Mouth breathing can interrupt sleep, cause orthodontic and facial deformities, and weaken lungs. Mouth breathing sometimes results from blocked nasal passages and other times is merely habitual. In both cases, treatments can be used to stop mouth breathing. You can not determent definitely the cause of your mouth breathing on your own, so to find out visit an ears, nose, and throat doctor.
Nasal Obstruction Treatments
If a blocked nasal passage causes your mouth breathing, treatment aims to remove or reduce the obstruction. The treatment will vary depending on the type of obstruction. Often medicated nasal sprays are prescribed. These sprays use steroids or other medicines to widen the nasal passages and allow increased airflow. For more complicated blockages, surgery may be necessary.
Mouth breathing toddlers with blocked nasal passages often do not need any treatments. As their faces develop, the nasal passages will widen, and typically the problem will go away on its own.
Some people continue to breathe through their mouths after nasal passage obstructions are removed, because mouth breathing has become habitual. If you experience continued mouth breathing after nasal obstruction treatment, you must then use habitual mouth breathing treatments to correct the problem.
Habitual Mouth Breathing Treatments
If you mouth breathe habitually, without an exterior cause for the mouth breathing, you can use therapy treatments to correct your breathing. Therapy treatments work to correct mouth breathing through two methods: strengthening the seal of your lips and obstructing your mouth to force you to breathe through your nose.
Therapy exercises designed to strengthen your lip seal involve holding a small item between your lips. In one exercise you keep a pencil held between your lips. This exercise can be done throughout the day, and a pencil can easily be brought with you in your pocket. The more time you spend doing the exercise, the more your lip seal will improve.
In a similar exercise, you keep your lips sealed around a sheet of paper. This allows you to shut your lips tighter than with a pencil, but it is more conspicuous and harder to carry with you throughout the day.
Another exercise uses a button with a piece of string tied to it. Hold the button between your lips while a friend tries to pull the button out using the string. This exercise is more complicated than the other two, but improves your lip seal more quickly.
You will typically use mouth obstruction therapy only at night. With this therapy, you restrain your mouth from opening so that you will be forced to breathe through your nose. You can use a piece of surgical tape to simply tape your mouth closed, or you can get an oral screen from your ear, nose and throat doctor. An oral screen blocks airflow with a thin piece of rubber inside between your lips and teeth.
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