Dr. Sarah Petrich will bring you through several signs and tests to assess whether you can breathe adequately through your nose. She also walks you through easy ways to improve nasal breathing, and with whom you can consult with if the easy fixes don’t help. And, Dr. Sarah demonstrates an easy exercise to open up your upper airway and release neck tension.
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/s-i2q80v6Yo
About Sarah Petrich, PT, DPT, PRC, NCPT:
As a specialist in Postural Restoration, Pilates, & Dance Medicine, Dr. Sarah Petrich provides physical therapy and Pilates training focusing on re-balancing posture, alignment and breathing for patients and wellness clients. When not in the clinic or on zoom, she's often traveling around the nation teaching educational courses to healthcare professionals, Pilates instructors and other movement specialists. You can find her and her courses on her website www.sarahpetrich.com or on Instagram at @drsarahpetrich.
Catch Oxygen Plus at @oxygenplus on TikTok and Instagram
Dr. Sarah Petrich will bring you through several signs and tests to assess whether you can breathe adequately through your nose. She also walks you through easy ways to improve nasal breathing, and with whom you can consult with if the easy fixes don’t help. And, Dr. Sarah demonstrates an easy exercise to open up your upper airway and release neck tension.
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/s-i2q80v6Yo
About Sarah Petrich, PT, DPT, PRC, NCPT:
As a specialist in Postural Restoration, Pilates, & Dance Medicine, Dr. Sarah Petrich provides physical therapy and Pilates training focusing on re-balancing posture, alignment and breathing for patients and wellness clients. When not in the clinic or on zoom, she's often traveling around the nation teaching educational courses to healthcare professionals, Pilates instructors and other movement specialists. You can find her and her courses on her website www.sarahpetrich.com or on Instagram at @drsarahpetrich.
Catch Oxygen Plus at @oxygenplus on TikTok and Instagram
Just be happy with the a .
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Dr. Sarah Petrich and uh , I am um , wondering if you really can breathe through your nose adequately 'cause it's really important and if you wanna know why we have another video on that. But first I have a few questions for you. Can you breathe with your mouth closed through your nose for one minute comfortably? Um, do you ever wake up in the morning with your mouth open, dry mouth? I hate to say it, but sometimes drooling. Ugh uh , you're breathing through your mouth when you sleep. Um, can you even close your mouth comfortably? 'cause some people actually can't without creating tension. So when you close your mouth, some people because of their occlusion or some other factors really can't do that comfortably. If not, you are probably still a mouth breather. Um , and then , uh, can you breathe through both nostrils but not at the same time? Can you breathe through each one? So you can do a simple sniff test, close one nostril and breathe in and then try the other one. And if you're like, oh , I can't breathe through them the same amount, that's okay, don't panic, that's normal. Um, we have a circadian rhythm that switches your dominant nostril. Yes, you have a dominant nostril, but it'll switch ever so often. Um, so it's okay if one is more open than the other, but you still wanna be able to be , be able to breathe through both nostrils. Now if you're like, Hey, I've got a cold. No problem, that's temporary. You know how to take care of that. But some people have chronic allergies all the time and that impacts your ability to breathe your nose. This is an issue. So if you haven't already tried over the counter , uh, help, which may sound obvious but you'd never know, <laugh> uh, try to do something for your allergies. If that's not enough, go talk to an allergist. Your ability to breathe through your nose is so important to your quality of life. Uh, if you appreciate how important sleep is for the quality of your life, then you should value whether you can breathe your nose. Now you might also have difficulties breathing through your nose because of inflammation and there's some disorders. Um, one that's more common is called rhinitis. Uh, and that's an inflammatory issue of your nose and you can get help from a doctor for that. So if that's an issue, you should definitely look into that. Now there are some other factors that can impact your ability to breathe through your nose. You can have some anatomical abnormalities and that can become, that can that can be created because you had some trauma, so some facial trauma or you had surgery. If you've had your nose done, that might be an issue for you. Um, there also can be just regular anatomical abnormalities that happen like deviated symptoms. Um, some people have really high palettes, so that's the roof of your mouth and if it's high and narrow, that also will impact your upper airway. You may wanna talk to an airway focused dentist and that's the big key. They need to be kind of more airway focused and understand airflow people or dentists that specialize in sleep disorders are usually good references for that. Um , you also might need to talk to an airway focused ENT . That's an ears, nose and throat doctor 'cause you might have issues in your nose like terminates and adenoids. I won't go into the details of those, but if you have some of those issues, you may need to have that checked out. And people who really struggle with that, if they do an appropriate um , intervention to help with that, it can greatly impact your life. Uh , and then there's one other issue and that goes back to a dental issue as well. There was the high palate issue for uh , the mouth, but also if your teeth don't line up nicely and you've got some male occlusions, that's the fancy term for it, but your bottom teeth and your top teeth don't line up well and your jaw doesn't line up with your mandible. That's the top of your mouth. Um, you also might have some airway issues that are impacting your nose. Now that being said, those are all like go to the doctor kind of things. However, there's also some really simple things you can do to make your life better and make it easier to breathe your nose if you just don't breathe your nose when you're sleeping. Nasal strips are the simplest thing you can do and sheep. So , um, there's all sorts of different kinds, but there's ones on over your nose. There's even some that go on your face and just pull , um, the skin apart and open up your airflow. Now there's also people that just have a habit of breathing through their mouth and if you just have a habit of breathing through your uh , mouth, you can even just tape your mouth shut. Sounds extreme kind of crazy and a little scary if you're a mouth breather. And I can say that as a former mouth breather. When I, when I used to sleep, I didn't know until I was like 12 years old , years old at a , um, at a sleepover that you're supposed to breathe your nose when you sleep. 'cause I heard some other girl talk about another girl who sleeps with her mouth open and was drooling. And I thought to myself, oh no, I better figure this out. So turns out I learned when I was 12, you're supposed to breathe your nose. Not everybody knows. But , uh, I did try a little bit of taping if you just put a little tape and I didn't tape my whole mouth 'cause that was a little scary to me. But I put a little tape over the front. Gauze tape works great. Um, and after like a good week, I breathe through my nose now when I sleep and I sleep much, much better now. Um, they're also , um, as I alluded to earlier, if you cannot close your mouth comfortably, that can be an issue. Um, and that can be because your lips are actually tight, like the muscles are tight and your tissue's tight. You can have some tongue issues where your tongue doesn't have good mobility. Um, you can also just have general , um, lip mobility issues or jaw mobility issues. And a myofunctional therapist , um, which is like a physical therapist of the mouth , um, can help with that. Now lastly, there's one more thing that I am a little more attuned to and that's helping with your posture. And your posture actually can help you , um, get more airflow through your nose. And sometimes your airflow is impacting your posture, which is why I talked about all those other , um, disciplines that can help you with your airflow. But a lot of times if you just do a few simple things, you can actually open that up as well. So I'm here to tell you a little bit about that. So I , uh, I'm sitting in a lower chair here today and I'm sitting here lower because if you're sitting low, it's kind of nice to have the knees at the same height as your hips and that helps you sit back on your sits bones. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna try to turn off some of these anterior neck muscles. So those , there's , those are the front neck muscles. They will tend to overwork when you're not breathing well and they will be overworking to try to pull air into your chest if you aren't using your diaphragm and your abdomen well for breathing, which we're gonna talk about in another video. So to get ready you just need to be able to put your hands on your sternum, sit on your sits bones and relax your shoulders and then take a breath of air into your nose if you can. And then exhale all the way out and let your hands gently pull down your sternum and relax and hold your air out for a little bit until you get hungry for air. And then take a breath of air in and you're basically just lengthening the front of your neck and opening up your decolletage. Then we are gonna add another thing on the next breath. So on your next exhale you can roll your head back. So exhale, sternum goes down as your head tilts up and now we're getting even more of a lengthening and stretch through the front of your neck. And then when you're ready for your inhale, bring your nose back center and breathe in. Now I can add onto that, but before I do , um, just take note. When you tilt your head back, it's not actually tensing the back of these neck muscles, which is great 'cause a lot of people get tension back there. As you roll your head back, it's actually allowing these muscles to go on slack. So it's also really beneficial for tension back here. So win-win. Now we're gonna add one more layer on top of that if you wanna add just a little more stretch and a little more benefit. So you take a breath of Arian , exhale out and you roll your head back. And then you can take your bottom teeth and bring 'em in front of your top teeth like you're doing an underbite. And that will also lengthen the neck even more. When you are ready for your inhale, bring your neck back to center and breathe in. And there you have it. So E is E easy , a little posture exercise to lengthen the neck. It also brings your cranium back a little bit more in line with your shoulders after you're done with it. So as a therapist, I'm happier with that 'cause you're gonna have better po looking posture and it's gonna help open up your nasopharynx so that you can inhale through your nose a little bit better. Thanks everybody for watching and I wanna do an extra special thanks to Oxygen Plus I hope you learn something. And if you'd like to find me, you can find me@sarahpetrich.com. S-A-R-A-H-P-E-T-R-I-C h.com . Or if you wanna learn more about Oxygen Plus you can find them@oxygenplus.com.