78 | How Posture, Breathing, and Movement affect Snoring

If you or a family member is snoring at night, learn how your posture, breathing, and movement are affecting snoring and things you can do to help.

Align in your Car information and videos

The study on leg movement and snoring


Breathing through your nose and allergies. (1:23)
Practice breathing and slowing it down. (3:45)
Where your tongue should rest in your mouth. (5:52)
How to improve your posture. (8:09)
How to improve your sleep hygiene? (10:08)
Prolonged sitting may promote leg fluid retention. (12:04)
The results of the study. (13:49)
Things to do right now to help with snoring. (15:25)

Transcript

Unknown: 0:05

Welcome to raising healthy humans, a podcast created for busy moms where you can easily find information on health and wellness for your family. Enjoy experts who share tips on how to raise children through each phase of life. Gather current information on nutrition and wellness. And listen to Courtney, a health coach, movement specialist and founder of form fit and active and supportive community where she helps busy moms move more on raising healthy humans podcast, Courtney shares her personal life experiences, training, knowledge and conversations with other health and wellness experts. So you can raise healthy humans. Today, we are talking about sleep, and snoring and how breathing posture and movement may be affecting your snoring and sleep. So today, I want to start with breathing and kind of talk to you a little bit about things to pay attention to things to notice in your breathing and how that can help you sleep a little bit better at night. So the first thing is, is make sure that you work on breathing through your nose. And many times people will say to me, I can't breathe through my nose because I have seasonal allergies. What I recommend you do if you deal with allergies, and you're dealing with a lot of stuffy nose type situations, you've got to look at your diet. That is where it begins. I promise you can shake your head at me No, but it is the truth. Look at your diet, clean up your diet, don't worry so much about what you need to take out of your diet. Instead, let's look at what can we add to our diet. So the first thing and yes, I understand this is about sleeping, but I do have this has to do with breathing. And if you can't breathe through your nose, you're never going to be able to fix all these other things. So start with adding more fruits and vegetables into your diet, more protein and healthy fats. If you start there, you will naturally decrease some of these inflammatory foods that you are eating. The other thing that will occur is the more healthy fats and proteins you eat, the less sugar and carbohydrates you are going to eat because you will be satiated longer. And when this occurs, you're eating less of those inflammatory foods. So I always try to focus on what we can add in rather than what we need to strip away. Once you can start working on that you will decrease inflammation in your body naturally, which will allow for you to breathe a little bit better. The other thing that you need to do is work on practicing breathing through your nose. Okay, so even if you deal with congestion, start work on breathing through your nose, you will notice the more you practice it, the easier it becomes and the more your nose starts to naturally decrease the congestion in it. So two things that you need to focus on to work on allowing for more, you know, being able to breathe through your nose better. And then you're going to start working on practicing breathing. Now, what has happened societally is we used to have a eight breaths per minute used to be what was considered normal overtime and the health of our nation maybe world I'm not sure where this is, I'm guessing it's more of a Western protocol that's been followed. It is normal to breathe 16 to 21 breaths in a minute from eight. That's basically double. That's concerning to me. So we need to I would not just say, oh, let's just take what is stated is normal. No, we need to be optimal, not just normal. So work on slowing down your breathing. And what I like to do is I will just there is a breathe app where you can practice breathing with the breathe. It's I think it's just called Breathe app. And you it'll like provide you the information so that you know how long you to breathe in how long Breathe out. And when to take that next breath, you can work on that. The other thing you can do is just time yourself on time and see how many breaths are you doing in one minute. And if it's 15, then let's work on slowing it down just by one breath, just by one, that doesn't mean I'm holding my breath, it means I'm working on trying to create a deeper, fuller breath with the next you know that next minute, you're trying to breathe in longer and breathe out, I wouldn't spend too much time doing this, you don't want to be dealing with any kind of you know, some people deal with anxiety when it comes to breathing, or hyperventilating because you're not taking deep, full breaths. So just do it like a minute, today, then try it again in a couple of days, or whatever you want to work on trying to breathe in and out through your nose. The other thing I want you to do when you're practicing this, is pay attention to where your tongue is in your mouth. So many of us get lazy tongues, and they just kind of rest on the floor of our mouth. This changes the way everything sits in your mouth. So if you've got a lazy tongue, when you go to sleep at night, and you're dealing with your mouth is open, because you're open, you know, mouth breathing, and then you've got that lazy tongue, it's gonna naturally slide back into the back of the throat and create airway restriction and you know, breathing is going to be compromised, and you will be storing. So we need to work on nose breathing to become more natural at that. And also where our mouth, I'm sorry, where our tongue sits in our mouth, will affect how everything in our mouth is working. So what I want you to do is say, the letter N, as in NO. So say, where your tongue is when you say that is where the tongue should rest. Now the difference is, when I say, Hmm, it's more of the tip of my tongue that's pushing up into the roof of my mouth, what I need to do is, once I say, hmm, I'm then going to suck the mid portion of my tongue up into the roof of my mouth. So I'll go, huh. And then when I do that, I've sucked the mid portion of the tongue in my mouth. And I'm now letting the tip of my tongue just kind of rest, and it shouldn't be touching anything, it should just be kind of resting there. So that is how you want to work on tongue strengthening basically, is what it's going to be helping you to do, naturally putting your tongue in the proper place of your mouth, which will help you to naturally strengthen the muscles in your mouth, especially your tongue, it will help to maybe possibly start to widen that palate a little bit to create a little bit more space. And then it will help to open the airways a little bit more. So that is the first part of breathing to help with snoring. The second thing is your posture. So you've heard me numerous times talking about this rounded forward position, the tongue depending on where the tongue is in the mouth, if it's pressing up against the front of the teeth, that naturally pushes your head forward. So get that tongue placement, right and then start working on thinking about lengthening so that the part of your ear, like say, the middle of your ear, is in line with your shoulder and I have information about aligning in your car. That will help you kind of sit more upright. But the goal is to get that ear above the shoulder so that if you drew straight line down your ear would be right in line with the shoulder so that your head is more sitting upright, which will then allow for muscles not to be tight or lengthened. So when we go into this rounded forward posture, all of these muscles in the neck get loose and lengthened. And then the muscles in the back of the neck get tight. So what we need to do is we need to work on relaxing that tension area. So a couple of exercises that you can do is just some head circles nice and easy. You don't want to do any of this fast, but you can just kind of go head in a circle nice and easy around and then the other way and then take that chin turn it towards one direction, one shoulder, and then the other. And then ear goes to the shoulder and ear goes to the shoulder. You can practice This every day before you go to bed to help work on releasing the tension that has started to occur in the neck. So that's the second thing. I would also make sure if you are sleeping with a high pillow, I would start working on trying to bring that pillow size back down to lower so that you aren't jutted forward when you're sleeping. Because that there again is going to change how the airway it will become more constricted, if you think about like a straw, a bent straw, the airway is constricted, we want to work on trying to bring it back, up and down, you know, regular so that it has more open flow of the airway. And then the last thing that I want to talk about is this interesting article that I read, it was a study that was conducted in 2017, in respiratory physiology and neurobiology, and it was conducted by the Center for Biotechnology Information. And basically what they did is they took 16 people, and I know this is a very small study. But I love how they did this study, because they kind of tested it over themselves. And you'll see what I'm talking about in a moment. And, you know, my feeling is always so when you have these different companies, there's not a lot of money behind some of these studies, compared to other studies that have a lot of money behind it. So that doesn't mean that the data is not valuable information, it still provides a lot of information. And if this means that I don't need to have surgery or some sort of medical equipment, and I can work on something naturally, what is it going to hurt me, you know, obviously, if you have sleep apnea or something like that, I would definitely make sure to go get studies and things like that. But I'm just saying for those of us who, you know, this is not going to hurt you to test out prior to going to that aspect. So basically what they did is they took 16 people that they knew were snores, and they tested them they had and the theory was that those who sit throughout the day are more apt to snore than those who stay moving. And what they did was they gave eight of them little footsteps to place under their desk. And these were a sedentary group who had to work all day at a desk type situation. So eight of them just sat in went about their day, just like normal. And then there were eight more who were given those little like foot bicycle pedal things to put under their desk. And then they pedaled that throughout the morning. And I think they did it like a study for four hours. So they tested them, what they did is they measured the fluid in their calves. And the theory was that prolonged sitting, may may promote legged fluid retention, that is going to redistribute to their neck at night. So that when you lay down, if you have this fluid in your calves from sitting all day, it will redirect into your neck in the evening, which makes you more susceptible to snoring because you know there's a lot more liquid and fluid in that area. So what they found when they did this study is that that ate the that we're peddling had less fluid retention. And that night had less signs of snoring, decreased snoring. They then then the other group, okay, here's the kicker. Here's what I love about this study. Instead of just taking that information being done, they then flip flop the group. So then the next night, the other group got the pedals or the next day the other group got the pedals. So that was the group that was snoring so much. So the next day they had the pedals and they were doing the pedaling, while the other group who wasn't snoring as much now are sedentary. The exact same thing occurred the group that was pedaling, they did not snore as much as the group that was sitting sedentary. So they determined that lower leg fluid volume tripled, and those participants, you know, were less likely three times less likely to snore at night. Oh, I'm sorry, no, it was the other way around. I read that wrong. The ones that were sedentary tripled. And they were more likely to snore, the ones that kept moving dropped by more than half, so they were less likely to snore. So yes, of course, there are some other things that may be involved in this. And that's why this is just one aspect. So things that you can do right now to start helping, if you or someone in your family deals with snoring, start working on breathing through your nose throughout the day. If you have a little mouth tape, they do sell it online, you can try it, I wouldn't try with just any tape is like three M mouse tape. It's safer so that if you you know, if you need to breathe during the night it does open. But that would be where I would start with that. Pay attention to where your tongue is placed in your mouth, because you want to make sure that your tongue is strong, not too tense, but strong, not lazy. Make sure that you are sending it straight so that your neck muscles aren't too tight, which could be creating restriction in your esophagus and airways. And then also make sure that you are moving. So hopefully that information will help you. And I found it very fascinating. Hopefully you did as well. Give it a try. Let me know in our moms raising healthy humans page, you can join us over there over on Facebook, and let me know if you tried it and see if you notice a difference. Also, I am doing a video if you're watching me here you're seeing that this is for a podcast as well. So you can stay on I will have the video recording of this in my membership portal where I'm going to be sharing some exercises as well. For those of you who want to work on some exercises if you deal with storing that may help. Okay, so hope you all have a wonderful day. Make sure to join us over in our moms raising healthy humans Facebook group or give us a try our membership. It is formfit online.com. You can try it join the daily movement snack, you'll be able to have access to this information, be able to watch this video where I go over some exercises and all the information that I just mentioned to you. Have a wonderful day and make sure to keep moving. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen to our podcasts. I hope you found this information valuable and hope that you are able to begin using some of the tips that were provided. Immediately. Make sure to check out the show notes for all the links that we discussed today. As a mom myself, I understand that at times you can feel alone and are looking for a sense of community. I hope that we are able to provide that for you. Make sure to join us over on our free Facebook community, moms raising healthy humans. We also offer three tiers, to our program where you can do daily movement snacks with a calendar. You also have opportunities to check out our membership portal where we have workouts, weekly workouts that you can do. And then we also provide zoom classes where you can work out with us live. We try to do something for everyone so that all people feel that they can find an opportunity to move more. Find a supportive community and live healthier lives. I hope to meet you soon and as always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions you might have. You can find us at form fit online.com And as always, keep moving