Getting a regular good night’s sleep is essential for both physical and mental health. Yet so many of us struggle with this seemingly simple task. Many common sleep disorders – such as insomnia, snoring and sleep apnoea – are a result of incorrect breathing habits.

If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, or sleep right through but still wake up tired, snore, or experience periods of choking or gasping during sleep, you are more than likely suffering from breathing disordered sleep. You could benefit greatly from learning how to retrain your breathing. Below are some of the most common breathing disordered sleep issues that we can help with here at The Breathe Clinic.

Insomnia

We all have trouble sleeping from time to time, but when it happens weekly or even nightly it has a huge impact on our health and wellbeing. This is classified as insomnia. Insomnia varies… you may find it hard to fall asleep and/or wake up many times during the night. You may also wake up far too early in the morning or sleep through the night but wake up still feeling tired. This ongoing lack of quality sleep results in extreme daytime fatigue and the inability to concentrate. Often, it can lead to anxiety and depression.

Many complain that they can’t sleep due to overthinking. But what you might not realise is that your abnormal or hyperactive breathing patterns may be lowering the carbon dioxide levels in your body. In turn, this promotes excitability in your brain. Retraining your breathing with The Breathe Clinic techniques restores balance, helping both your mind and body to relax into deeper, longer sleep phases.

Snoring

Snoring is not only disruptive and annoying for your loved ones, but it can also be a serious health problem that leads to poor quality sleep. It is also a prime indicator of sleep apnoea. Snoring is caused by the vibration of the soft tissues in the airway and the air turbulence. The way you breathe may be contributing to the vibration and the air turbulence thus making the snoring sounds at night. In many cases, it is possible to alleviate snoring without using a special device or even resorting to surgery.

Sleep Apnoea

This is a condition that causes you to stop breathing at certain points in a sleep cycle. There are two types of sleep apnoea: obstructive and central.

Obstructive sleep apnoea is when the upper airways collapse and block the breath. This may be caused by hyperventilation (or over-breathing), much like vigorous sipping on a straw can collapse it and make you unable to sip through it.

Central sleep apnoea occurs when the brain instructs the body to stop breathing. In breathing disordered sleeping, this is caused by over-breathing and increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the body. As a response, the brain represses the breathing reflex to restore CO2 levels. The episodes can last from 10 seconds to two minutes and the resumption of breathing is often accompanied by choking, coughing or gasping. This can happen countless times over the course of the night, meaning sufferers don’t benefit from the deeper, restorative sleep phases of a normal sleep pattern.

How Buteyko can help

Are you sick of feeling tired after supposedly sleeping all night? Then the Buteyko Method that is taught here at The Breathe Clinic could be just what you need. If you are experiencing any of these sleep-related problems, then the Buteyko Method of breathing retraining can help restore healthy, functional breathing patterns and bring back quality sleep to your life.

The Breathe Clinic offers one-on-one coaching, or group workshop sessions to train you how to alter your daytime breathing patterns. Over time, these changes will become habitual and carry over into your sleep. Book a Breathing Assessment and Capnography session today to see if this might be the right for you.

Dina from The Breathe Clinic would love to help you breathe better for any insomnia, snoring and sleep apnoea issues.