How improper tongue posture and breathing effects your sleep… And your partner’s.

A well positioned tongue and open airway.

Your tongue placement is crucial to your quality of sleep. As you can see in the image on the right, your airway is continuous from your nose to your lungs and passes right behind your tongue and oral cavity. If your mouth is closed and your tongue is pushed up and forward on the roof of your mouth, it keeps your airway wide and open for nasal breathing.

The image below shows how easily your airway can become blocked if your tongue doesn’t stay up and forward. When you lay on your back, a low toned tongue will fall backward in the oral cavity and block your airway.

A low toned tongue blocking the airway.

A low toned tongue goes hand in hand with mouth breathing, and if your mouth falls open while you’re sleeping this leads to your jaw receding and collapsing your airway eve further.

This presents as snoring at night, waking up gasping for air, waking up in the morning not feeling refreshed, frequently waking up to go to the bathroom (or bedwetting in children) or grinding your teeth as you sleep.

The person struggling with these issues is usually not the one to notice, but rather whoever they sleep with or near that gets to hear the snoring, gasping, grinding and frequent moving.

Do yourself and your partner a favor! Talk to your dentist, sleep specialist or myofunctional therapist to see what treatments might be best for you.