How to stop breathing through my mouth, nighttime edition

September 19, 2023 6:19 AM

Apparently I breathe through my mouth when I'm sleeping, and it's making it difficult for my wife to sleep. Is there anything I can do?

My nose/sinuses often feel constricted, not with mucus, but just like... I don't know, like I just can't get enough oxygen through them. I don't think I have seasonal allergies, or at least I don't get the hay fever, itchy eyes, runny nose, etc, that other people with allergies seem to suffer from.

I do consciously try to breathe through my nose when I'm falling asleep. Even if it feels somewhat constricted at first, if I keep breathing through my nose, often the constriction will improve and the feeling of not having enough oxygen will stop. But even in those cases, once I fall asleep, I apparently start breathing through my mouth again.

I wear a bite guard at night, which is fairly thick and keeps my mouth open a little bit. However, I've only been using it for about a year, and the mouth breathing problem predates that, so I don't think it's the cause. But perhaps it makes the sound worse?

I'm not overweight and I don't think I have sleep apnea.

I'd really like to solve this problem for my wife's sake. And also my dentist says that mouth-breathing at night is drying out my gums, which isn't great. Is there anything I can do to solve this? Should I just go see my doctor? Any steps to try beforehand?

posted by number9dream to Health & Fitness (27 answers total)

Best answer: Have you tried a nose strip or mouth taping yet?
posted by raccoon409 at 6:33 AM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I had the same problem, and the same indication that I do not have sleep apnea. I'm planning on consulting a ENT soon - there's a good chance I have a deviated septum - but in the short term, I've started using Breathe Right strips, and they've worked really well.
posted by Tomorrowful at 6:33 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Another vote for Breathe Right strips, which are little short of miraculous.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 6:36 AM on September 19, 2023 [4 favorites]

Another vote for mouth taping - just use the medical paper tape.
posted by skunk pig at 6:39 AM on September 19, 2023

Sleep on your stomach. I can’t do this well on a conventional bed, so I sleep on a bean bag chair.
posted by at at 6:49 AM on September 19, 2023

Why don't you think you have sleep apnea? Being overweight is only one factor and it is not the most common one. Loud breathing at night is an indicator that you should have an evaluation.
posted by soelo at 6:52 AM on September 19, 2023 [9 favorites]

Do you still have your tonsils? My kid snored "like a trucker", according to one sleep specialist we took him to see. We took him because we were concerned he might have sleep apnea, but it turns out his tonsils were huge and affecting his breathing.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:15 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I stopped breathing through my mouth while sleeping after reading Breath by James Nestor which is full of evidence about why mouth-breathing is bad for you. I used tape for a few days but after about the first week I trained myself to breathe through my nose while sleeping.
posted by jabes at 7:19 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wear a mask so that it just covers the mouth
posted by canoehead at 7:32 AM on September 19, 2023

Response by poster: Further info:

• I do still have my tonsils and I've never had any trouble with them.
• I don't think I have sleep apnea because I generally sleep ok and I feel well-rested as long as I get enough sleep (7-8 hours).
• I don't think I'd be able to tolerate having my mouth taped shut, and it would also be difficult because the bite guard keeps my mouth slightly open.
• I cannot sleep on my stomach. I'm usually a side sleeper but I also sleep on my back at times.

I'll definitely try out the nasal strips first and see if that helps.
posted by number9dream at 7:40 AM on September 19, 2023

If the problem is your partner has trouble sleeping through the sound of your breathing, you can work on that directly with white noise or earplugs.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:40 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

You should get tested for sleep apnea. It is a dangerous and silent condition that can effect your heart among other things.
posted by charlesminus at 8:13 AM on September 19, 2023 [5 favorites]

Like SaltySalticid mentioned, beyond taping your mouth shut (what I do), in terms of your wife's needs, you should be able to drown out your breathing with a fan/air purifier/white noise machine. Assuming your breathing sounds are normal, that will cancel them out (I also find the sound of my partner breathing distracting).
posted by coffeecat at 8:53 AM on September 19, 2023

This sounds like my partner who has nasal polyps. Do you also have a reduced sense of smell?
posted by guessthis at 9:07 AM on September 19, 2023

For someone who has sinuses that really make it difficult to breathe through the nose, I would be concerned about the potential of mouth taping to reduce oxygen levels and cause more problems than it solves. (And I say this as someone who uses mouth taping while using a nasal-mask CPAP machine, but that combination means that enough air pressure is coming in to the nose that routine congestion is not a problem.) Another quite safe thing to try would be nasal irrigation, whether with saline solution or a xylitol-based solution like Xlear.
posted by Creosote at 10:30 AM on September 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

Where you’re not feeling like you get enough air through your nose, definitely get a sleep study (it will measure such things). But the nasal strips have been quite helpful for my partner and me.
posted by eviemath at 11:17 AM on September 19, 2023

How dry is the room you're sleeping in? Are you in a dry climate? If so, and even if not, I second trying some nasal irrigation. I too get congestion at night that's not related to any mucus, it's just my nasal passages swelling, and a few squirts of saline before bed helps a lot when the cause is dry air. You could also try a humidifier.

But I also use Nasacort nasal spray, which pretty much resolved this problem for me entirely no matter what the weather is, so I wouldn't entirely rule out allergies, though I did also have other seasonal allergy symptoms (slight runny nose during the day, itchy eyes, etc).
posted by yasaman at 11:17 AM on September 19, 2023

You don’t need to tape your whole mouth if that feels bad or is claustrophobic. I do two thin vertical lines, one on each side, and that does the trick. You could still breathe through your mouth if you had to. Just cut 1” medical tape.

Nthing sinus rinse, humidity levels, checking for sinus deviation and polyps, and maybe sleep test. That book Breath is great!

Also what about earplugs for your wife? I wear Loops and they’re super comfortable.
posted by lloquat at 11:39 AM on September 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I found that Buteyko breathing, over a few weeks, caused me to consistently start automatically breathing through my nose during sleep. YMMV. Using a neti pot with distilled or RO water and pre-mixed salt packets, before sleep, helped, too.
posted by zeek321 at 12:18 PM on September 19, 2023

Seconding the mouth-taping. I learned about it, and I think a lot of us did, from the book Breath by James Nestor, and I recommend it. I use about an inch of medical tape to tape my mouth closed at night, and that improved things dramatically w/r/t my overnight mouthbreathing. If your nose gets blocked, you can breathe around it, and it comes off in the morning with no residue. It's all upsides.
posted by Sunburnt at 12:57 PM on September 19, 2023

Echoing what guessthis said. I would schedule an appointment with an ENT to rule it out.
posted by umwhat at 2:05 PM on September 19, 2023

Instead of tape, there are chin straps for the same general purpose and I'd imagine they'd accommodate the bite guard.
posted by teremala at 2:29 PM on September 19, 2023

My daughter was a mouth breather/snorer. She was really nosy. You could tell if she was sleeping from outside her room. We saw an ENT doctor. Turns out she had really large adenoids which made breathing through her nose hard. We had them taken out and her sleeping improved almost immediately. (Though the first night freaked me out - I couldn't hear her breathing anymore and panicked).
posted by daffodil at 2:59 PM on September 19, 2023

Try not to sleep on your back. Side should be ok, but my partner will inevitably mouth-breathe or snore if he's on his back, and this wakes me up even when I'm wearing earplugs. I typically just nudge him lightly and say "you're snoring" or "you're breathing weird", and he will roll onto his side without even waking up to any extent he remembers later on.
posted by aecorwin at 10:19 AM on September 20, 2023

As an alternative to nose strips or mouth-taping, let me suggest Mute, which makes small "nasal dilators" that sit just inside your nostrils and help you breathe more freely through your nose.

I've seen ads for some pretty shady nasal stents pop up in social media; these are not those. Mute was recommended by my ENT at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, so they're backed by a credible source.

And they work for me!
posted by bassomatic at 1:01 PM on September 20, 2023

When I started mouth taping, it was problematic that my nose would sometimes be stuffy. I noticed that running an air filter at night would make that better so particulates in the air can be a subtle yet relevant problem with taping.
You can buy a HEPA filter and tape it to a regular floor fan and run it low at night. That's what we do and it really helps.
posted by diode at 6:47 AM on September 24, 2023

Response by poster: Breathe-Right strips have more or less completely solved the problem! I did see my primary care doctor as well and he said the first thing to try was the nose strips and/or a nasal spray, but the strips work so well that I didn't even bother with the spray. My wife says she doesn't notice it anymore, I feel like I can breathe, and my mouth doesn't get all dried out during the night anymore.
posted by number9dream at 9:57 AM on October 26, 2023 [1 favorite]