#

Tape Your F***ing Mouth

A Graduation Towards Nasal Breathing.

There are a few occasions where once can honestly say: “well this changed my life.” This is one of those times.

Jesus, I fucked myself over through having the worst possible foundation for the most critical life action — breathing. I was breathing wrong all my life! Even better, I didn’t know about it. If you’re a poor breather, you might not even know what good breathing feels like, until you experience it.

Triggers For Realization

Little did I know, at the time, what led to mouth breathing was what seemed like two very uncorrelated incidents. 1. People constantly telling me that I breath heavy and audibly when sitting. I just excused it as having bad sinuses. Eventually, one of my friends found it idistracting, and showed me the meme below.  3. I knew I sort of snored, but I wasn’t aware of the magnitude until getting to live with two other friends in London flat. Looking back, having roomates that were light-sleepers was a blessing in disguise. They were waking up muliple times causee I snored so hard. We looked at possible reasons for my snoring, and I tried nasal decongestant sprays and nasal strip that didn’t help.

Having three sleep monitoring apps on my phone tracking the consistency of my snoring, I noticed the sounds mainly came from my mouth. So combining the noise’s source, and the two factors above, I decided, fuck it, I’m taping my mouth shut when I go to bed and see what happens.

Changing My Breathing Behaviour — An Experiment

Let me tell you it was HARD! The first few nights, I felt actually sick. Those times you go to bed while having a horrible flu. I would constantly wake up after having to rip it off. Magically, the tape is off and pasted on my headboard. The tracking apps showed. clear indication of snoring sounds starting immediately after the tape was off, and nothing beforehand.

It took a couple of weeks to get used to, but afterwards, I couldn’t even go to sleep without it. I was using Amazon’s [SomniFix Mouth Tape](https://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Strips-SomniFix-Breathing-Nighttime/dp/B076CQ1NR8), or sometimes just plain bandaids when if I run out. I didn’t want to have a day where I slept with my mouth open.

My sleep quality improved drastically, mouth wasn’t dry when waking up and zero snoring. I keep on feeling better, less tired, and more centered/aware of my body. Grogginess and genaral low levels of energy were apparent when I forget to mouth-tape/ran-out.

I decided to stop mouth breathing in its entirety — even when awake and without a mouth tape. It took longer and active peripheral monitering than expected. Quickly, it became norm and air incoming through my mouth felt unnatural and cold.

Hindsight Research

At this point being common knowledge, Cottle (1958) states at least 30 health beneifts of nasal breathing. These include humidificaiton and cleansing of the air, regulation of the direction and velocity of air to veins, 50% more resistance to airstream leading to more oxygen uptake compared to the mouth, and increased circluation of blood oxygen…etc. More benefits listed on another Graham T (2012) study.

One key improvement that’s less commonly know is the mixture of air with nitric oxide in nose turbinates (tiny shelf-like bone like strcutures in the nose). Nitric oxide is commonly known to be an environmental pollutant right? Always had a bad connotation in my head. How is this useful then? I did a quick deep dive, and in 1998 three scientists recieved the Nobel Prize for discovering nitirc oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system.

Additionally, it’s a potent bronchodilator and vasodilator (thank to my 8 months of medshcool, dialation is expansion, so dialation of the bronchioles the dialation of our vaso(vessels)- bloodvessles). Expansion is important in increasing the amount of air absorbed. And where do these enzymes producing the nitric oxide exist, IN THE FUCKING NOSE!

Current State

Currently, it’s been 8 months since my first tape, and mouth breathing feels like genuine torture. I’ve been strict about nasal breathing, and adding more deeper/healthier breathing techniques on top of it.

However, the only times I end up slipping into mouth breathing is when exercising. It might be the lack of focus from the body to the game/run or the fact that I just need a lot more oxygen intake than what the nose affords (double breathing), but I'm constantly being mindful of closing my mouth when exercising. I will report back with updates in a few months as it’s likely to take longer for this adjustment.

Additonal Quotes

According to Lundberg (2008):

“Nitric oxide gas from the nose and sinuses is inhaled with every breath and reaches the lungs in a more diluted form to enhance pulmonary oxygen uptake via local vasodilatation. In this sense nitric oxide may be regarded as an ‘aerocrine’ hormone that is produced in the nose and sinuses and transported to a distal site of action with every inhalation.”

Chang (2011) named nitric oxide the ‘mighty molecule’ and noted that it is an active component of the cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems, and is extremely versatile and significant within and throughout the human body. The fact that nitric oxide plays a significant role in cardiovascular health is evidenced by the fact that one of the Nobel Prize winners mentioned earlier wrote a book titled ‘No More Heart Disease: How Nitric Oxide Can prevent - Even reverse – Heart Disease and Strokes.’

Conclusion

Dude, mouth breathing almost single ruined my qualtiy of life. I’d go as far in saying MOUTH BREATHING IS FUCKING CHRONIC! Sadly, the adverse effects aren’t common knowlege as they ought to be. It takes a conscious effort, and a slightly uncomfortable one, I might add, to change a habit as engrained as breathing patterns. Although I did a brute-force approach of just closing/taping my mouth whenever possible, there are breathing retraining methods. Some that I found helpful in hindsight include the [Buteyko Method](https://buteykoclinic.com/the-buteyko-method/) and the [Papworth Method](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2094294/).

</p>

Notice how you breath, if there are signs of mouth breathing, try methods linked above, and if all else fails, tape your fucking mouth!!