Dhru Purohit Show - How Mouth Taping Can Radically Transform Your Sleep with Dhru Purohit

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and Birch Living. Are you ready for a super-simple tip that can help take your sleep health to the next level? Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, I share how mouth taping can radically transform our sleep. I walk through the benefits of mouth taping, how it works, who should explore using it, and how you can get started doing it today.   In this episode, we dive into:  -How mouth breathing negatively impacts our health (2:10)-The central role nitric oxide plays in our body, especially when it comes to breathing (2:44)-What happens when we don’t produce enough nitric oxide (3:25)-Signs of nitric oxide deficiency (7:44)-What drives nitric oxide deficiency (13:49) -Who would benefit the most from mouth taping (17:26)-Can you use mouth tape even if you have sleep apnea and use a CPAP machine? (20:23)-Is mouth taping safe for kids? (21:43)-Is mouth taping safe for pregnant women? (22:10)-Who shouldn’t mouth tape (22:32) -Dhru’s mouth tape recommendations and how to get started (23:32) Also mentioned in this episode: -Try This: Mouth Taping 101 -The Miracle Molecule You Need To “NO” About  -Ask the Dentist -Sleep Apnea: The Real Reason You Grind Your Teeth? -Mouth Breathing: What Every Parent Needs to Know -How to Mouth Tape for Better Sleep at Night with James Nestor -MedVance Silicone Tape -SomniFix Sleep Strips  This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers and Birch Living. Magnesium Breakthrough from BiOptimizers really stands out from the other magnesium supplements out there. There just isn't anything else like it on the market. BiOptimizers is offering my community 10% off, so just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru with code DHRU10. To get $200 off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, Drew Prode here. Today we're talking about a super simple tip that anyone can take on to improve, radically improve. In fact, their sleep quality starting today. Are you ready to hear about this tip? Well, in this week's episode, we're talking about the benefits of mouth taping and how you can get started on it today. I'm going to walk you through the process step by step. I know it might sound a little scary at first, but I can assure you that mouth taping is a super safe and highly effective way to improve your sleep quality.

And this comes from not only my own research, which I'm going to be highlighting in today's episode, but also my personal experience and interviews with top experts in this field, including functional medicine dentist, functional dentist, Dr. Mark Brehanna, and New York Times bestselling author James. Nestor. So what's the big deal about maltapping and how does it work? Well, I'll walk you all through that. And by the way, today's episode and content comes from my try this newsletter, which anyone can subscribe free to. Just go to drew proet.com and click on the tab that says, try this newsletter. And you can sign up for free today. That's drewproet.com. Link in the show notes. So the simple act of taping

your mouth shed at night encourages you to breathe through your nose instead of of breathing through your mouth, which results in a deeper, more restful night's sleep. Sounds crazy? Maybe. But people swear by this practice. So who should explore maltapping? If you have sleep apnea, snore, grind your teeth at night, wake up with drool on your pillow, or feel tired and groggy in the morning for no reason, you might want to consider exploring

maltapping. Not that maltaping is some magic bullet that a man. immediately we'll get to the root of all these issues, but it could play a part in the reasons why you're suffering from some of these things. So let's jump in. Why is it so bad to breathe through your mouth on a consistent basis? Our nose was primarily designed for breathing and smelling, and our mouth was primarily designed for eating, tasting, and talking.

When we use these body parts outside of their intended use, that's when problems start to emerge. an estimated 25% of our body's nitric oxide is produced from breathing through our nose. This has been taken from a paper published in Wiley Online called decreased pulmonary vascular resistance during nasal breathing. Now, let's do a little background on nitric oxide, a little sidebar, because understanding the importance of nitric oxide and its central role that it plays in our body, especially when it comes to breathing, is a huge part of understanding why mouth breathing is so

detrimental to our health, why nasal breathing is so important, and why mouth taping in particular can be very helpful for those that might be breathing through their mouth, especially at night. If you want to reduce your risk of heart attack, if you want to reduce your risk of stroke and significantly improve your overall vascular health, you want to know about nitric oxide. Okay, so first off, what happens when we don't produce enough nitric oxide inside of the body? A rectile dysfunction known as ED, cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, infertility, cardiovascular disease, and even sleep disorders have all been linked to low nitric oxide production. So what's the link?

How does this tiny molecule have such a profound impact on our health? And what is it doing inside of our bodies to keep us healthy and protect us for? from disease. So a little background. Nitric oxide, also referred to as NO, is very unstable, meaning it doesn't stick around in the body for a long period of time once it's been produced. Because NO, nitric oxide, is such a short-lived molecule, it took a long time for researchers to identify it in the body and discover its central role in vascular health. In 1998, Dr. Lou Ignaro and his colleagues were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiciative. in medicine for discovering the role of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.

For listeners to the podcast, you'll remember that we've had Dr. Lou Ignaro, Nobel Prize winner, on the podcast before talking to us about the power of NO and his pivotal work in helping us understand that. Dr. Ignarro's work and the book Breath, New York Times bestselling book Breath by James Nestor, those were two central pieces that were a big inspiration behind today's episode and our past newsletter content. Now, as we mentioned before, our nose is one of the primary places that nitric oxide is produced. When we breathe through our nose, the cells in our sinuses produce nitric oxide, which travel directly to our lungs. And because nitric oxide dilates our blood vessels, it relaxes our trachea and our bronchials, which allows us. us to take in more oxygen. By the way, that's a good thing. In addition to our nose, our endothelial

cells, the cells that line the inside of our heart and blood vessels, are another main site of nitric oxide production. The nitric oxide that's made by our endothelial cells relaxes our blood vessels, enhancing circulation, and the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to our tissues. So this is how nitric oxide protects the body. When our endothelial cells produce nitric oxide. Our arteries begin to relax. This keeps our blood moving and our blood pressure normal, which prevents blood clots and plaque buildup. Having enough nitric oxide is essential for cardiovascular health. It reduces our risk of heart attack and stroke, but not having enough nitric oxide does the exact opposite. In addition, nitric oxide protects against stroke by

increasing blood flow to the brain. This enhanced delivery of blood to the brain, this enhanced delivery of blood to brain is accompanied by oxygen and nutrients as well as being a central part of why nitric oxide levels are associated with better learning, cognition, and even memory. Additionally, you'll be surprised to hear that the circulation to the brain helps flush out toxins and plaques that lead to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia. This was taken from a review paper called involvement of nitric oxide in learning and memory. memory processes via the University of Madras in Chennai, India. Another crazy important function of nitric oxide is that it's antimicrobial, which means it

can help fight off viral and bacterial infections. It's crazy to think about it, but our nose is the first line of defense when it comes to coming in contact with airborne pathogens. But that's only if we're using it. That's only if we're using it to actually breathe. and increase that nitric oxide production inside of our body. Breathing through our mouth doesn't produce NO. So we're missing out on that first step of sterilization, which means sterilizing whatever microbe is coming into our body. Instead, if we skip the nose and we breathe directly from the mouth,

those pathogens are coming right directly into our throat and lungs. Now, what are some signs of nitric oxide deficiency? Believe it or not, one of the earliest warning signs of nitric oxide deficiency is erectile dysfunction. Everyone's heard of the little blue pill known as Viagra that's prescribed to treat ED, but understanding the mechanism behind how it works can connect the dots as to why it's been such a blockbuster drug. Viagra works by upregulating nitric oxide production. Pharmaceutical companies were quick to jump on the development of a drug for ED after Dr. Ignaro, again, the Nobel Prize winner, and his colleagues discovered that NO was a central part of our vascular health.

The pharmaceutical companies took his findings and successfully applied them to create a pharmaceutical drug designed to upregulate nitric oxide production for arousal and libido purposes. Based on the success of this drug, we can infer that ED in part is driven by a lack of nitric oxide production and can be corrected by upregulating nitric oxide production. production. To connect the dots even further, ED and men and low libido in women as well could be a warning sign of poor vascular health and a canary in the coal mine, so to speak, for more life-threatening situations like a heart attack or a stroke. I know the doctors at our clinic at the Ultra Wellness Center will often ask patients, especially men as they get older,

if they're suffering from any aspects of ED because ED and the symptoms that come along with it are one of the first signals that their vascular health might be out of whack. Other signs of nitric oxide deficiency are poor cardiometabolic health, for example, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, high blood sugar and heart disease, obesity, mouth breathing, of course, getting sick frequently, cognitive decline, and sleep disorders like sleep apnea or snoring. By the way, if you're somebody who's snoring on a regular basis at night, you're a prime candidate for getting a sleep study. So definitely ask your doctor to conduct one because you most likely have a form of sleep apnea.

We've had many dentists on the podcast previously. You know, functional dentists are some of the people that are leading and paving the way around exploring this area in this field, which is super fascinating. We've had many dentists on this podcast before, including Dr. Stephen Lynn, who say that snoring is choking. So if you're snoring at night, you want to think of that as a form of choking at night, which is a perfect indication that there's some sort of sleep apnea going on in your body, and you might want to explore some corrective solutions and mouth taping could be one of those things. But of course, if you're diagnosed with sleep apnea, you want to work

with your doctor to come up with a protocol. You may not want to willy-neilly just throw on mouth taping on top of it. So an important question to ask ourselves is what's driving nitric oxide deficiency. One of the leading causes of nitric oxide deficiency is actually insulin resistance, something that we've done many episodes on this podcast. Insulin resistance puts the body in a state of inflammation, an oxidative stress that damages our arterial walls, resulting in endothelial dysfunction, and a reduced ability to produce nitric oxide. With American adults consuming approximately 60 pounds of added sugar annually, and one in three Americans having pre-diabetes, This explains why ED is so common today, affecting 40% of males over the age of 40, and a whopping

70% of males over the age of 70. This also explains the rise in infertility in both men and women, and why cardiovascular disease and sexual dysfunction are so intimately connected. They share the common denominator, insulin resistance. And if you want to hear more about this, I did an entire episode on sexual dysfunction and infertility with Dr. Casey means, and talking about the common things that both men and women experience from our modern diets and lifestyles that's inducing insulin resistance. Of course, it's a little bit more complicated, especially for women, but we talk about a lot

of those nuances inside of the episode. Now, today's topic is all about mouth taping. So it would be no surprise to hear that a major contributor to nitric oxide deficiency in the body is mouth breathing. Mouth breathing doesn't stimulate nitric oxide production, as we mentioned before, the same way that breathing through your nose does. Now, in addition to James Nester, I've mentioned two of my friends previously, functional dentist Mark Perhanna, Dr. Mark Perhanna, and functional dentist, Dr. Stephen Lynn, they talk

a lot about the detrimental impact of mouth breathing. And it doesn't just affect our sleep. It also impacts our oral microbiome and our cardiome metabolic health. With the rise of obesity, people are using their mouths to breathe today more than ever, not just at night, but during the day too, which not only leads to sleep disorders like sleep apnea, but it also means lower levels of nitric oxide and the risks that are associated in it that we covered previously. Now, one of the other crazy things about mouth breathing is that it dries out the mouth and disrupts our oral microbiome. Our oral microbiome, you have an oral microbiome,

just like you have a gut microbiome. You also have a nasal microbiome. A lot of of saliva makes our mouth more acidic and causes bad oral bacteria to take over, which makes us more prone to cavities, gum disease, and bad breath. Yuck. Okay, want to hear something wild? My friend, Dr. Mark Berhanna considers mouth breathing to be the number one cause of cavities, even coming before poor diet and bad dental hygiene. You can read more about what Dr. Mark Brehanna has to say about this in an article that

he's written about mouth breathing and mouth taping, we have a link to that in the show notes. All right, so let's talk about mouth taping. By far, one of the best ways to increase your body's natural ability to make nitric oxide is by making sure you're breathing through your nose at night. Many people who suffer from undiagnosed sleep apnea or a chronically stuffy nose breathe through their mouth on a regular basis, which results in a lack of oxygen and directly inhaling dust or allergens. mouth taping to keep it simple is a simple and effective strategy to ensure your breathing through your

nose. All right. So let's talk about who would benefit the most from mouth taping. I have a list of a few people that would benefit the most for mouth taping. Anyone suffering from the conditions of sleep apnea, dry mouth, snoring, fatigue, bad breath, gum disease, teeth grinding, that's me, high blood pressure, anxiety and even depression. More and more people every day are dealing with sleep apnea and disordered sleep breathing than you would think. And it can show up in a number of different ways. Here's a personal anecdote. I used to grind my teeth at night, which is one of the ways our bodies deals with disordered sleep breathing because it brings more oxygen into our airways. It's also related to a narrowing of our jaws from our modern lifestyle. I'll talk about that more

in a future episode. After I started maltape, I noticed a massive improvement in my sleep. True story. And way less tension in my jaws. Mout taping works so well that I even got my wife on board. She has a pretty prominent tongue tie. We haven't gotten the little operation that you can get rid of the tongue tie, but that's definitely on our list in the future.

She's a little afraid of doing it right now. So we put her on malt tape, which I'll talk about in a second. And that helped her achieve a deeper, more restful nights sleep. the nights where my wife does not mouth tape she feels groggy in the morning she doesn't feel as alert she feels like she's more likely to crave sugar probably because her sleep is off so mouth taping has become a central part of our sleep hygiene and improving my wife's overall health mine as well too all right let's cover a few frequently asked questions about mouth taping now mouth taping you'll see from all the resources and forums and books that are out there, mouth taping is generally regarded

as safe. It's something that kids can even do. We'll talk about that more in a second. But if you have a complicated situation, like a deviated septum, if you have severe claustrophobia, even though honestly I have friends that have a little bit of claustrophobia and find mouth breathing to, mouth taping rather, to be super easy to do. not scare at all. But I have to add in a disclaimer that, you know, check with your doctor, even though the truth is your doctor probably doesn't know anything about mouth taping. No shade thrown there. It's just not as well known. You're more likely to find out about mouth taping and its benefits from a functional dentist. You can go to ask the dentist.com.

Ask the dentist.com. That's my friend, Dr. Mark Bahana. He has a directory of nationwide, even worldwide, functional dentist. And many of them are very familiar with the benefits of mouth taping and many of them also run and work in conjunction with your primary care physician to help you get to the root of disordered sleep. They'll run sleep studies on you and many other things that are there. So let's talk about some of the Q&As that people have. Can you use mouth tape even if you have sleep apnea and use a CPAP machine? Yes, many people use mouth tape even if they use a CPAP machine. Both one of my best friends and my dad are on CPAP machines. It's been a game changer for them.

Both of them had undiagnosed sleep apnea. And when it finally got addressed through a sleep study, they found that their snoring at night was a sign that they were choking. One of my friends, actually, he stopped breathing at night for up to 30 to 40 times an hour, which means that his brain is not getting oxygen in those chemo. moments, which is why there seems to be an association with sleep apnea, according to Dr. Dale Bredesen, one of the top Alzheimer's researchers in this field, why there seems to be an association with people who have severe sleep apnea and things like Alzheimer's in cognitive decline. It will impact your brain health over a period of time.

So if you think you have sleep apnea, definitely get a sleep study, get some treatment, and often that treatment is as simple as a CPAP machine, those machines, those machines that people wear at night over their mouth to get better and better. breathing, they're made more effective with mouth taping. And many people do it. You can search online for different forums where people provide best tips and practices. Is mouth taping safe for kids? And the answer is generally yes. Just make sure they can easily open their mouths if needed to. Mouth taping is not recommended for very young children or babies. That's an important thing. We're talking about older kids. If you want to learn more about mouth breathing for kids, we have a blog post in the

show notes by myo functional therapist Sarah Hornsby. You can read more about that and she talks about it in depth. Is mouth taping safe for pregnant women? Yes, but of course, anything with pregnancy, talk to your doctor first. But I have many female friends in my network who were pregnant and still incorporated mouth taping to encourage maximum breathing through your nose. Now, who should shouldn't do mouth taping. If you're sick or congested or have really severe allergies, a deviated septum, or some kind of blockage that prevents you from fully breathing through your nose, mouth taping isn't a great idea. You might want to figure out why you're so congested. You might want to figure out why your allergies are so severe. Often it has to do with gut health and food

sensitivities and other things like that that you can explore with a functional medicine doctor. One note that I'll mention in is that a common culprit of, of nasal congestion is actually a dusty bedroom. So that's something to look at. You know, incorporating some sort of air filter, a high quality air filter like air doctor could be a useful part of it. Also, sometimes people have severe mold issues in their house, and that can be leading to a lot of allergies and dust inside of there too. But work with a doctor to get to the root issue of why you're so congested. And generally, after you sort that out, then you can incorporate mouth taping into your routine. Now,

My recommendation for mouth tapes and what exactly you're going to use and how it works is coming up. So one of the mouth tapes that a lot of people use, you can easily find it on Amazon. It's like six bucks. It's called Medvance silicone tape. This is a great low-cost option for people who want to get started with mouth taping. And here's how you get started with mouth taping. Right before bed, you're cutting a tiny piece of tape, maybe a quarter of an inch. Now, you're placing the mouth tape over the center of your lips, just the center.

You're not trying to cover your entire mouth. And you place the mouth tape over the center of your lips, and you just lightly fasten your lips together. The goal here is to lightly keep your lips together. When you lightly keep your lips together, you're preventing your mouth from being open wide. If you're not watching the YouTube, this is not going to make any sense, but your mouth is open wide like this. And you see people a lot.

If you watch people who breathe through their mouth at night, they're fast asleep, they're often snoring, and they're breathing through their mouth like, and when you fasten your mouth with just a tiny bit of mouth tape, just a tiny bit. That's all that's needed. You keep your mouth shut. And to take it one step further, that often helps the tongue, your tongue be placed on the roof of your mouth, on the roof of your mouth, which forces you to breathe through your nose. And that's really it. If you want to watch a clip expanding on that a little bit further from James Nestor, the author of Breath, here's a short little clip that is on YouTube that you can watch inside of the show notes where he goes more into it in detail. More than anything, it's just reminding you that you're not covering your entire mouth. It's a small piece of tape and you don't need some fancy, super expensive mouth tape that's out there. You can just get some very basic silicone tape that you get on Amazon for a few bucks. Now, if you want to splurge a little bit, there is a brand that I use.

I have no affiliation with them, no back-end dealings or anything. I just find it easy. And it's called Somnifix. And Somnifix is mouth tape specifically. It's taped designed specifically for mouth tape. And it has a small breathing vent to alleviate some of the fear and anxiety around mouth taping while you're asleep. Somnifix can easily be applied and removed from your mouth without getting stuck on your lips or facial hair.

It's fancier option, so it's more expensive. It works perfectly. It's what my wife and I use just to keep it simple and easy. And I have them sent out to me every month. Again, no affiliation with the company, no kickbacks. It's just genuinely something that I use in my life. And for, again, anybody who's afraid, Cosmni Fix does cover the full lips,

even though it has vents for you to easily breathe, an anecdote that I'll incorporate in is that often at night, if I'm tossing and turning a lot or if I open my jaw really wide just by accident, not even knowing, the Somnifix mouth tape will just pop off automatically. And so even some nights, it's so loose that you have to make sure that it actually stays on by keeping it firm. So this idea that you're going to be trapped or you're not going to be able to breathe, it's kind of silly, but I understand why people feel that way. You're not using duct tape.

You're not using any kind of crazy tape that's out there. You're just using a little bit of lightly fastened tape, either Somnifix or sometimes people use 3M tape. The problem with 3M tape that's often used for people with mouth taping is that. I find that it's so sticky, even if you use a little bit of it, that it really peels off and it can kind of rip a little bit of skin from your mouth. But that's another option that's out there. So here are my final thoughts on mouth taping and mouth breathing. I'll admit, when I first heard about mouth taping, I was a little skeptical.

But once I heard about the importance of breathing through your nose and the role that nitric oxide plays in our sleep and overall health, I totally understood what the hype was all about. There's no timeline for how long you can mouth tape or how long you should mouth tape. The goal is to retain your body's ability to breathe through your nose, but it's up to you if you want to experiment with it for a couple weeks or make it a part of your nightly routine for the long term like my wife and I do. Again, mouth taping can seem crazy,

but it's a worthwhile endeavor to take on, especially if you're someone who's serious about improving your sleep quality. So let's give it a shot and tell me, visit my website, and hit the contact form, d-H-R-U-R-O-H-I-T-T-com, Drewpro.com, hit the contact form and reach out to me if you end up trying, mouth-taping and tell me, did it work for you, did it not work for you? I'd love to hear from you.

And by the way, while you're on my website, click on the tab that says, try this to sign up and get my newsletters first before I cover them here on the podcast. Every Friday, you'll get a new newsletter for me and my team where we talk about something that you can try in your life, that's why we call it Try This, to radically improve your health and help you achieve the goals and dreams that you're shooting for.

I'm Drew Proet. This is another episode of Drew Proet podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Share this episode with a friend, especially someone who you think is interested in the topic of mouth taping to avoid mouth breathing. I'll see you next week.