Nasal vs. Mouth Breathing: Why the Difference Matters

Will You Expand On How Nasal Breathing Compares To Mouth Breathing?

Snoring that rattles the room, daytime brain fog that will not quit, a child who always sits with lips parted—these are not random quirks. They are clues that point to how we breathe, and whether the nose or the mouth is steering our sleep, growth, and long-term health. We dive into the science and the daily habits that turn good breathing into a life-changing skill.

Dr. Mark A. Cruz explores why the nose is built for breathing: it warms and humidifies air, delivers nitric oxide to support immunity, and provides just enough resistance through the turbinates to guide efficient airflow. That gentle resistance also shapes development, stimulating the nasomaxillary complex and helping the midface grow forward while the sinuses pneumatize to create space. When the mouth takes over, the tongue drops from the palate, arches narrow, and the airway can shrink—setting the stage for snoring, poor sleep, and altered posture.

We share practical ways to spot early mouth breathing, from an interlabial gap at rest to restless nights and drooling on pillows. A simple experiment—lips sealed versus slightly parted—reveals how tongue posture changes instantly, proving the neural link between lip contact and airway support. Then we zoom out: how a low tongue and forward head posture can echo down the spine, affecting gait and joint stress, and why a systems approach beats the siloed model that often misses root causes. From myofunctional therapy and nasal hygiene to timely referrals for ENT or airway-focused dentistry, you will learn how to protect nasal breathing in kids and regain it as adults.

If better sleep, clearer focus, and a healthier smile start with the nose, the smartest move is small and daily: lips together, tongue to the palate, and quiet nasal breaths. Share this with a parent, a partner who snores, or a clinician who wants a broader lens. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us the one breathing habit you will work on this week.

To learn more about Dr. Mark A. Cruz, DDS. visit:
https://www.MarkACruzdds.com
Dr. Mark A. Cruz, DDS. 
32241 Crown Valley Pkwy #200  
Dana Point, CA 92629  
949-661-1006 

Transcript

Welcome & Breathing Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Airway Focused Dentistry with Dr. Mark A. Cruz, the show where better breathing leads to better living. If your nights sound like a lawnmower chorus or your energy stuck on low battery, you're in the right place. Hosted by Dr. Mark A. Cruz, we explore how the airway impacts your sleep, your health, and your smile. So you can breathe, sleep, and be well. Take a deep breath, and let's get started.

Why Humans Mouth Breathe

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Discover why the way you breathe may be shaping your sleep, your airway, and even your long-term health. Welcome, I'm Julie Schwenzer, co-host and producer in the studio with Dr. Mark A. Cruz. Dr. Cruz, it's great to be back with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Thank you. Likewise, Julie, good to see you.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Good to see you. And we need your help. Will you expand on how nasal breathing compares to mouth breathing?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah, sure. I mean, it's uh honestly, it's it's become a big topic, but uh let me just start with the foundation. Foundational understanding is that all mammals exchange gas through their nose. And it's only humans as an uh as a mammal, Mamayan species, that has what's called oral tidal breathing, where we use taking air through our mouth. And the reason for that, as I think I've mentioned in other podcasts, is due to the advent or the evolutionary uh selective advantage of having language. So when I'm speaking right now, I'm taking air in to manipulate pockets of those air, that about air, to make phonetic sounds that is based on language, okay, all the different languages that is kind of code in that those sounds, if that makes sense. Uh, no other animal has that ability. They can make sounds, and you know, maybe they can communicate like, you know, dolphins and whales, and maybe they can use sonar, and you know, we don't know that much about that type of uh of communication, but humans certainly have this much more advanced uh uh language, if you will, that has contributed also to our great development. So, with that said, when I'm speaking here and bringing in air through my mouth, I'm not really exchanging gas so much. Mostly it's coming through my nose.

The Biology Of Nasal Breathing

SPEAKER_01 2:40

We also know that in our evolutionary plan, if you will, the way we developed over eons is that breathing through the nose has a number of advantages. Number one is as the air comes in, it's carrying oxygen, obviously, and it's conditioned before it gets introduced into the body, into the lungs. So it's humidified, it's brought up to uh body temperature, and it's also disinfected with nitric oxide, which is a transient signaling molecule that actually kills viruses and bacteria and et cetera, et cetera. So it's really, really important, and then it gets introduced into the the into the body. So the other so that that has to do with the function of gasification. It has to do with metabolic uh function, right? It's it's creating energy and and being able to feed every cell in our body. But the other aspects of breathing through the nose is as the nose enters into the nose, there are these structures called turbinates that slow down the air to some extent. Create a little bit of resistance, not a lot, nothing that you can really sense. But that resistance does a number of things, especially during growth and development. And that is that it stimulates midface growth. So the midface or the nasomaxillary complex. So um the midface is made out of two aspects,

Midface Growth And Turbinates

SPEAKER_01 4:22

the oral cavity and the nasal fossa. Call that the nasomaxillary complex. And so as we breathe through the nose during growth and development, it upregulates stem cells to create more bone to allow our faces to grow downward and forward, uh, projecting the face downward and forward by stimulating the bone cells from that light resistance, it's a mechanical resistance. But the other thing it does is that it pneumatizes the sinuses. So we have these major, a number of different sinuses, but I've just focused on the maxillary sinuses, their air spaces, right? Adjacent to the nose. And those pneumatized, meaning that over time they get larger and larger, create more empty space. But as they pneumatize, it also helps project the midface forward. So it's got that function as well. So if you're mouth breathing, the face doesn't grow properly. It actually has what was called aberrant growth. And yet it's so common that we think that it's normal. And if we look at the human facial skeleton of today compared to the way it was 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, 5,000 years, very different. I mean, we still look like humans, but the actual measurements that pertain to function and wellness have dramatically changed. And therein lies the problem and the topic for a long-form uh podcast, if you will. But um, so there's a lot there. And so nasal breathing is absolutely paramount. And so, you know, hopefully that, you know, gives some insight.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

And what are some early signs that parents or adults should look for that indicate

Sinuses And Facial Development

SPEAKER_02 6:18

that there's habitual mouth breathing? And I know you've touched on this before, but if you could expand on that for the parents, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah. So we want to look at, so oftentimes when we are thinking about mouth breathing, we're thinking about wide open gape, gaping mouth. And yeah, it could be as simple as what we call the interlabial gap. The lips are separated when you're just concentrating. So, like when I'm watching you right now, you have no interlabial gap. Your lips are touching. By the way, there is a lot of innervation, a lot of neural feedback from our tongue and our lips. In fact, if you look at what's called a homunculus, it's a brain map of um sensory and motor function that's mapped into the different structures. And you could look at it, it's called a homunculus. If you look at the homunculus, there's a disproportionate amount of the brain, sensory motor that is dedicated to the lips and the tongue. And that's body uh by design. And so there's a lot that's going on there. So when the lips touch, they actually, it's more than just feeling um the oral cavity, it also sends some signals to the brain in function, which we're not going to talk about here, but which is what I I will use as an example. As I'll ask you, Julie, as you're sitting there and your lips are together, tell me where the dorsum of the tongue, that's the top of the tongue, where do you feel it touch right now?

SPEAKER_02 7:57

The top

Mouth Breathing And Aberrant Growth

SPEAKER_02 7:58

of my mouth.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

The roof of the mouth, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Okay. So what I want you to uh to do right now is just separate your lips just a little bit. Where's the tongue now?

SPEAKER_02 8:10

It's partially on the roof, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Partially, but most of it's dropped down. Yes. So there now there's an airspace, right? So it's almost like a circuit. So when your tongue uh drops a little bit, just by separating the lips a little bit, it's a neural circuit. It's not just a mechanical issue. But what also happens is that when you swallow the cheeks, which are muscles, and the lips, which is a muscle, actually puts inward pressure. And what buttresses the palate is that tongue. If it's not there, then you start getting narrowing. This is especially in a growing, growing kid. The biggest function, the biggest issues have to do with you know, brain development, cognitive function, intelligence development, brain damage, and things like that. Yes, those are really important. But also structural, patient growth, it affects our entire posture. Um, uh, because the tongue plays this huge role. We don't think of it as that, but it's actually um, as the saying goes, the tongue is the rudder of the spine, actually affects the rest of the body. Um, so you can have problems with what we call descending problems, um, which uh affect the gait, um, how you walk, stresses on the joint. So oral posture is what we call it, fosters nasal breathing. But when we don't have it, let's say for mouth breathing, it's not just the fact that we're mouth breathing. There's a whole cascade of other morbidities uh that are seemingly unrelated, but are related to um how we deal with this environment of gravity. And that's called glossopostural syndrome. Uh, there's a lot that's been written about that, how our kids' axial skeleton grows, uh, risks for joint, knee, and hip problems later on in life that has to do with just our lips together and our tongue up there. And so I'll just say that sounds crazy. And the reason why it sounds crazy is because we are all conditioned as a population to think

Early Signs Parents Should Watch

SPEAKER_01 10:22

very silent like our health professions. That's just the way we're trained. And yet the body is a very integrated structure, and this is the big issue right now in healthcare. There's this move more towards what's called human systems theory. It's basically saying that the body is a very complex system of which we don't understand a lot of it. Um, but when we break down the component parts, we can isolate and deal with those specific issues that come up with those component parts, whether it's the heart, the kidneys, the gut, and and oftentimes our go-to is medications, okay, that may address compensation that manifests as a symptom. And if we use a pharmacological agent, if you will, a drug, we know that every drug has and we just accept it. Because it's solving the major problem, but it may be creating some downstream smaller problems that are connected in other ways that we kind of ignore it. It's not until you're on uh, you know, uh a list of medications that now you're dealing with the side effects that interact with the side effects that now, and this is kind of where our country is. We're living longer, but there's more chronic disease and more of these problems. We have to really step back and understand how the body is supposed to work, of which nasal breathing is what I call five major competences. We need to be able to do that very, very well. So um, if you have any problems with that, you're gonna have all kinds of problems.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

So, one of the challenges

Lips, Tongue, And Oral Posture

SPEAKER_02 12:12

it seems for a lot of patients is they come in for something like you're mentioning how all these um disorders or some kind of condition could be related, but they don't know this is the reason for it of what you just described. Um, you know, if they go to their general practitioner who usually has the power and can do all these referrals for other uh, you know, to see other providers, um, how does do you think that it's not addressed enough in the general practice for them to recognize and so I know it's not.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

And the problem, it's no one's fault, it's just the system's broken. It's it's very clear. I mean, if I'm gonna summarize it, um, the health of the United States as a population is not even in the top 50 in the world. And yet we pay over twice as much. And we could say, oh, yeah, we're living longer, but we're also with dealing with chronic disease earlier and earlier. And the fact that we can keep someone alive with a lot of signs and symptoms and medications is not the same as being a population that is well based on lifestyle. And our system is incentivized to um deal with symptoms in isolation. The doctor, the physician, the primary care physician, you know, has seven minutes with you and it's dealing with the symptom de jure. And the next thing is you're having an MRI, you're having a blood test, you're having a CT, you're having some. And uh who you refer to is going to be a function of your understanding of how the body works. And if you're very siloed, um, you're behind the eight ball. This is the problem. You could be super intelligent, very educated about one small area, but what's happened is we've really uh lost our way. And it starts with medical and dental school, the allopathic model that is what's called evidence-based. But we we really have lost our way in understanding how the system works. We understand it very early in our training, but as a dental or medical student, you start wanting to get into doing the surgery and the cutting and the procedures. So you kind of leave that behind. So you lose some of the context. And I talk to my colleagues all the time, both in medicine and dentistry. They absolutely agree, it leads to a system, honestly, that's been hijacked by the um third-party payer. And so there's a huge um discussion. Uh, again, I don't like to make it uh a right or wrong, but it's it's really led to a lot of frustration in the population and why Dr. Google is increasing it as dangerous, right? Because they're frustrated with their physician who says, that's not working. What do you mean uh I'm gaining weight and I have to change my diet? I'm I'm eating a very healthy Mediterranean diet and I'm still getting whatever the case may be. So patients know they're more in touch with their body. And I think this is a huge topic.

Posture, Gait, And Systemic Effects

SPEAKER_01 15:12

So you're thinking, isn't it crazy that a dentist is talking about this? And actually, I would just say um we as dentists should be treating the patient attached to the teeth. But we tend to focus on the teeth attached to the patient, but it's interconnected. You know, the teeth don't function in isolation. They're part of a complex system. I'll just say for me, it's less about that and more about empowering the patient, uh, even the provider, to think differently. And we tend not to, because we get very comfortable with our orthodox way of thinking, but maybe think a little bit outside of the box and start asking different questions. And I think you start going down this journey that can be uh precarious, right? Because you can make a lot of mistakes and cognitive mistakes in that regard. But let's just start thinking differently about um, you know, what's going on here. So anyway, leave it at that. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Thank you. Another great episode with you. Thank you, Doctor.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

All right, take care of my pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

That's today's breath of fresh insight from airway focused dentistry with Dr. Mark A. Cruz. Remember, small changes in your airway can spark big changes in your life. Breathe, sleep, and be well. For more information, visit markacruz DDS dot com or call nine four nine six six one one zero zero six. If this helped you, share the episode and maybe give your pillow a quieter night. See you next time.