Do you always wonder why there is a thin layer of saliva dripping from your mouth when you wake up in the morning? In this case, you suffer from drooling during sleep, and it occurs for many reasons, and it is a common condition for most people, but it often indicates a serious condition.
Drooling during sleep is a sleep disorder that causes a person to feel embarrassed in front of others. It often spreads to children during the stage of tooth development, and the child drools when he is awake or asleep, but the situation is completely different for adults because when you wake up, you notice that the pillow is wet. This can be due to certain diseases that can increase saliva production, and millions of people suffer from this condition every day while they sleep.
The causes of drooling during sleep are:
1- Sleeping continuously on one side:
Do you sleep constantly on one side, whether it is the right or the left? Your answer to this question may be the cause of drooling during sleep. When you sleep on your side, it causes you to open your mouth throughout sleep and causes saliva to drip onto the pillow instead of down. These are the most common causes of drooling during sleep.
2- Sinusitis:
Inflammation of the sinuses makes it difficult to swallow and breathe, which in turn leads to drooling during sleep. The situation gets worse when you have a cold, because it makes you breathe through your mouth due to a stuffy nose, causing saliva to leak out of your mouth.
3- Acidity or gastroesophageal reflux:
If you suffer from acidity or GERD, this may be a reason behind excessive salivation in the mouth. It stimulates the production of stomach acid in the esophagus which in turn leads to excessive salivation.
4- Allergies or poisoning:
Excessive salivation can occur due to allergic rhinitis, food allergy, or pesticide poisoning. These conditions often lead to excessive salivation. Sometimes severe allergies or poisoning threaten your life, so you need to constantly seek help from a doctor.
5- Tonsillitis:
When the tonsils, glands in the back of the throat become inflamed, they restrict the production of saliva that accumulates in the back of the throat and is called tonsillitis. It is one of the most common causes of drooling during sleep. You may experience drooling in your mouth while sleeping due to a sore throat.
6- Dental problems:
If you suffer from infections in the gums and teeth and a host of other dental health problems, this may lead to excessive salivation.
7- A congenital defect in the mouth:
You may suffer from a congenital defect in the mouth if the mouth or tongue has a large size, or the teeth are narrow, or enlarged lymph nodes lead to drooling, and to overcome this problem you must determine the cause of salivation during sleep and the best way to reduce This condition is to avoid sleeping on the side because this position encourages the opening of the jaw, which leads to the opening of the mouth during sleep.
8- Taking Medications:
A group of side effects of some specific medications is excessive drooling. Such as antidepressants, antidepressants, and medications such as pilocarpine and morphine.
9- Neurological disorders:
You may have difficulty controlling saliva if you suffer from a neurological disorder. It could be facial paralysis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, autism, muscular sclerosis, or multiple sclerosis.
10- Other reasons:
One of the side effects of pregnancy is acid-rich foods.
Treatment of drooling during sleep:
Drooling may be caused by a certain health condition. Therefore, the problem must first be identified in order to find the best treatment for it, and it is best to start by consulting a doctor for allergies, poisoning, sinus infections, tonsillitis, dental problems, nerve infections, and other diseases that lead to salivation. . . . . . Here are some other steps you can take to avoid drooling while sleeping.
1- Sleeping on your back:
One of the good ideas you can do is to sleep on your back because it helps saliva to seep into the back of your throat and eventually dry your mouth. So it is a good idea instead of continuing to sleep on your side, you will notice a significant change and improvement in your condition.
2- Supporting the head:
When supporting the head when sleeping at night because the vertical position of the head supports the mouth and prevents saliva from the mouth during sleep, consult a doctor about the medications you are taking: this may happen as we mentioned. . Some drugs cause drooling, you should consult a doctor for intervention. Some changes in medication have harmful side effects.
3- Breathing through the nose:
Breathing through the mouth is one of the main causes of drooling during sleep. It is common to sleep with your mouth open, especially with a cold. Therefore, when treating congestion, it helps relieve blockage.
4- Do deep breathing exercises:
It is good to include deep breathing exercises in your daily routine. Try breathing deeply through your mouth to improve breathing patterns and better deal with and deal with stress.
5- Allergies:
Taking allergy medications causes difficulty in breathing through the nose, so try to treat allergies in a way that you do not have any side effects.
6- Dental problems:
If you suffer from infections in the gums and teeth and a host of other dental health problems, this may lead to excessive salivation.
As for the recommendations of the American Mayo Clinic studies for the treatment of drooling during sleep, they are:
Evidence suggests that you can do some facial exercises that help relax facial muscles and reduce sagging skin while sleeping so as not to stimulate saliva accumulation between the gums and lips.
- You can massage your face with lavender oil to help relieve drooling while you sleep.
After tooth extraction, it is recommended to brush your teeth regularly and rinse your mouth after each meal, while massaging your mouth before eating is one of the effective ways to reduce salivation.
Not eating quickly and chewing food slowly helps reduce saliva production in the mouth.
- Avoid eating spicy foods because they stimulate saliva secretion in the mouth, especially before bedtime.
- Treatment of sleep apnea, because the case of difficulty sleeping, such as heavy breathing, loud snoring, and drooling, these conditions increase with smoking, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.
Try to lose weight, because being overweight leads to breathing problems during sleep and more than half of the 12 million people in the United States with sleep apnea are overweight, so trying to change your diet to reach a healthy weight helps with that. Treatment of breathing problems during sleep.
