. Regardless of the population, lip strength training multiple times a day for a relatively short term (<24 weeks) has resulted in improvements of lip muscle strength. This change in lip strength has been observed in both young and old participants. Although changes in strength have been observed in both men and women, we are unaware of any studies that have tested whether there are sex differences in this response. The same directional change can be expected for patients with stroke and patients with lip incompetence, but the magnitude of the training effect seems to be higher in healthy people.
Highlights
Lip strength and function is important to consider because it can influence daily activities.This includes facial expression, speech production, eating behaviors and even indirectly influences swallowing capacity
The purpose of this review is to: 1) introduce the characteristics of training devices used in previous studies; 2) provide information about the effects of lip exercise training focused on adult individuals with and without stroke or lip incompetence; 3) discuss possible sex differences; and 4) discuss the effect of aging on these training responses
The increase of lip strength was observed gradually during the training period from baseline (981.7 g) to 4 weeks (1372.7 g) of training [30]. This type of lip strength training was evaluated in individuals with and without lip incompetence measured by electromyography activity, and it was suggested that individuals with lip incompetence need greater orbicularis oris muscle activity to keep their lips closed [31]
Summary
Lip strength and function is important to consider because it can influence daily activities This includes facial expression, speech production, eating behaviors and even indirectly influences swallowing capacity. The decline of lip closure can negatively influence various behaviors, during the oral phase of swallowing and when forming facial expression, during speech, while sleeping [9], and in the presence of halitosis [10]. The purpose of this review is to: 1) introduce the characteristics of training devices used in previous studies; 2) provide information about the effects of lip exercise training focused on adult individuals with and without stroke or lip incompetence; 3) discuss possible sex differences; and 4) discuss the effect of aging on these training responses. The baseline characteristics of lip muscle strength from cross-sectional studies have been added to the sections discussing sex differences, the effects of age, and disease
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