Are you sleeping a full seven to nine hours a night? Probably if you're not on shift, if you're a firefighter, but still waking up feeling less than refreshed. Do you toss and turn at night or wake up with a dry mouth every single time you wake up even from naps? Have you ever gotten smacked because you snore too loud or you're keeping your partner or bedmate up at night because you snore too much? Have you ever taken some heat for snoring too loudly at the firehouse?
A simple solution might be all you need, so stick around and find out how a little piece of tape might actually increase your rest and your overall longevity and livelihood. Welcome to the Firefighter Craftsmanship Podcast where we coach you to deal with the stressors of the job as a first responder as well as how to thrive off duty. My name is Kevin Housley, a Human Performance Coach and a firefighter since 2005.
I've been able to coach over a thousand emergency responders on ways to be more resilient, better prepared for the job, and how to be happier and healthier at home. So let's get to it and start optimizing your sleep. So today's topic, we're going to call it Tape It Up, but if you don't know by now, sleep is a foundation to ultimate human performance. And when we combine quality sleep with quality respiration, we can really level up our game both on and off the job.
We've talked a little bit about respiration on this podcast throughout, so go back and check out some previous episodes specifically. Episode 26 titled Using Your Breath for Relaxation and a Box Breathing Technique.
So some really, really good stuff in there and easy to implement protocols on using respiration to help you down-regulate and up your overall game, increasing your happiness, etc. So in this episode of the Firefighter Craspmanship podcast, we're going to talk about mouth tape while sleeping and give a surface overview of why this might be a key to help you get better rest and recover more efficiently.
So when we talk about mouth tape or taping your mouth while you sleep, the instant reaction for a lot of people is you basically want me to tape my mouth shut and die like I'm a hostage or something. And no, that is absolutely not what we're talking about. We're not talking about like wrapping tape around your head. We're not talking about using duct tape or smelling a rag like an old spy movie or something like that. So we're not talking about that at all.
So let's get into kind of what mouth tape means, how it might be an option for you. And I think a good disclaimer is, is I'm not a physician and I am not a sleep doctor. So talk to your primary medical provider about this. And we're going to talk about maybe referring to a sleep specialist here in a second, but this is not construed as medical advice.
So take what we have here, dive into some of the research that we have provided in the show notes, do your own research, figure out what's going to work for you, how these techniques may or may not help you and level up your game. Because all of this stuff is 100% customizable and it's 100% personalized to you, whether we're talking about human performance psychology, we're talking about tactical fitness or today we're talking about sleep.
And this episode, tape it up is going to actually kick off a sleep series that we're going to do here on the firefighter craftsmanship. So the next few episodes that we're going to do is going to be all around sleep and how we can educate ourselves around sleep, optimize our sleep and have some other tools and resources and interventions that maybe will help us with sleep. The first one being potentially mouth tape.
So there are a couple of fantastic books out there that dive into different aspects of health, breath and sleep, tons and tons and tons of resources on health for sure. A few really good resources of why we sleep book by Dr. Matthew Walker is an amazing resource that I highly recommend you check that out. And then a few really, really good books that are out there regarding breath and why respiration matters and how we breathe matters.
But really the first book that I want to talk about is called JAWS, the story of a hidden epidemic written by Conn and Ehrlich. And this really was the first book that kind of brought the concept of mouth taping while sleeping to the forefront. And this book was written by a professional author and an orthodontist. And really the basis of it was they were looking at why do most adolescents or kids these days need orthodontic work and why do they need braces?
Because historically that wasn't the case. And so when they looked at different skulls from all over the world, they noticed that you know, different tribes and different facial structures, different cultures, things like that, they all had the exact same style of bone, facial structures, they had the square jaw, they didn't have the narrowing face and things like we see today. And so that was really kind of the foundation of the book.
Really really good resource linked to the show notes for a link to Amazon to purchase that book if you're interested, but definitely worth your time and energy to kind of read that, especially if you have children and want to set them up for success and potentially want to save yourself a ton of money in orthodontic work. But this was kind of that first book that talked about mouth taping and it really kind of brought it to the forefront out of the shadows of things like breathwork.
But really this, you know, the technique that they talk about in JAWS specifically was the Boteko technique, which was developed by a Russian scientist in the 1950s, and ultimately was brought to the United Kingdom and Australia in the 1990s. So it's really not that old.
And it has gained the Boteko technique specifically has gained a lot of positive momentum in the last few years, mainly because of the amazing work and effort of Patrick McCown and Irishman, who is now widely taught and he has the oxygen advantage and the Boteko Institute and some other really, really great resources out there that have some paid content as well as some free content.
But McCown's work has really, really kind of transformed a lot of the barriers to entry to breathwork and they've really kind of de stigmatized some of these things for ultimate human performance. A lot of his techniques and Boteko specifically is widely taught and followed set of breathing protocols that now across the world is not certainly limited to Russia or the United Kingdom or Australia anymore.
But even more recently, there was a book written by James Nestor, which a lot of you have probably read titled Breath, the new science of a lost art. And he talks extensively about mouth tape and sleep and especially nasal respiration versus mouth respiration and the impacts of that and all these other different breathing protocols and techniques throughout.
But one of those that got a lot of airtime, a lot of press really kind of brought it into the forefront where you might even be able to call it a fad was this whole tape your mouth while you're asleep. And so the book by James Nestor, Breath is an absolute must read.
If you're into trying to figure out ultimate human performance, if you're into anything in relation to breath, but I'd also heavily encourage you to read that book, JAWS, as well as any book written by Patrick McCown and the Oxygen Advantage crew. So all very, very good resources and all linked in the show notes for you. So you don't have to look them up on your own. All right, so let's get into how does this thing work? So what is it matter? Why would I tape my mouth when I'm asleep?
Am I going to suffocate and die? And really the fact of the matter is sleep should be the optimal time of rest and digest and parasympathetic nervous system activation. So remember in the autonomic nervous system, we have the sympathetic nervous system, which is more often than not called the fight or flight. And we have the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest. So when we're asleep, the whole reason that we're doing that is to rest, recover, recharge, rejuvenate.
So we want to be as parasympathetic as we possibly can. And we know that optimal amount of sleep that we should be shooting for to get every single night. And I understand when we're on shift, we can't control those things. That's not what I'm talking about. We can control on shift though, if you're in the fire service, if you stay up till two o'clock in the morning watching a movie versus going to bed, or if you're like, well, we're probably going to be really busy tonight.
So I'm going to just stay up and drink 19 monsters and four Red Bulls. And then something happens, the universal lines. And you actually would have gotten a really quality night of sleep. So there are a lot of controlables that you can control that have nothing to do when somebody calls 911 for response. You can control most of those things when you're not at work.
And we've talked about this previously on the podcast where, yes, if you have young children, if you have a baby, an infant at home, there are things that happen at home where you're going to maybe have interrupted sleep. But for the most part, you can control those controlables when you're not on duty and you can shoot for that seven to nine hours of optimal sleep every single night. But can we get that seven to nine hours and still feel like we are not rested?
And not because you're trying to catch up on sleep debt, but man, I've been sleeping really, really well. Maybe I've even had some vacation and I still wake up feeling really tired. And you need to start to listen to that, that's your body telling you something of, hey, there's something else going on for sure. And we want to make sure that when we are asleep that we have that optimal parasympathetic nervous system activation.
And one of the easiest ways that we can do that is by simply breathing through our nose. And so that's kind of where that whole like, hey, just take a deep breath when somebody's trying to tell you to calm down, that should be, hey, take a deep breath through your nose. Because nasal breathing triggers the vagus nerve. It triggers that parasympathetic response, which means that my heart rate lowers, my respiration rate lowers.
I have cognitive clearing of my mind and I can start to process information a little bit better if I'm a little bit more parasympathetic than I am sympathetic from not so amped up. Now, if we breathe through our mouth, just simply breathing through our mouth, it triggers a sympathetic response. So it elevates our heart rate, it elevates our respiration rate, it dehydrates us.
So if you're hanging out most of the time and you're just chilling and you're finding yourself breathing through your mouth up most of the time, you really, really need to start to work to try to transition that to nasal breathing if at all possible. And I can hear the excuses already of, well, I have a deviated septum or whatever.
And yes, some people have issues with their facial structure that they're going to have a really, really hard time being nasal breathers for the most part of the time. But I have a deviated septum as well. It's about 75% occlusion on one side. And you can train around that stuff. It is not a barrier to entry to be able to breathe through your nose at rest, to breathe through your nose at sleep, even to breathe through your nose while you're doing work.
More to come on mouth versus nose breathing for sure on the firefighter craftsmanship podcast. But the fact of the matter is, is when we breathe through our mouth, we trigger a fight or flight response, a sympathetic nervous system response, and we become a little bit more amped. So if I'm breathing through my mouth while I'm asleep, I'm working against myself to get the optimal rest and recovery that I can possibly get just solely by how I'm breathing.
So when we look at taping your mouth, this is kind of that foundation of where that is initially coming from from the botaco method of, Hey, if I'm breathing through my mouth, I'm creating fight or flight response, I'm creating stress, I'm creating unnecessary anxiety, and now I'm doing it while I'm asleep when I should have no anxiety and the ultimate rest.
That's kind of where I starting to say, Hey, maybe if I breathe through my nose specifically, and I might need some sort of apparatus to help me with that. And there's lots of different products available out there where jaw slings and all this stuff that help you breathe through your nose specifically, but you can accomplish that by a really, really small piece of microfiber tape that's just acting as a reminder to close our mouth. Now for some of us, we may snore quite a bit.
And more than likely when you're snoring, your mouth is open. Now snoring can can be related to a lot of different things. And so if you have a crewmate who's complaining that you snore too much, or you have somebody in your household that's complaining that you snore too much, or they're sleeping in another room because you snore so loud, that is absolutely something that you should go talk to your primary care doc about.
And ultimately probably get a sleep study done to see if you're just snoring because of tongue position. That's something maybe that can easily be rectified, or do you have various levels of obstructive sleep apnea? And we're not going to dive into sleep apnea in this at all. Hopefully at some point we can talk to a sleep specialist specifically, a sleep doctor, and they can really kind of dive into sleep apnea and what those different levels of sleep apnea are.
But a lot of times obstructive sleep apnea is and snoring is due to just tongue being out of position and falling back and including part of the airway. And so this can really be tied to mouth breathing during sleep. But again, it can also be a sign of that something is much more dramatic that has serious health implications in relation to sleep apnea. So if you snore, get a sleep study done if at all humanly possible.
So there's been a really couple of good studies specific to firefighters about sleep apnea. And there's a study called randomized prospective study of the impact of a sleep health program on firefighter injury and disability, which was conducted in 2017. So not that long ago.
And from that survey, they found, quote, our national survey of nearly 7,000 firefighters conducted across 66 fire departments found that 37% of active firefighters were at risk of a primary sleep disorder when assessed using validated questionnaires, particularly obstructive sleep apnea. And so for those most of those sleep disorders is what they're referring to most of whom 81% were undiagnosed.
So if you know, if they had some sort of sleep disorder, whether it's obstructive sleep apnea or some other sleep disorder, 81% of those respondents out of the 77% that had that risk, they had never been diagnosed. So right there is pretty good action and pretty good statistics to say, hey, you know, over a third of us in the fire service specifically, just in the United States, we're at a risk of primary sleep disorder.
And then 81% of those people, they had never talked to anybody about that they were completely clueless. So if you're waking up and you're feeling exhausted and not refreshed and dehydrated, you have cotton mouth, all those sorts of things, you're in one of those 81%. There's another article that was in gems titled relief for firefighters with sleep apnea.
And that article is from 2010, where they said a quote, according to a 2007 report, the effects of sleep deprivation of firefighters and EMS workers by the International Association of Fire Chiefs states, firefighters who suffer from sleep apnea exhibit chronic daytime fatigue and decreased alertness. Those individuals with untreated sleep apnea are six times more likely to have a vehicle accident.
So when we combine that with different shift schedules, things like long shift hours, mandatory overtime, things like that, where people aren't getting sleep, they have sleep deprivation, and they potentially have some sort of sleep disorder or full blown sleep apnea on top of it. We have a serious problem on our hands where we're jeopardizing not only our personal safety, but those that we work with, and ultimately the public as we're responding and driving around.
So it's really, really important that you go when you talk to your primary care doc, if you don't have a primary care doc, absolutely get one. Most of your insurance are going to cover it the very minimum one physical a year. And so establish with a primary care doc and then start to have this sleep conversation with them. Realize however, a lot of doctors, especially if you go to a doctor that's been in the game a long time. They have very little to know training on sleep.
And so if they don't really know about sleep and they don't really know about sleep debt and the impacts of sleep debt, especially for us in emergency response, then just kindly ask, Hey, would you be comfortable referring me to a specialist that will be covered by my health insurance and just play the game that way a little bit to try to get this stuff covered.
All right, so there's a good long section about maybe why getting checked by an actual specialist is going to be really important for you, especially as you go from, you know, young and I can stay up for weeks at a time and it's never going to affect me and I'll sleep when I did to, Oh, I really like this profession. I want to play the long game on this thing to, Hey, I have played the long game and now I'm really trying to optimize my performance.
And I really want to make sure that I'm looking starting to look towards the end of my career. And retire and happy, healthy and strong. And sleep is going to be a basic foundation for all of you, no matter where you are in your career, no matter what your job is and whether you're in emergency services or not, it is the thing that we really need to be focused and extremely on.
And we need to start to change the narrative, not only within ourselves, but within our organizations on what does sleep mean, what does rest and recovery mean, and how does that relate with terms like laziness and work output and things like that. So how does tape bring all of this stuff together? Well, if we tape our mouth, like we've mentioned multiple times on this podcast already is if I tape my mouth, it creates parasympathetic tone.
It lets me recover and optimize me humor performance simply because it's encouraging me to breathe through my mouth. Now there's lots of different products out there in relation to tape. There's a very, very popular thing. I get an email from them almost every single day, a commercially made mouth tape that they market because it works really, really well with facial hair. But it doesn't have to be that grandiose and it certainly doesn't need to be that expensive.
And so for me personally, I've been using the 3M microfiber tape for at least three years, if not four years at this point, pretty consistently, I tape my mouth when I'm at home. When I sleep and I tape my mouth when I'm at work and we have the opportunity to sleep. And if we get up for a call, then I just take that piece of tape off, it goes in the trash, and then I start the process over when we get back for that call. It's just part of my routine now. It's really not a big deal.
Now when I tape my mouth, I'm not using a full long piece of tape where it's taping my entire lip shut. I'm using a very, very small thin strip of the microfiber tape. I take a lot of the sticky off by peeling that little piece of tape off, maybe let's call it a quarter of an inch wide. And then I put the tape on the back of my thumb and I take some of that sticky off. And then I put it on my face.
So that way if I do need to take it off in short order, it's not, especially if we get up a few times in one night, multiple times in one night, it's not creating damage to my lips and to my skin. So I take a lot of that sticky off and really it's just acting as a very simple reminder for me when I sleep to keep my lips shut.
And some people have really, really good results with this method, you know, to tape their mouth and they might only need to try and kind of train their body for a month or so. And they can essentially just ditch the tape altogether and they just breathe through their nose when they sleep. They're not snoring anymore. They're not waking up with dry mouth. They're waking up feeling refreshed and recovered.
But others like myself maybe need a longer commitment or I can go through phases where I can tape my mouth for a while. I can stop taping it and my wife isn't complaining that I'm sleeping or snoring. And I'm waking up feeling refreshed. I don't have dry mouth. So I know that I'm sleeping with my mouth closed. And then I go through other phases where that's certainly not the case and I need that piece of tape to remind my body while I'm asleep just to keep my mouth shut.
So you don't need some massive thing. You don't need to tape your entire mouth shut. Just a very, very simple piece of tape. And when I tape my mouth shut, it's such a small piece of tape that if I had to, I can still breathe through my mouth. So if my body really is like, hey, I'm not getting enough oxygen, which probably isn't going to be the case when you're breathing through your nose. You're not doing anything. You're just laying there asleep.
You don't need to have this massive tidal volume of air coming in or exiting as you're asleep. But if I needed to, I can breathe around that piece of tape through the sides of my mouth, both sides, and compensate that way. I can also actually have a conversation with that piece of tape. It just kind of sounds like this where the middle parts of my lips are taped together. And I could still have a little bit of a conversation if I need to, but I'm asleep, so I don't need to talk.
So it doesn't need to be this grandiose thing. And I understand that a lot of you are like, oh, this is so ridiculous. There's no way or I'm going to die if I tape my mouth. Consult with your doc. See what you think. Do you have obstructive sleep apnea? Do you have some other sleep disorder? Is it worth giving it a shot with a really small piece of tape and seeing what happens? And what's probably going to occur is when you try this out, the first night's going to kind of suck.
I'm not going to lie. It's kind of like anything else. When you have something new, you're focused on it first off. So maybe start trying to tape your mouth when you're watching a movie. Do it in the comfort of your home so you don't get made fun of by all the people at your work, right? But do it while you're in a rest state and start to get kind of used to wearing mouth tape when you're at rest and training your body.
Hey, when I'm at rest, I want to make sure that I'm breathing through my nose. It's going to make that first night or first couple nights a lot easier on you. And yes, you're going to wake up sometimes and your eyeball is going to be taped shut because you pull that mouth tape off. It might be on your eyebrow or in your hair or whatever. But ultimately, it won't take very long.
And from a lot of the people that I've coached specifically on using mouth tape, they have an instant reaction in a positive fashion to how much better, more refreshed they feel by simply using a small little piece of tape. So lots of resources in the show notes. I have the 3M microfiber tape linked in there as well. For Amazon, I have a bunch of different books and a couple articles and studies for you to check out if you're into this sort of stuff.
And we really appreciate you spending your valuable time with us here at Firefighter Craftsmanship. We're stoked to get a good old sleep series going over the next few episodes specifically. I'm going to dive into some of the research that I was able to conduct as I completed my master's degree. Super excited that that program is done. I learned an amazing amount of information.
Very very stoked to start to put a lot of that into play and even more stoked that that three and a half year journey is over. So very exciting times here at Firefighter Craftsmanship. A lot more quality content coming your way and some really, really fun things on the horizon. But for now, we're going to focus on sleep. We're going to focus on how can we optimize sleep? How can we use different technologies to optimize sleep? And really just some basic education around sleep.
Why does it matter and how can I control the controllables? So if you've gotten any value out of this show ever, whether it's today or any previous episode, please consider rating, reviewing and following the show on your favorite podcast player. We would love to see some five star ratings out there. If you think it's worthy of that, just go ahead and spend 10 seconds and rate, review and follow the show.
If you follow it, you'll never miss one of these weekly episodes released every single Wednesday. So thank you again. Let us know if you have any questions. If you are throwing the red flag at any of this stuff, or if you have any specific topics or guest ideas for the firefighter craftsmanship podcast, stay smart.