When I wake up in the morning, I always find my face soaked in half a depression of wet liquid. The sticky feeling and dirty pillow make me very uncomfortable. It is really extremely embarrassing and shameful to have a girlfriend or boyfriend lying beside me.
Like a headless fly, you are at a loss as to how to change this situation. I’m also a little worried about whether my body has what problems. Let Dr. Clove tell you how to deal with drooling at night.
Medicine calls this condition [salivation]. Usually when we sleep, we produce significantly less saliva than when we are awake. However, when we are awake, we can take the initiative to swallow the saliva, so there will be no saliva flowing out of the corners of the mouth (unless we see delicious food or beautiful women).
Under normal circumstances, we also swallow saliva during sleep, but due to various reasons, this process is affected, resulting in a large amount of saliva flowing out. Sometimes it is really because of illness, sometimes it only happens temporarily.
Causes of drooling at night
When sleeping, many people actually breathe with their mouths unconsciously, and this kind of situation is mostly accompanied by drooling at night.
Perhaps you will ask, when everyone is asleep, how can you control whether you breathe through your nose or your mouth?
Usually, it is because you cannot get enough oxygen through your nose that you will open your mouth to breathe. Only finding out these reasons and carrying out corresponding treatment is the key to solve the problem.
Common causes include blocked nose, chronic rhinitis, sinusitis, allergy and deviation of nasal septum.
Some drugs may have the side effect of obviously increasing saliva. When taking these drugs, you may suddenly find yourself drooling in sleep.
Central nervous system inhibitory drugs, such as antidepressants, are the drugs most likely to cause this side effect. Secondly, alcohol will have a similar effect.
When sleeping on your stomach or on your side, your chin will unconsciously open, so the possibility of saliva flowing out of the corners of your mouth will greatly increase. When sleeping on your side, a large amount of saliva will accumulate on the corners of your mouth and flow out directly, which will not trigger swallowing.
When sleeping on your back, due to gravity, saliva will accumulate behind your throat, triggering swallowing.
Change starts tonight
First of all, it is necessary to find out that the specific cause of breathing through the mouth is what.
(1) Nasal obstruction caused by cold: Try taking some cold medicine (usually containing [pseudoephedrine]) that can relieve nasal mucosa congestion orally, or try using ventilated nasal patches. However, the above two methods can only temporarily relieve nasal obstruction symptoms.
It is better to drink more water and rest more quickly, and the nasal congestion will naturally ease when the cold is cured.
(2) Nasal obstruction caused by allergy, it is better to see an otolaryngologist at once! Doctors will prescribe drugs (including oral antiallergic drugs and nasal sprays) according to your situation. Sometimes these drugs will take effect immediately, allowing you to bid farewell to nasal mucus and regain a healthy nasal cavity!
(3) Because of nasal congestion caused by chronic sinusitis, it is even more important to see a doctor. This situation usually requires a long period of professional treatment, including surgery and drugs, to relieve it.
No matter which of the above conditions causes nasal congestion, when you do not have the conditions to see a doctor in time, drugs that can relieve nasal mucosal congestion can temporarily relieve symptoms.
If you are a loyal lover of sleeping on your side or on your stomach, it may be painful to suddenly change your sleep posture, but in order to stop saliva flowing freely, the necessary efforts are still worth it.
First, try to fall asleep in a flat position. Although it is possible to sleep and habitually sleep to one side after falling asleep, a good start is half the battle. If you wake up in the middle of the night and find yourself sleeping on your side again, then lie flat and sleep immediately.
In order to make sleeping on your back more comfortable, you can choose pillows designed for sleeping on your back. This kind of pillow can better support the head and neck. Other pillows will have a depression in the middle that fits the back of the head. Using these pillows can increase the chance of sleeping on your back during sleep.
If the problem lies in the drugs taken at this stage, it is recommended to communicate with the doctor about whether it is possible to replace them with another drug with less side effects.
If there is really no suitable drug replacement, or if the problem of drooling interferes too much to you, you can also use other drugs to reduce the occurrence of drooling, but at the same time these drugs will also bring side effects such as dehydration and dry mouth.
Here is a very simple way to put a towel on the pillow before going to bed and wash it off the next morning so that you can go unnoticed.
Don’t worry too much! Take it easy
Although sleeping drooling will really bring you a lot of troubles, but really don’t worry too much, in fact, many people are the same as you. As long as you are good at finding the potential factors that cause the cause, and make corresponding adjustments and improvements, I believe the problem can be solved.
Responsible Editor: Fei Fei