How To Stop Tossing and Turning When You Sleep

Monday, October 24, 2022

I usually learn something new from each person I treat for mouth breathing and snoring. One reason is that I ask so many questions that most would think are irrelevant. As a result, I have a growing list of behaviors that might occur during or after a night of restless sleep. For example, I started asking people about the condition of their bedclothes (sheets, blanket) when they awoke in the morning.

If You Toss and Turn in Bed, You Are Not Alone

Approximately 30-35% say that they move around all night and their sheets are a mess the next morning. One teenager told me, and this was verified by his parent, that his bedclothes were usually wadded up and all the way across the room in the corner. This particular teenager had a tongue thrust, was a mouth breather, and snored. He started doing tongue exercises to learn how to breathe and swallow correctly.

How Proper Breathing Can Help You Sleep Still

Each week when he attended therapy, he was asked about the condition of his bedclothes. Each week, he reported his sheets were “moving” closer and closer back to his bed. Actually, this meant that he wasn’t tossing them as far away as the previous week.

The reason he wasn’t tossing them as far away as the previous week was that he was beginning to breathe through his mouth more and more each night. By the end of the 7-week program, Jack’s sheets were staying on his bed and they weren’t messy. Oh, and by the way, he had learned how to swallow properly and was now sleeping with his mouth closed, which resulted in a much deeper sleep.

Snoring, poor sleeping, tossing, and turning; it’s all related. Our Stop Snoring program can help you breathe more effectively at night, stop snoring, and sleep better.

Written by: Janet M. Bennett

Janet Bennett, M.Ed., CCC-SLP, is a Speech Pathologist in private practice in Asheville, NC, since 1977. She specializes in treating tongue thrust, a swallowing disorder that can result in buckteeth, an open bite, a lisp, snoring, and other problems that have not yet been made known to most people.