Are you Mouth Breathing?

Sophie here with another Monday movement tip. 

Today we're going to talk about breathing, specifically mouth breathing. For many people they don't even realize that they are breathing through their mouth or that there could be a potential issue with breathing through your mouth. Mouth breathing can lead to over-breathing which means you are just taking in too much air for the activity that you are doing. For instance, are you mouth breathing while you're just walking around the house or doing activities that don't require a lot of heavy breathing, such as running to catch the bus. Mouth breathing can lead to over breathing and it can also contribute to allergies, dry mouth, asthma, fatigue, anxiety, stress, high blood pressure, and snoring. Those are common symptoms that people will often have when they breathe through their mouth all the time or too much when it's not appropriate. 

So, what can you do instead? Breathe through your nose. Nasal breathing can really help reduce a lot of these symptoms. It can help reduce stress and anxiety. It can improve your concentration, really all of those things that mouth breathing contributes to. The benefits of nasal breathing extends to filtering the air coming in through your nose, warming the air that is coming in, and regulating the amount of air that you are taking in. Because your nose holes, your nostrils, are much smaller than your mouth. Simply taking a big inhale through your nose you're going to get a lot less oxygen than you do through your mouth. It’s important to make sure that our blood gas levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide are at appropriate levels. Nasal breathing helps regulate the pH balance within the blood. This isn’t really important for you to understand right now, the point I'm trying to get across is that mouth breathing can be an issue for a lot of people and nasal breathing can really help. 

If I notice that my clients are doing a lot of mouth breathing when they're coming in to see me, I might suggest that they tape their mouth. There is tape made specifically for taping your mouth. There are a lot of options out there that you can find. I simply prefer Scotch tape, it's just easy. It doesn't have a super strong adhesive that leaves a lot of residue. Some of the other tapes might leave a little bit of a sticky residue or they can be difficult to take off. Some people prefer a specific tape for your mouth. If you do have sensitive skin you might want to look into a tape that's meant for sensitive skin. 

To simply begin, I would suggest just taking a little bit of tape, placing it on your mouth during the day while you're awake and moving around. From there, you might consider taping your mouth at night while you sleep. I know that sounds very scary and a little intimidating but it might be worth exploring to see if you sleep better, if your dry mouth improves, if you snore a little bit less. Taping your mouth is not going to fix everything but it is a really small step that you can do to improve a lot of these issues.

Here is a really interesting exercise that will help you breathe through your nose if you experience a lot of nasal congestion. Take a normal inhale through your nose and a normal exhale, then cut off all of the air coming in/out and then move your body. At the very first sign of Air Hunger or that need to breathe that you notice, you stop moving and breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Your goal is to calm your breathing as soon as possible. You may need to repeat this exercise several times.

Finally, a couple of books that I like to recommend are: Close Your Mouth by Patrick McKeown and Breath by James Nestor. 

I hope this was helpful!.