Room to Breathe: Restoration

A September Series on Breath & Immunity

AIRWAY & DEVELOPMENTHEALING FOUNDATIONSROOM TO BREATHE

9/27/20265 min read

Last week, we followed the movement of exchange through the Lungs and Large Intestine, from the oxygen entering through the breath to the carbon dioxide produced within our cells, and from the food entering the digestive system to what is absorbed, transformed and eventually released. This week, we bring Room to Breathe into the night, when breath, terrain and exchange continue, but the demands we place on the body begin to change.

Most of us think we know whether we sleep well. We went to bed, did not wake very often and seven or eight hours later it was morning. We may even know that our mouth stayed closed and assume we were breathing well. But sleep has an architecture, and being unconscious for a certain number of hours does not necessarily tell us how well we moved through it. Breathing, nervous system activity, heart rate, muscle tone and brain activity all change as we move through the different stages of sleep.

During REM sleep, for example, most skeletal muscle tone is temporarily inhibited while the diaphragm continues the work of breathing. This normal REM atonia becomes particularly interesting when we consider the airway. If there is already limited room behind the tongue, nasal resistance or another reason moving air requires more effort, the nervous system may have to respond even though we never wake enough to remember it. The lips can remain closed while the airway is still struggling to stay open.

This is one reason nighttime clenching and grinding open the door for me to look beyond the teeth. The wear may be visible in the mouth, but I also want to know what the nervous system may have been responding to. I want to consider the airway, sleep architecture, autonomic regulation and tension being carried through the muscles and fascia. Someone can genuinely believe they slept through the night while their jaw, tongue, teeth, digestion, energy or morning tension suggest their body was doing more work than they realized.

We often use the phrase rest and digest to describe parasympathetic activity, but that nighttime shift involves much more than feeling relaxed. Digestion, intestinal motility, microbial activity, immune communication and tissue maintenance continue within their own rhythms. The intestinal barrier still needs to be maintained, microbes continue interacting with their environment and the immune system continues communicating with the tissues and organisms sharing those surfaces with us. The body has not shut down. The nature of its work has changed.

One relationship I have been studying involves vitamin D, the intestinal microbiome, B vitamins, vitamin K and acetylcholine. What interests me is not another list of nutrients to take, but how much of this support is meant to arise through relationships already built into our biology. Sunlight allows our skin to produce vitamin D, while vitamin D signaling participates in immune regulation, intestinal barrier function and the environment in which our microbial communities live. Within the model I have been exploring, adequate vitamin D helps create conditions that support the microbial community involved in supplying B vitamins and vitamin K. Those nutrients participate in processes throughout the body, including pathways involved in nervous system and autonomic function. Acetylcholine is particularly interesting because of its relationship with sleep architecture, parasympathetic activity, digestion and muscle function.

There may be times when vitamin D, B vitamins, vitamin K or other depleted resources need support while the body is rebuilding. But support does not necessarily mean permanent replacement. Part of natural healing is continuing to listen as the body changes and recognizing when something that helped restore a depleted system may no longer be what it is asking for.

I find this compelling because we can become so focused on adding the next thing. We find a microbial imbalance and want to kill something, then repopulate it. We find a nutrient that is low and replace it. We see mineral loss in a tooth and look for something to put on the enamel. Sometimes intervention is necessary, but if we stop there, we may never ask why the body needed to compensate or what would allow normal function to return.

The mouth gives us a visible place to observe some of these relationships. Salivary flow naturally decreases while we sleep, and mouth breathing can create additional dryness, leaving the teeth with less of the saliva meant to buffer, carry minerals and maintain the oral environment. When we talk about healing teeth naturally, this matters because mineral exchange is already part of their biology. Supporting teeth is not simply about finding something that “remineralizes,” but also considering the environment in which that exchange is being asked to happen.

Traditional Chinese Medicine gives us another way to consider nighttime through the Horary Clock, where organ systems move through periods of greater activity across the 24-hour cycle. It is a different framework from sleep architecture and circadian physiology, but both recognize that our biology is rhythmic. I think about pH within that rhythm as well. Throughout the day we eat, move, think, digest, respond to stress and produce energy, contributing to an acidifying burden the body must continually process, buffer and eliminate. As those demands quiet and we move more deeply into rest-and-digest physiology, nighttime allows movement toward the alkalizing and restorative side of that rhythm.

If breathing repeatedly requires more effort, sleep architecture is disrupted or the autonomic nervous system continues being called back into action, the body will still adapt. But what happens to the restorative work that should have had more room during those nighttime hours? Morning arrives regardless, bringing another day of eating, moving, digesting, responding and producing energy, whether or not the work of the night was completed.

As we finish Room to Breathe, notice what your night leaves behind. Is your mouth moist or dry when you wake? Does your jaw feel relaxed or has it been working? How is your digestion and bowel function? Do you feel restored or simply awake? These observations are not answers by themselves, but they are information about what the body may be asking us to notice.

We began September with the room needed for air to enter, then explored the terrain in which our microbial communities and immune system live and the exchange taking place through the Lungs, Large Intestine, mouth, cells and mitochondria. Nighttime brings those relationships into another part of their rhythm, where the body has an opportunity to regulate, restore and repair without our consciously directing every step.

We can eat nourishing foods, supplement, work on vitamin D and the microbiome and carefully support our teeth. Sometimes those things are needed. But natural healing also asks us to remember how much the body already knows how to do when it has the resources and opportunity to do it.

If the airway, sleep architecture or autonomic nervous system are still asking the body to work through the night, perhaps the question is not always what else we need to add, but whether the body is getting the opportunity to complete the repair it already knows how to do.

Room to Breathe: Restoration

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