Did you know the body holds a lot of emotional tension that presents as physical tension in our joints and muscles?
Take a moment and assess your mouth muscles. Is your jaw firmly set with teeth possibly clenched? Is your tongue pressed tight to the floor of your mouth? If so, you might not be getting enough oxygen into your system, because the airway into your throat is partially blocked off.
As a result, this impacts your sleep quality, and may show signs that you could have sleep apnea.
People with jaw issues can also experience lock jaw, which means certain joints in your mouth can get stuck together, which locks the jaw in place, slightly open. If you’re opposed to eating nothing but apple juice until the issue resolves, it might be a good idea to talk to a sleep apnea expert to see what jaw-and-mouth-related exercises might be right for you.
Speaking of the jaw, how many times do you chew your food before you swallow?
You may have been taught from a young age to count the times we chew before we swallow, but with how busy life has gotten, proper ingestion has gone to the wayside in favour of hoovering our plates or opting for breakfast smoothies and processed foods. All of this leads to weaker jaw muscles due to softer chewing, meaning we don’t take bigger bites and don’t have a need to chew our food as thoroughly as our bodies require.
Has your dentist ever said you have an overbite? How you chew your food may be playing a part or mouth-breathing may also be playing a role in it.
Here’s a brain worm for you: an overbite is produced by poor forward posture, cause by compensation for improper oxygen intake. A dedicated sleep apnea coach can help you develop exercises to get your body back into literal alignment. Who knew that the way to better breathing habits lies in better posture?
Here's a thought: are your eyeteeth flat? Are your molars flat? Do you have flat spots in your teeth on one side of your mouth, but not the other, and don’t know why?
Unless a dentist has already spilled the beans, you might be grinding your teeth at night – just one of many symptoms of sleep apnea that unfortunately slip between the cracks.
If you already know you grind your teeth at night – what’s your tally so far of mangled mouthguards?
Dentists often prescribe mouthguards to protect your teeth from further wear-and-tear. And while that is super awesome of them to do, wearing a mouthguard doesn’t resolve the core issue of grinding and will eventually break down as a result, sending you back to the dentist for a replacement.
What you might not know is how teeth-grinding is linked to breathing issues. The reason people may grind their teeth in the night is because the body is trying to keep the airways open.
So how can a sleep apnea coach help you grind your teeth to a halt once and for all? With the same approach to any other patient with airflow issues. Exercises dedicated to finding ways to optimize your breathing that target problem areas such as snoring, tongue-and-jaw positioning, and keep those airways open at night.
Did you know your tongue defies gravity?
A lot of the time when we experience jaw issues, it is related to how you are breathing and the resting position of your tongue, because if your tongue is not resting on the roof of the mouth, you’re hanging off the joints and muscles to do all the heavy lifting.
What gives your jaw stability is your tongue – one of the strongest organs in the body – pragmatically, of course.
