Shut Your Mouth When You Sleep!
Written by Kirsten Ahrendt
I never used to address the topic of breathing with clients. No one addressed it with me as an athlete – so it wasn’t on my radar! I just thought lift more weights + do more sprints + add 1 more rep next time + increase mobility + eat a veggie + eat more protein + recover + work harder tomorrow = improve. It’s not a bad starting recipe.Â
But three years ago my co-coach Sarah Loogman gave me a book, The Oxygen Advantage. It sent me down a rabbit hole and I’ve been following it ever since. I can honestly say, changing how you breathe might be THE MOST IMPORTANT thing you do on your path towards general health & wellness.Â
It’s counter-intuitive, because most of us aren’t used to it. And it doesn’t actually require that much effort to implement – so we inherently think it must not have that much worth. (Anything worth doing, is going to be hard, right?). But I feel so strongly about the importance of breath dynamics on human’s overall health, that I no longer feel I am doing my job if our clients are unaware of this health factor that is entirely within their control. To me, it is as fundamental as telling someone to keep their spine straight when they deadlift. Yup.
Eat your veggies? Yup.
Daily movement? Totally.
Continue to lift weights as you age to maintain bone density – cool!
But want to be healthier and even improve your performance? Go simpler, even more foundational, no equipment required, no membership fee needed…breathe optimally. And that means breathe through your nose whenever possible. Even when you’re sleeping.
The simplest way to accumulate the most amount of time nasal breathing is to start by keeping your mouth shut at night. If you’re not doing that, do not worry about nasal breathing during exercise (although I’m all for that). It’s a simple numbers game. If you workout one hour a day and maybe you do two workouts a week nasal-breathing (I’m stretching this here), you could accumulate 40-90 minutes of nasal breathing per week. But you sleep on average 6-8 hours/night multiplied x 7 nights/week. Seriously. Math.
Sleeping with your mouth shut will lead to a cascade of health benefits:
– stay more hydrated
– less loss of essential vitamins and minerals (legitimately, mouth breathe long enough and you’ll start to leach minerals from your bones!)
– more balanced blood pH
– lower blood pressure
– better sleep & increased mental clarity
– increased CO2 tolerance
– decrease instances of sleep apnea and snoring
– decrease states of stress
When you keep your mouth shut for 6-8 hours a night, you’ll start to unconsciously build this habit to maintain it during the day. And you’ll do it while you’re unconscious – HECK YA! Unconscious healthy habit building for the WIN!
Pro Tip:
This sounds weird, and I didn’t come up with it. But if you’re struggling to prevent your mouth from falling open while sleeping, put a small strip of tape across the middle of your lips (right under the bridge of your nose to your chin) when you sleep. This will allow you to still open the sides of your lips should you need to or feel less freaked out than if you were to duct tape your entire mouth. We’re creating sleep hygiene folks, not kidnapping skills. I suggest using medical tape you can get at Walgreens or Rite Aid. Duct tape, scotch tape, band aids, etc. are too intense, or too big, or have chemicals on them.Â
Tape your mouth every night, monitor your sleep quality for a month and see what you notice. #gainzWhileyouSleep. You’re welcome. I suggest getting your significant other in on the gainzTrain, it’s way cooler (read: less creepy) that way.Â
Read more articles on breathing by Coach Kirsten…
I Started Nasal Breathing – Now What?
NOW is the Perfect Time to Fall in Love with Aerobic Zone 2 Training
10 Things You Should Know About Breathing
This is not so easy with facial hair…just sayin