Dr White

Does mouth breathing make people ugly?

By Dr White

 


"Mouth breathing" is an abnormal state of breathing 

But sleeping with your mouth open is not the same as mouth breathing.

When the human body breathes normally, the majority of the respiratory airflow should pass through the nasal cavity, this breathing state is normal breathing.

If the respiratory airflow through the mouth and more than a certain percentage (generally in the 25% to 30% or so), it is mouth breathing.

Depending on the cause, mouth breathing can be divided into "obstructive mouth breathing" and "habitual mouth breathing".

Obstructive mouth breathing is when the nasal cavity is completely or partially obstructed, for example, in cases of rhinitis or colds, airflow cannot enter through the nasal cavity, so in order to ensure sufficient oxygen, one has to breathe through the mouth.

Habitual mouth breathing is when the nasal cavity is not obstructed, but you habitually open your mouth to breathe, or you habitually keep breathing through your mouth after the cause of nasal obstruction is removed.

Habituation takes time to develop and therefore often occurs in children after 6 years of age.

So how do you know if you have a mouth breathing problem?

Everyone with a small double-sided mirror, you can simply give yourself / help others to test (double-sided mirror method):

Put the double-sided mirror below room temperature between the nostrils and lips, observe the lens, the top lens with fog is nasal breathing, the bottom lens with fog is mouth breathing.

A breathing problem triggered such a big discussion, what people are really curious about is - the impact on the face.

Does mouth breathing make people ugly?

Not necessarily.

Prolonged open-mouth breathing does, in principle, have the potential to lead to pressure imbalances in the oral and nasal cavities, affecting the development of children's facial muscles.

This famous chart should also cause anxiety to many people who have seen it.

Image source: consciousbreathing.com

But researchers have found that changes in facial appearance are not as simple as "mouth breathing".

In 2007, three researchers studied the relationship between mouth breathing, nasal breathing and facial morphology in 119 adolescents aged 15 to 18 and found no evidence of a correlation between mouth breathing and facial morphology.

Human appearance is influenced by multiple factors, and the relevance of mouth breathing alone to this facial feature is controversial, and it is unclear at least how long mouth breathing causes corresponding clinical changes.

Some studies have also suggested that the change in facial appearance is not due to mouth breathing, but rather to the underlying disease problem.

Although mouth breathing is not necessarily to blame for the ugliness, it does have some harmful effects.

For example, during sleep, mouth breathing may lead to snoring, strange sleeping posture, repeated turning over, excessive sweating and other symptoms that affect the quality of sleep. Over time, it may lead to poor concentration, irritability, irritability and other performance during the day.

Not only that, long-term mouth breathing may also cause respiratory tract infections.

The nasal cavity is the first line of defense of the respiratory tract, with the role of heating, humidification, filtering air. If long-term mouth breathing, the nasal defense does not play a role, the air is not filtered and inhaled directly into the lungs, may cause respiratory tract infections.

To solve mouth breathing, symptomatic treatment is more important

If you really want to solve mouth breathing, you first need to check the nasal ventilation to determine the problem causing mouth breathing.

  • If the dyspnea is caused by rhinitis, etc., it can be treated first by cleaning the nasal passages, etc.
  • If the dyspnea is caused by enlarged tonsils and adenoids, then the doctor will choose conservative treatment or adenoids removal surgery depending on the situation.
  • If there is no problem with the ear, nose and throat, then you need to get your facial development checked. For example, the teeth are not aligned, buck teeth and other conditions also tend to cause the natural state is easy to open the mouth. In this case, orthodontic treatment is needed to solve the problem of open mouth and even "ugly".

At the same time, it is also necessary to break bad habits and perform daily functional training of the labial muscles for a certain period of time to close the upper lip properly by actively exercising the relaxed labial muscles (in short: to close the mouth), rather than passively sticking the mouth.

Here, we offer a little faith in breaking bad habits.

Beware of being peeked at when it will be ugly!



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