A chronic hyperventilation syndrome is often maintained by breathing too fast and too deep during night sleep. In this article you will find a collection of tips and tricks, many of which are derived from Buteyko therapy, on how not to speed up your breathing at night.

The most important basic rule is to never breathe through the mouth at night. The better your health is, the more likely you are to breathe only through your nose. However, if this is not the case (indicators are for example a dry mouth or low CP-value in the morning, alternatively a bed neighbor reporting mouth breathing or snoring), then talk to me about what measures you can take to stop mouth breathing.

Consequently, you must avoid swelling of your nasal mucous membranes at night, because as soon as the nasal passage is blocked, the body will switch to mouth breathing.

This includes finding out whether you suffer from allergies. If so, you must do everything possible to remove possible allergens from your sleeping area. This means among other things

• Pollen protection grids for pollen allergies to be used consistently
• Change bed linen regularly
• remove dust traps such as carpets, blankets, pillows, because they release the dust and let your nose react to it
• In case of animal hair allergies never let animals into the bedroom.
• Take a shower and put on fresh sleeping clothes when you go to bed (otherwise you might transfer pollen from your hair to your pillow and inhale it later)
• Remove plants if you react to mold (because soil is always moldy)
• While colds consistently treat the swelling of mucus, in consultation with me for example through nasal sprays or nasal showers

Do you sleep restlessly because of too much noise, light or electrosmog? Remove all these sources of interference as far as possible.

For example, while it is not easy to flip a power line, you can charge your cell phone outside your bedroom, you could ground your pillow with special grounding wires, you could replace flickering lamps (fluorescent tubes) with warm halogen light.

The higher your CP value, the faster you will go through deep and dream sleep phases in one night. Wake up spontaneously after sufficient sleep, please get up and do not turn over to the »other side« again. Especially at the end of the night - when you sleep extra long - you will go through a particularly large number of REM sleep phases (dream sleep), in which you breathe faster than necessary.

You recommend sleep measurements - talk to me about this if necessary - to determine whether you have already slept enough after 6 1/2 hours, for example, after which you wake up spontaneously, to decide that you can then get up with a clear conscience.

But please note that this does not mean that you should set an alarm clock to »too early«. Because if you artificially miss sleep phases, your health will not improve either. Shorter periods of sleep must be »natural«. If your body has an increased need for sleep, for example due to infections, then you should give in to this and go.

Sleeping on your back speeds up your breathing. It is best to sleep on your side, if necessary with a side sleeper pillow.

Make sure that your mattress is not too soft. Your bedroom should also not be too warm, just as your blanket should not be too thick, because too high temperatures when sleeping also accelerate breathing.

By avoiding factors that make your nose swell up, by avoiding disturbing factors in your bedroom, by the right sleeping position and the right temperature in bed, you can influence that you do not start breathing excessively fast while sleeping.

If you have any questions about this topic or wish to get a personal consultation with our practice, please schedule an appointment. Appointments can take place in our Kaiserslautern office or over the phone.

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