breathing thru your nose 24/7
I checked out the site you mentioned. I don't have asthma but I have been trying off and on for some time to retrain myself to breathe through my nose exclusively. In my research I found the suggestion to tape your mouth shut when you sleep. I found that disconcerting, but interesting. Did you ever try it?
Karen, yes I did..........I did it to satisfy the concerns of my buteyko instructor. I am usually able to successfully program my brain to do something when sleeping....like waking at a particular hour. So I told my brain to keep my mouth closed during the nite. But to make sure it was working, I taped my mouth shut one week, and then left the tape off the second week. Each nite and each morning of the two week period, I tested my control pulse and pulse rate to see if they were lower, the same or higher overnite. If your mouth is shut, they both should be at least equal to the levels of the nite before or lower. Both the week my mouth was taped and the week it wasn't, my control pulse and pulse rate were lower. That confirmed that I did not need the tape to keep my mouth shut during the nite.
Six months later I tested the whole thing again.......again the scores were consistent with keeping my mouth shut thru the entire nite. So I do not use the tape at all. I understand your concerns......its pretty uncomfortable. A suggestion.........I would start breathing thru my nose during the day first. It takes two weeks for the discomfort to stop and your body to adjust. At the gym, I would stop an exercise when I found myself getting out of breath because I was breathing through my nose. However, within a month, my workout was back to the levels that existed prior to stopping my mouth breathing. Later, I was able to exceed those levels by nose breathing only. In addition, once I began to nose breath, I no longer had exercise-induced asthma at the end of my workout. After you are comfortable with day time nose breathing, I then would work to make that happen during the nite.
And just for the record, Buteyko states that asthma is just one of many illnesses caused by poor breathing/overbreathing patterns. Roughly a mouth after doing buteyko, I went to a new dentist and was startled to hear her ask me if I was a mouth breather. Mouth breathing can cause above normal secretions in the mouth, damaging both the teeth and the gums.....particularly the gums. The conclusions Buteyko came to can be found in pieces throughout different aspects of Western science and research. But no one in the West had connected the dots like Buteyko has. I am very grateful to him.
ted |
