Back on track

If you have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, there are things you can do about it. Mouth-breathing is a habit of many people which can persist throughout life if not corrected.

“Reversing cognitive decline will be improved significantly by breathing properly at night.”

Dr John Roberts

Proper breathing means through your nose with your mouth closed. Mouth-breathing changes the O2 and CO2 levels in the body – this importantly includes the brain! Mouth-breathing also leads to snoring. This is because the soft tissues in the mouth including the tongue, relax and fall to the back of the throat. This is especially possible if you tend to sleep on your back or you are overweight. The normal airway is blocked and air must instead enter through the mouth. This body position, as well as mouth-breathing leads to snoring.

Sleep apnoea is a condition in which the body (and especially the brain) is deprived of oxygen because the normal airway is blocked. Every time oxygen is cut off from the brain, the body wakes you up! Sleep apnoea is this disturbance of your sleep all night as you wake up numerous times to take in oxygen.

As you can imagine, a brain deprived of oxygen is not a good thing! Hence, this is why the body wakes us up numerous times a night – to prevent the brain from dying for lack of oxygen. The down side of waking up every few minutes is sleep disruption. Hence, we awake in the morning exhausted.

A sleep study is recommended to determine if your sleep is disrupted in this way. There are easy ways to check your sleep patterns by searching online. Check yourself for symptoms of sleep apnoea and solve this problem for a well-deserved good night’s sleep!