If there’s one popular theme that I get asked about in relation to breath it’s: sleep! Oh boy do we want to get better sleep…or actually what we really want is to wake up better.
There’s countless ways to improve your sleep quality with use of conscious breathing but by far the most simple way is to improve your nasal breathing during the night. Especially if you snore or mouthbreathe, then switching to nasal breathing can help you…
– sleep deeper
– get up with more energy
– have less wakeful moments at night
– stay hydrated better
– start the day with less stress
– have better overall recovery
Sadly though….most of us have blocked nasal airways due to chronic stress, allergies and suboptimal lifestyle. I sure do! To get out of this negative spiral there’s 3 tools that I use every day to keep my mouth shut and my nose open. And I’ll tell you all about them in this video!
Tools mentioned in the video:
https://www.intakebreathing.com
https://faceformer.de/en/
https://www.snorelab.com
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO
do you wake up tired with a dry
mouth and a groggy brain and do you feel
like you need to drink
a liter of water and five espressos to
get your brain ready to go
well then i have bad news for you
because you might be doing
one of the worst things for your health
the entire night which is
mouth breathing and in this video i want
to share
with you three very simple tools that
will
allow you to have better quality breath
throughout the night now if you’ve been
following me for a while you know
that i am habitually a bad
nose breather and you know that nose
breathing is one of the
most important factors for optimal
health
so your nose and i’ll just very quickly
go through the benefits of nose
breathing your nose is a filter
it filters out pathogens and fine dust
and all kinds of crap that’s in the air
that you do not want in your lungs it
humidifies the air
so to make sure that you have the
optimal humidity in the air
to be received in your lungs and it also
air conditions the air actually funny
yesterday my daughter
was laying in bed breathing and she was
like hey why is my
air from my nose cold and the air from
my mouth warm have you ever wondered
this well it’s because
your nose makes sure that the
temperature of the air is regulated so
it
comes into the optimal temperature to be
received in the lungs
through your nose and then lastly but
very
very much not leastly is
nitric oxide which is an amazing
chemical that is produced in your nasal
sinuses
that relaxes the smooth muscle tissue in
your airways and opens up your lungs
which is also actually an anti-viral
chemical because it destroys
a lot of pathogens on impact so every
breath through the nose is in all of
these ways
better than a mouth breath which does
none of this
now most people have learned to
habitually breathe through the mouth and
i’m one of them
i used to have allergies for many years
i used to be a smoker
and i’ve just had so many different
inflammatory issues in my body
that have caused my nasal mucosa to
swell up and
to block my airways which has led to a
negative spiral of being
less capable of breathing through my
nose which causes me to do
more mouth breathing throughout the
night and the more you breathe through
your mouth
the less you are capable of breathing
through your nose because your body
adapts to function
right so that’s some of the background
on nose breathing so learning how to
switch to nose breathing is an amazing
way to improve your overall health
chronic mouth breathing snoring and
sleep apnea have been linked even to
neurodegenerative diseases and
less concentration less rem sleep less
restorative sleep
more inflammation more susceptibility to
viruses and all this
stuff that we don’t want now the cool
thing is a lot of people ask me what is
the best way to start with a breathing
practice and if you are a mouth
breathing
during the night then just being able to
sleep with your mouth
closed will give you seven to eight
hours of high quality breathing practice
as opposed to seventy
seven to eight hours of disease and bad
health promoting
mouth breathing practice right so all
you need to do is shut your mouth
the entire night um and then you will
have all of these benefits
especially if you are a snorer or you
have sleep apnea or you wake up multiple
times in the night with a dry mouth and
having to pee then
improving your nasal breathing is the
way to go
now i have three tools that i want to
show you that make this easier
i do want to say that having a breathing
practice and slowing down your breath
and calming down your breath
before you go to sleep is one very
important
place to start but i just want to show
you some of the tools that i use now
first of all
and this is one that people always kind
of giggle about is mouth taping and it’s
becoming more and more popular
you can do it with many different types
of tape this is just
a physiotherapist tape their surgical
tape there’s kinesiology tape just pick
a kind of tape
that is not irritating to the human skin
now
i have in emergencies used duct tape or
a gaffer tape like this
which is not a good idea i can’t
recommend it the glue sticks to your
lips and it
irritates the skin but hey to me it’s
better than a knife mouth breathing at
least
so this is um a very simple
tape that you could even find in a first
aid kit this one’s called omnifix but
there’s also one called kinesiology tape
there’s one called 3m
micropore there’s many different types
so as long as you get one that sticks
easily to skin and doesn’t irritate the
skin you’re good
now there’s two ways to do this
basically i take
so this is a very wide strip and there’s
two ways to do it or multiple ways to do
it but these are my favorites
so one way to do it is to cut two very
small strips and what you basically do
is well first of all apparently you lose
the first strip oh i found it
and you take these and you stick them on
both
sides of the center of your lips like
that you could even have them shorter i
could probably even
yeah cut this in half and put it on both
sides but you basically have it like
this on your lips
you stick it and then the thinner that
if you do this
it gives a lot of people peace of mind
because if you just have this as a
reminder to keep your lip shut and
keeping it together
you could still on the side open your
mouth
and breathe through your mouth and talk
if you’re worried that you’re going to
suffocate and that’s kind of the first
worry that people come up with
if they talk about mouth taping they
don’t even worry about the contraceptive
qualities of mouth taping
and all of the things that i’m going to
show you today are great contraceptives
that make you look very weird
and your significant other is going to
have to get used to this but
hey most likely will improve your
snoring
and recently i mentioned this in a
workshop and then a few months later
i got an email from a lady saying you
saved my marriage
my husband started mouth taping or i
think she started
taping her husband’s mouth and now we
can sleep in the same bed again
anyway so you can take these two strips
if you’re worried about suffocation then
you can just put them like this and then
you can still breathe on the side
if needed now i have taped my mouth for
over two years and i know countless
people who do it and it’s always
been completely safe and nobody has ever
called me that they had suffocated
during the night because this tape comes
off fairly easily
now what you can also do is make a
little bit of a wider strip
and this fits precisely over my lips
and it is of course wise to make sure if
you’re worried about suffocation it’s
of course in a way it’s a realistic fear
because you’re cutting your you’re
taping your mouth shut um but
you have to um trust that your tape will
come off fairly easily
so make sure you have a tape that you
can test whether it comes off and the
way you test it is you basically you put
it on your lips like this
and then you try to open your mouth like
that all right
oh
that was pretty easy and it didn’t even
hurt that much so now
if you have your tape and you just do
that and it pops off easily then you
know you have
nothing to worry about and if you ever
feel like you need to
breathe better breathe through your
mouth during the night you will just
open your mouth and you’ll be fine
right now in the beginning actually it’s
a hassle to even keep it on because most
people are so unused to having this tape
on their mouth at the first week
they might keep opening it up and you
wake up with like tape stuck to your
forehead and
you’re like where did my tape go so it
takes a while to get used to
and this really allows you to help your
keep your lips
shut which for most people also gives
you a better
mouth and jaw position where you
naturally keep your lips shut
now there’s many ins and outs of this
but that’s
the basics you can try it out and if you
feel like in the beginning your nose is
still too blocked to be able to use this
to breathe properly then
keep at it that’s the only way uh to
kind of keep going right so
as soon as you you will start to breathe
more through your nose your body will
start to adapt and you’ll start to be
able to breathe
more through your nose and your nose
will slowly start to open up but like i
said
i have mouth taped for two years and my
nasal breathing still isn’t optimal
some nights my nose feels a bit too
clogged and then i have to do
a lot of breathing practice slow hypo
ventilative breathing practice to open
my nose
but i also have another tool for that
which i will explain in the end of this
video
and it just takes a while it takes a
while to adapt but it’s worth the effort
and it’s worth
keeping on so that your nose will open
up and of course go slow
don’t force yourself don’t push yourself
take it easy and you can also go like
you know one night on and one night off
with the mouth taping well that’s one
way to go
but then actually after this whole rant
in mouth taping i must confess that it
didn’t
solve all of my problems apparently i’m
a very very talented snorer
and i can even snore with my mouth taped
shut and actually 9 out of 10 people
that
start doing this practice they have
their snoring disappears right away and
they’re like oh my god you solved my
snoring and i’m like ah
what about my snoring apparently i’m
very good at snoring
so then i found another amazing tool
which is tool number two which is called
the
face former my daughter calls it
daddy’s pacifier because it looks like a
pacifier
and actually one of my followers
recommended this to me who’s an
orthodontist and i was very grateful for
this tip
i have next to mouth taping i’ve also
been
in omft oral myofunctional therapy for
about a year in order to improve
my facial muscles so the sphincter
around my mouth for example that allows
the
mouth to stay shut but also the position
of the tongue
the way that you swallow your swallowing
technique all of that
plays a huge role in the ability to nose
breathe and even in the way that your
skull takes shape so i’ve
been spending a lot of time on these
different therapy therapy forms that
train the facial muscles and in general
it makes you better at breathing which
makes you better at life
it’s also funny to kind of notice that
i’m bad at all the simple stuff like
i thought i was at least you know
capable of doing the basics i’m 35 years
old i run two companies but i can’t
breathe
i can’t swallow and i can’t properly
sleep so that’s when i started really
fixing this stuff now the face former is
a strength training tool
for the muscles in your face which means
that it is
so motorically and neurologically
improving the
quality of your facial structures which
will not only make you look better over
time but will especially train you
to naturally keep your mouth shut and be
better at nose breathing
instead of relying on a piece of tape to
keep it
together with this thing over time you
will train to keep the thing
in the correct position it’s very simple
it costs 20 or 30 euros
you wear it like this again great
contraceptive
oh god and um but what you basically do
is you contract your
uh your mouth muscles to squeeze this
thing together like that
and you do it a few seconds on a few
seconds off
one set of training takes four to six
minutes depending on
your training you do it three times a
day and in the beginning your mouth gets
really sore it’s a really intense way to
train
and it really makes you realize how weak
these muscles are but over time you
notice your muscles getting stronger you
can start to wear it at night and i’ve
been wearing this at night
and since the first uh night that i
started wearing this i actually uh
snored well nothing the first few weeks
and every now and then i have
a few minutes of snoring and i keep
track of my snoring
uh in an app that i forgot the name of
but i’ll
post it down below but there’s different
snoring tracker apps that
record your snoring during the night and
then you have feedback you can quantify
it
so this has been a great tool for me the
cool thing is that it doesn’t have to
stick
so as soon as you’ve done enough
training with these phase muscles your
facial muscles will naturally
keep this thing in place keep your mouth
shut improve your facial
facial muscles improve your nasal
breathing improve the entire structure
of your
face which is good news because we like
faces don’t we
so that’s another great tool and then
lastly i have over here the
intake breathing tool this is uh
something that i got really excited
about i supported that kickstarter way
back
by the way i’m not affiliated with any
of the any of these companies this is
just stuff that i use
literally every day what this is is
it is a bunch of wipey cloths and then
there is an
applicator tool and then there’s this
bridge that will go over your nose
and then there’s some band-aids with
little pieces of metal in it
and then these pieces of metal they
click into the magnets on this bridge
and they open your nose and i just want
to quickly show you
how much that opens nasal patches
because my main issue
is that my nasal passage is blocked i
have tried
thousands of things i’ve had balloons up
my nose cameras up my nose i’ve had
surgeons who wanted to cut my nose open
and i believe in
constant practice relentless forward
progress on the thing you want to
achieve and not in quick fixes
so i’ve been training and practicing
it’s getting better and better
every month but i still use this because
it gives me so much of a better nasal
airflow
so i every night this is part of my
evening ritual i take this applicator
with a magnet on it and then take off
these little
bend eddy thingies and then i stick this
on the side of my nose
like that see if i can get it on the
right position without a mirror yep
that works and then of course i’ll do
the other side
now most people will over time very
quickly
improve the space in their nose
significantly
enough at least to start to do more
nasal breathing through the night
or in general but i apparently need more
help and i have some other treatments
and experiments that i’m working on
but check this out so this is this is my
nose you’ve been looking at for a while
it’s not very wide it’s quite narrow
actually
and then i stick this on and look what
happens
boom airflow airflow
baby good stuff and again great
contraceptive
i look like a weirdo i have a pacifier
like this i have a nose bridge and then
i also wear a mask
to block out all the light i have many
more sleep hacks that i’ll do more
videos about
but these are the three ways that you
can start to
work to increase your nasal
airflow during the night and to keep
your mouth shut and the combination of
those will allow you to have
however long you sleep hopefully seven
to eight hours of blissful
nurturing health promoting um high
quality
nose breathing which will allow you to
wake up with less moisture lost
with less of your immune system
challenge with less sympathetic tone
more parasympathetic tone more rest in
your nervous system
and just a much better oxygenation
feeling better rested
having higher quality sleep and being
ready to kick ass
in your day so you can try these things
out
simple mouth taping it’s basically free
this thing
is whatever 20 or 30 euros or dollars
it’s cheap tool
and then the intake is a little bit more
expensive and one downside
about this is of course that every day i
have to discard
band-aids and you know the the
discardable parts of this
are really something that are bugging me
um
and to me for now it’s a necessary evil
i live completely like flat
plastic free and i try to live as waste
free as possible and this is the only
thing left in my life that is not
in line with my waste free way of living
which bothers me a lot but
um yeah definitely the amount of better
nasal breathing that i get through the
night is
worth it now like i said i’m working on
some other experiments to
massively increase my nasal breathing
capacity and in the future i will share
more about this
but for now thank you for your attention
i hope you will be happily nose
breathing
tonight and that your significant other
will accept all this weird stuff
on your face in um as a trade for
less snoring and just more peaceful
nights so i hope you enjoy that
let me know in the comments what your
thoughts are and if there’s any way that
you are improving your nasal breathing
through the night because i’d love to
learn more
and i hope to see you soon peace out