Mouth Taping: The sleep hack you never knew you needed

Strange as it might sound, mouth taping is a sleep hack that you can try immediately.

Mouth taping is not just a social media trend; it has a scientific backing to explain why it provides better quality sleep at night.

Here are a few of my favorite mouth taping benefits:

1. Lessens cavities 
2. It prevents your mouth from drying
3. Filters the air you breathe through your nose
4. Increases your nitric oxide intake
5. Decreases snoring
6. Reduces the chances of waking up at night to pee

I know it’s not as easy as it sounds, to sleep with your mouth shut, so if you have some qualms, you may want to try taping your mouth before you turn in for the night or some time in the morning while you get on with your routine before you go to work.

If you have tried mouth taping and found that you’ve torn the tape in the middle of the night or notice after several attempts that your body just can’t tolerate it, it’s best to see your doctor to check if you have any sleeping problems or ENT issues.

To hear more about mouth taping, head on over to episode 143 of the Less Stressed Life Podcast, where I talk about how mouth taping works to increase your sleep quality.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Last month. I had the honor of traveling to Sedona with a couple of colleagues and we participated in a microbiome conference virtually together. But through that experience, we were able to mastermind and talk about all kinds of fun things. One of them being mouth taping, which is sort of my obsession of November, December, 2020. So let's talk about mouth taping. It's become very popular recently. There's a new book called breath by James nester. That's on my read list and here's how I perceive or understand the benefits of mouth taping. So what we are doing often is breathing through our mouth and mouth breathing is associated with shallow breathing or chest breathing. Let me back up. Do you ever wake up, especially in the winter time with kind of like dry mouth, dry throat, et cetera, you're sleeping with your mouth open. And I think it varies depending on what's going on.

And it varies depending on how great our nasal integrity is. So, you know, shout out to the nasal washing and rinsing episode, go back and listen to that one. I have a lot of thoughts about nasal stuff, but back to mouth breathing and nasal breathing. So the point of taping your mouth shut, and this isn't a kidnapping scene, it's like a butterfly tape up and down. But the point of doing this at night is because then you can breathe through your nose. So nose breathing is really more associated with diaphragmatic or a belly breathing, which is like really activates our rest and digest or, you know, calming nervous system side and mouth breathing is really associated with shallow breathing, not really getting in that great oxygen and chest breathing, and that's really associated with a kind of fight or flight. So when we breathe through our nose, we're improving that nitric oxide and nitric oxide is essential for oxygenation.

Low nitric oxide is probably associated one with like send this to all your friends with ed erectile dysfunction, sleep apnea could really benefit from improved oxygenation. You may have seen this sometimes you'll see on grocery store shelves, you'll see this. Like, I don't know what you'd call them, but it's like an active energy shine. It's like beet juice. Cause beet juice is really big friend creasing, nitric oxide. So we're thinking we're improving nitric oxide. We're improving oxygenation, which is naturally going to improve energy during the day. So we want to improve overall deeper sleep as well. So it's, it's also associated with that. So while we were in Arizona and we were together a couple of nights with mouth taping, the first night result, I have a ring that really monitors my sleep. And so what's a normal amount of deep sleep. Not REM sleep.

Deep sleep is one and a half to two hours. I got two and a half hours of deep sleep. The first night I'm off tapes. The person next to me, she's a practitioner who I think she's 48 and she's at the phase in her life where she says I was getting up to urinate a couple of times a night, first night of mouth taping, no waking up to pee in the middle of the night. Amazing it's because getting into that deep sleep is supposed to suppress the signal to tell your body, to wake up and urinate. And so frequently we get a decreased amount of deep sleep as we get older. So this is like a really hot problem. And this is a very cheap, practically free option solution. So what you can do is look in your medicine cabinet for micropore paper tape. It's not like so sticky.

I like to use some lip balm. So it's not like sticking to my lips. I still haven't graduated to real mouth taping tape. I have some coming, I bought the cheap stuff, but again, this isn't like duct tape. This isn't a kidnapping across your mouth. It's like, it's almost like a butterfly band-aid like up and down just to hold your lips shut. If you're anxious about it or you think you can't breathe your nose. Well, which I know is going to be a thing. You wanna go ahead and try it while you're awake and props to my friend, Robin, I did not think of this. So go ahead and try it while you're awake before you go to bed and just see how it goes. Okay. So if you do try mouth taping, I'd love to hear what you get from it. Go on over to Lester select.com, click on that SpeakPipe app and drop me a voicemail.

Have a good one.

Do you need to detox? January is really a time where the word detox gets thrown around and people spew all kinds of craziness on both sides of the fence. But here's the thing we need to show respect where respect is due. My friends detox is amazing and I happen to have a pretty intimate connection and knowledge on what detox looks like. And when it is slowed from waking up with a puffy face or your eyes being swollen or retaining water weight, or having skin stuff like acne, eczema, et cetera, pop-up or identifying as a sweaty person, not handling alcohol like I did when I was 21, not waking up energized, waking up in the middle of the night. You've had some interesting eye symptoms I can trace to my detox systems. So what do you do? Well, thank God. This is a podcast and not a Twitter post because it doesn't fit in 140 characters.

When people ask me questions, like, what do you think of this chlorella supplement or dandelion tea or juice cleanse. I want to sit down and give you the one-on-one on what's happening inside your body. So you know exactly if and what that tea or supplement will or will not help. That's why I'm doing a live detox, a masterclass on January 8th. Don't worry. A replay will be available if you register for the live version in my detox masterclass, you'll get the detox four one, one of what's going on on the inside and outside of your body. Plus simple shifts you can make to make these systems work better. You'll get how often you should give your body some love on your detox pathways. So your skin digestion, energy, and just your body in general runs at its absolute best. You'll also get my two week detox protocol that you can use then rinse and repeat to effect everything from how much fluid you're retaining to improving sleep and energy, to how much you sweat to that bear knows that you have, I've been wanting to do this forever and we're finally doing it. So just go to Krista bigler.com forward slash detox to take my, do you need to detox quiz and register for this jam packed masterclass. You do not want to miss it. So we'll have this link in the show notes as well, but it's Krista bigler.com forward slash detox. I'll see you there.