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Snoring is a huge issue affecting many people.
Despite the fact that snoring affects 30% of adults overall and 50% of people over 60, I've found that most people are completely unaware that snoring is a common outcome of dysfunctional breathing, which can be improved or reversed with breathing retraining.
It's true that many people who snore have complicated structural issues in their nose or throat that require medical treatment. But just like you can't lose eating fresh fruit and vegetables when you're sick, people who snore for any reason can adopt healthy breathing habits and strengthen underlying, unhealthy breathing patterns, enabling them to achieve the best results possible.
To Address Snoring, Pay Attention To These Two Breathing Habits
A person's breathing pattern is consistent throughout the day -- while awake and asleep. So one of the best things a snorer, or the partner of a snorer, can do is closely observe what's happening during sleep in order to change the pattern during waking hours.
Think right now of someone who snores. Aren't most people who snore breathing through their mouths rather than their noses at the time? I have observed that this pattern frequently goes on at night and during the day too. So starting to breathe through the nose during the day is a great step toward nasal breathing at night.
Then there's the noise...While snoring, a person is typically breathing a large amount of air, with such velocity that the gusts are making structures in the back of the throat vibrate enough to make sound. That's not necessary. The typical person who snores is over-breathing.
Just like experts know how much we should eat to maintain or lose or gain weight, there's also an optimal volume of air to breathe per minute depending on the activity. Scientists have proven that many people in our modern society are over-breathing, just like many are over-eating and under-exercising.
When we sleep we need less oxygen to help break food down into energy compared to our daytime requirements. Even during the day, when we are sitting or laying down resting, ideally we should be breathing so gently that no one can hear or see us breathe. Our torso should not move significantly at those times. Imagine how quiet and serene a sleeping infant is. That's how healthy adults are supposed to sleep. Match breathing to your activity.
Breathing Retraining Center offers individual and group training and coaching on self-management techniques to identify and correct poor-breathing habits. Breathing Retraining Center's educational products, courses and coaching are designed to improve breathing skills for people whose issues may be related to habits that have the potential to be improved, as a self-care/wellness activity. Breathing difficulty may be a warning sign of a life-treatening heart or lung condition, infection or other illness. Always check with your doctor about your own situation.
The Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies we teach are an alternative approach and are not the practice of medicine, psychology or a form of psychotherapy, nor are they a substitute for seeking medical or psychological advice from an apporpriate professional health-care provider. We want to make the important distinction between using the Buteyko Breathing Technique and other breathing-retraining strategies for health and well-being and the practice of medicine, psychology or any other licensed health-care profession.
Breathing classes, coaching and other services from Breathing Retraining Center are offered by teachers who are not licensed by the State of California as physicians or other healing-arts practitioners unless so noted. We offer alternative non-medical/non-psychological techniques and our services are considered to be laternative or complementary to the healing arts that are licensed by the State of California.