Why Do I Keep Waking Up With a Dry Mouth and Sore Throat?

Saturday, December 04, 2021

With the New Year in view, many people have made resolutions and set goals to improve their health and wellness. You are planning to exercise more often, eat more nutritiously, use your downtime more wisely, and be better next year than you were last year.

Reaching your health and wellness goals starts with sleeping well. When you wake up in the morning, you want to seize the day. That means going to bed early enough to get a full night’s sleep, practicing good sleep hygiene, and avoiding the snooze button.

However, if you wake up each morning with a dry mouth and a sore throat, it is going to leave you with a sour taste about keeping up with your health and wellness goals.

Your morning dry mouth and sore throat may be related to breathing through your mouth while you’re sleeping. In this article, we want to help you better understand what causes dry mouth and sore throat and how you can prevent it.

What Causes Morning Dry Mouth?

Over twenty percent of all people throughout the world experience dry mouth. While it can affect anyone, older adults are more likely to experience it. Per WebMD:

“Dry mouth, or xerostomia, is the sticky sensation you may feel when you don’t have enough saliva or spit in your mouth.”

Common Causes of Dry Mouth:

Some of the common causes of morning dry mouth include:

Dehydration
Alcohol consumption to close to bedtime
Medication
Lack of humidity in the air
Breathing through your mouth while you sleep

It can be difficult to identify the exact cause of dry mouth, but the sensation definitely impacts your desire to get out of bed in the morning.

What Causes Morning Sore Throat?

If you wake up with a scratchy, itchy throat or find it difficult to swallow, there could be many causes, including:

Dehydration
A virus or sinus drainage
Dry air
Breathing through your mouth
Snoring

If you frequently experience dry mouth and/or a sore throat in the morning, the cause probably matters less than correcting it.

Mouth-Breathing Is One of the Primary Causes of Dry Mouth

If you breathe primarily through your mouth, especially when you sleep, you are susceptible to developing a dry mouth and waking up with a sore throat. However, you may not be aware of how much your mouth is open while you’re sleeping. Some signs you are mouth-breathing at night include:

Experiencing dry mouth and sore throat is in itself a sign of mouth-breathing
Frequent allergies and hay fever
Snoring
Fatigue
Irritation and stress

Is there anything you can do to correct mouth-breathing? In a previous post, we wrote that breathing primarily through your mouth is among the signs of tongue thrust. Tongue thrust is a condition that describes your tongue’s placement in your mouth. If it is pushing against your teeth or protruding between your teeth when you swallow, you have tongue thrust.

How to Correct Tongue Thrust

Mouth-breathing is not in and of itself a guarantee you have tongue thrust. Other signs include:

You have speech issues such as a “lisp”
You have dental issues from your tongue pushing out your teeth
You grind your teeth
You snore frequently
You have chronic fatigue and other sleep-related conditions

Correcting tongue thrust could help improve mouth-breathing, which can lead to helping prevent waking up with dry mouth and sore throat. The process is not nearly as difficult as you might assume it would be.

IJustWantTo® Correct My Tongue Thrust

This program is the only one of its kind available. It's a seven-week exercise program that's been shown to correct a tongue thrust and repair an improper tongue position. This is performed by performing particular exercises to strengthen the tongue muscles and making the new tongue placement a habit.

When this occurs, nasal breathing should take the role of mouth breathing during sleeping, which will help to prevent snoring and other mouth breathing symptoms.

Your path to improving health and wellness this new year may involve correct tongue thrust. You may find you start breathing through your nose, find relief from snoring and fatigue, and wake up without having a dry mouth and sore throat.

If you want to correct your tongue thrust, contact IJustWantToCorrect My Tongue Thrust or visit our online store.

Testimonial

“I saw a great improvement! I thought it was great to have results so early in the program. Sleeping more soundly and less dry mouth. The exercises were easy to do and could be done at any time and almost anywhere. Even falling behind with the lessons does not have a negative effect on the process. This was a good experience for me.” – Caroline M., 53 yrs., ROCHESTER, VT

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.