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Mouth breathing keeps you on alert
Mouth breathing and cavities
The trouble starts in the mouth itself. Constant mouth breathing makes the mouth more acidic, which means considerably more cavities, and dentists going back 120 to 130 years have named chronic mouth breathing, not sugar, as the number one cause of cavities.
Air that never arrives
Air has to get down into the lungs to be extracted into the bloodstream. Through the mouth, the breath is shallow and goes into the chest, and much of it gets caught in the mouth, the throat, and the bronchi. The body spends energy bringing breath in and pushing it out without any purpose.
The stress cycle
A little oxygen still arrives, which leads to breathing more, heavier and faster. The faster and shallower the breathing gets, the more the lungs signal the brain that this is an emergency, and people run in that cycle of stress, with constant sympathetic nervous system agitation, all day long.
Why does a dry mouth lead to cavities?
Saliva neutralizes the acids that mouth bacteria make, and it supplies calcium and phosphate that repair enamel. Breathing through the mouth dries the tissues and reduces saliva's protective effect. Enamel begins to dissolve when the mouth's pH falls below about 5.5. Dental researchers link dry mouth to higher rates of decay, which is why conditions such as Sjogren's syndrome come with many cavities.
How does the nose prepare air for the lungs?
The nose warms incoming air to near body temperature, adds moisture, and filters out particles with hairs and sticky mucus. The turbinates, curled bony shelves inside the nose, create swirling flow that brings air into contact with the warm, moist lining. All of this happens in a fraction of a second on each breath. Air that comes through the mouth skips most of it.
Why does shallow breathing waste so much air?
Roughly 150 milliliters of every breath fills the airways, from the mouth down to the small bronchial tubes, and never reaches the air sacs where gas is exchanged. Physiologists call this anatomical dead space. A typical resting breath is around 500 milliliters, so the dead space takes up about a third of it. In a breath half that size, the dead space takes up well over half.
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