Mouth Breathing Can Cause Poor Quality Sleep
- Posted on: Sep 18 2020
The nose and sinuses perform critical functions for your health and well being. The nose and sinuses provide filtration, humidification, and warming of the air you breathe.
This conditioning of the air allows the throat, vocal cords, bronchial passages, and the lungs to remain warm and wet. It also allows for the removal of harmful viruses, allergens, and pollutions from the air before the air reaches the lungs.
Negative Effects of Mouth Breathing
When you mouth breath, the throat and vocal cords can get dry and irritated. This can cause a chronic sore throat, hoarseness, chronic throat clearing, and chronic cough.
Mouth breathing also drys out and irritates the bronchial passages resulting in constriction of the smooth muscles of the airway and an asthma-like reaction limiting the airflow to the lungs.
Mouth breathing also dries out the Alveoli. This is the place in the lungs where the oxygen is transferred to the bloodstream. This dry environment reduces the exchange of oxygen and leaves the patient feeling more out of breath. The increased respiratory rate then will change the blood pH which reduces the ability of the blood to hold and carry the oxygen.
It’s obvious to see that mouth breathing will dramatically reduce one’s physical ability resulting in losing conditioning and gaining weight over time. This can result in obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.
How is Mouth Breathing related to the Quality of Sleep?
What may be less obvious is that the mouth breathing also creates snoring, poor quality non-restorative sleep, and even sleep apnea. Chronic deprivation of deep quality restorative sleep has a profound negative impact on your physical, psychological, and mental health. Poor job performance, accidents, poor memory, anxiety, depression, are all known consequences of this poor sleep. And if sleep apnea is present also then hypertension, diabetes, weight gain, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular disease will also occur at a greater frequency.
Schedule A Consultation
If you notice that you are a mouth breather at night or during demand, realize that this is not normal. It may be affecting many aspects of your health and it’s important to get this condition evaluated and corrected.
In our office, we use painless nasal video and miniCT scan to know the reasons why you may be mouth breathing. We also offer comprehensive medical treatment, allergy testing, and allergy drops, as well as simple office procedures to correct the underlying issues.
Don’t suffer another day as a mouth breather. Contact us today at 512.601.0303 to schedule an appointment for a comprehensive evaluation and a better plan.
Tagged with: mouth breathing
Posted in: Allergies, Mouth Breathing, Sleep Apnea, Snoring
