Mouth breathers

I’m a mouth breather, but not in a Stranger Things way. At least, I hope not.

The Netflix phenomenon brought back this slang term for a stupid person, but I just mean that I actually prefer breathing through my mouth. It’s never really been something I’ve given much thought to because I always just assumed that the win for me physically was getting oxygen. I mean, oxygen is pretty fundamental to living, and so someone who knows enough to breathe, even if it’s through the mouth, can’t be stupid, right?

An intentional non-breather, maybe. But not a mouth breather.

Of course, thinking about mouth breathing took me to Google and after, oh, I don’t know, a few seconds of reading the results, I decided to become a nose breather. Who knew breathing through the mouth could lead to all those bad things? One site said, “In adults, chronic mouth breathing can cause bad breath and gum disease. It can also worsen symptoms of other illnesses.”

Who wants that? And who wants to be married to that?? I am so sorry for anyone who has been victimized by my bad mouth breathing breath, especially my wife, The B99, who has endured almost 3 decades of second-hand mouth breathing.

And that’s the point of this whole post: deciding to become a nose breather isn’t the same as becoming a nose breather. It’s a start. A necessary first step. But breathing hasn’t felt natural at all the whole time I’ve been breathing through my nose. The entire three and a half minutes.

But that’s how change is. We want the effect of change without the effort of change. Said another way, we’d like the product of change without the process of change.

I’d like to breathe through my nose and have better smelling breath. I’d also like to breathe effortlessly and not have to keep telling myself to keep my mouth closed. The change will take time, it always does, but change is possible.

I know this because I didn’t breathe through my mouth at all as I wrote this. I also checked my breath and didn’t die. Go me.

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