Shut Your Mouth And Breathe
How taping your mouth in your sleep can do wonders for your health
I used to wake up every morning with an extreme dry mouth. Some nights I even had to wake up to drink water as I was so thirsty. Since I drank a lot of water during the day, it didn’t add up. So I looked for solutions.
I first put my money on acupuncture. My acupuncturist told me right away I had a mix of fire and damp in my stomach, one of the worst combo you can ever get in the eyes of chinese medicine. So every other week I would go get treatment and overtime I saw some improvement. But as soon as I stopped during the summer holiday, all the problems came back.
Dry mouth. Gum issues. Bad breath. FML.
My finances didn’t allow me to go back to the acupuncturist and I was running out of ideas when, by the luck of the Youtube algorithm, my internet path crossed a yogi teacher who was explaining how we should all tape our mouth for better sleep! I laughed at the idea and at the same time I was intrigued. What is this guy talking about?
Watching him, I couldn’t stop this aha moment. It all made a lot of sense. Nose breathing is healthier than mouth breathing. Even if we are physically able to breathe from the mouth, our mouth is not the best tool to properly breath and protect us from foreign particles. The nose is actually a filter that helps us our lungs.
Not only that but the nose helps warming and moisturizing the air before it gets to our lungs to make sure it’s at body temperature and easier to take in. The nose can also boost the oxygen circulation in our blood when breathing as it releases more nitric oxide which open the blood vessels.
But that’s not the only effects nose/mouth breathing has on our health. Mouth breathing can very often be the source of several sleep problems, like snoring or sleep apnea, which can lead to serious health problems, like having an abnormal heart rhythm and even worse or increasing your risks of having a stroke.
Overall, breathing with the nose would help us sleep deeper, with a slower heart rate and reduce the brain fog in the morning.
The way we are breathing can also be responsible for shaping our face. Overtime, the dysfunctional use of mouth breathing can lead to an “adenoid face”, explained by Alexandra Frost as “A type of facial structure (that) involves a narrow upper dental arch, changes in incisors, an imperfect lip seal, and an increased facial height.”
Needless to say I started taping my mouth at night immediately after. Past looking silly with my mouth taped in the middle, I could really feel the benefits from the first morning.
First, I didn’t feel so tired as I didn’t wake up during the night, my mouth wasn’t so dry in the morning and I felt more calm and rested. For the following weeks, I even felt that I have been avoiding getting sick as my throat wasn’t sore every morning.
If you still not convinced, I can only recommend trying mouth taping for yourself. If you are interested in increase the quality of your sleep or you have gum and teeth issues, mouth taping might be the trick. No need to invest in special mouth tape, from my perspective, a simple small piece of my usual sport’s tape can do wonders. Let me know if you tried mouth taping in the comment section! Cheers!
If you are interested in going further on the topic, you can read several articles on the topic:
Dr Paul Henny — 5 reasons to consider taping your mouth
Mouth breathing in this fashion is dysfunctional, therefore nose-breathing throughout the night should be the end-goal if at all possible.
More research on the morphological effects of mouth breathing vs nose breathing
The present results indicated a significant increase in total anterior facial height and lower anterior facial height in mouth breathers, accompanied by a decrease in posterior facial height
And finally, the initial Youtube video I mentioned.
You can also read my previous work here:
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