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Comment by simultsop | Hacker News Reader

Did you learn this in a temple or what discipline helped you master it?

I did the same 25y ago, as prescribed by my allergy doctor. It was called (translation from French) "breathing reeducation", and it was roughly interval training: breathe fully in through your nose, then blow into a pipe (connected to a spirometer) at various speeds.

Before that, I was mostly breathing through my mouth. It was challenging even to eat a sandwich while walking :). Since this reeducation, I only breathe through my nose with no effort. I'm willing to believe it indeed has to do with muscle.

A breathing specialist (on a podcast, so take that with a grain of salt) said that breathing through your nose uses less overall muscles than through your mouth. This was focused on athletics training. By nose-breathing, the athletes were getting enough oxygen without heaving their chests so much, which uses more energy. The idea was that when you suck in air through your mouth, it works your chest more than is required, so you are wasting effort doing that. I tried it, nose breathing while working out, and it is incredibly difficult. Another guy on the podcast, the presenter, is an ex-rugby player and said he had to tape his mouth shut to be able to try it, and his nose was pouring with snot while jogging because he was not used to it.

I'm not saying it isn't to do with muscles, perhaps a sort of "muscle memory" due to years of breathing through your mouth, but my feeling is there's also a large psychological aspect to it. I nose breath when I remember, but it has to be a conscious effort to sort of clamp my mouth shut. Otherwise I'm :-O like that breathing. I feel like I'm going to suffocate if I nose breathe, but that's not the case of course when I actually force myself to do it.

Yep, I was not excluding muscle memory when I said it had to do with muscle. It is true that breathing through the nose seems effortless (at least when resting).

The "reeducation" consisted in a few 30 minutes sessions (probably around 5, not sure) and I don't remember having done any conscious effort to breathe through my nose after that. It just seemed easy.

That said, I still have to breathe through my mouth when running.

It’s actually because your oxygen absorption increases when you breathe nasally. Your nasal passages change the temperature and humidity of the air.

Breathing nasally does have positive effects on respiratory systems in general though.

You can tape your mouth shut when you sleep, and after a few days/weeks of this, you don’t need the tape anymore.

I see ads for these devices and the possibility of suffocating in your sleep just terrifies me. Sure most of the time you might wake up but still :/

Fortunately CPAP therapy works fantastically for me, and the CPAP masks have anti asphyxia valves to prevent you rebreathing your CO2 in the event the machine stops working (I wondered about that for a bit).

>the possibility of suffocating in your sleep just terrifies me

If you're to suffocate, in your sleep is the best time to do it!

I guess it's kinda funny

Can you refute this?

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/can-mouth-tap....

They say "could" a lot, and then say that there's no research/evidence to support it - but that's probably just because no one has done and yet. If there was any evidence against it, presumably they'd cite it?

Not a refutation, but then the article doesn't really offer any evidence to be refuted.

Afaik, "mouth taping" is just putting a little strip of fairly low tack surgical tape across your mouth, vertically, to encourage your body to keep it closed and breathe through your nose while you sleep. I've tried this just to see and it seems to work - but if you open your mouth or move your jaw even a little, it just peels off.

As long as you're sensible, it doesn't seem like it's going to do any harm?

Refute what? It's just a random doctor giving some general caveats about side effects. Anything we currently use to great effect, from aspirin to chemo, and from leg casts to band aids will have such generic caveats.

"Skin irritation" from some allergic reaction to the adhesive or fastening the mouth tap too hard? Sure.

"hampered breathing" sure, if you tie it wrongly, or have other issues.

It's more like a random physician's advice for caution than some voice of science. Also, they write:

"There's no research to support the measure"

Well, there's some:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9498537/

"Our study provided a simple and effective treatment modality using 3M mouth tape for mild OSA patients with open-mouth-breathing. The AHI and SI were reduced by nearly half after mouth-taping during sleep; the more severe the baseline AHI and SI, the greater the improvement after mouth-taping. For mild OSA mouth-breathers, mouth-taping could be an alternative treatment before CPAP therapy or surgical intervention are tried."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25450408/

Novel porous oral patches for patients with mild obstructive sleep apnea and mouth breathing: a pilot study. Conclusion: The POP is a useful device to treat patients with mild OSA and habitual OMB.

https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202109-105...

Mouth Closing to Improve the Efficacy of Mandibular Advancement Devices in Sleep Apnea. A combination of an adhesive mouthpiece and MAD is a more effective therapy than MAD alone. These findings may help improve clinical decision making in sleep apnea.

That's irrefutable by design. It _could_ lead to all those things. But it could also _not_ lead to them. Depends on the person. Besides, it's not like people with obstructive sleep apnea are having great sleep to begin with. FWIW I have facial hair so I did not use the tape. For me merely breathing through my nose during the day turned out to be sufficient to be able to comfortably do so at night.

Two books helped convince me this effect was "real" enough to try it: The Oxygen Advantage and Breathe.

A ~year later, anecdotal evidence: it works.

Start breathing exclusively through your nose during the day, and you will be able to do it at night too.

Yeah, no. That's about as useful as saying "just don't snore".

I've never been a mouth breather and yet I'm a heavy snorer with my mouth slacking open at night.

Hence "it won't work for everyone", in the original post. People differ anatomically.

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