How Erling Haaland and Alex Hormozi fixed my bad sleeping habits.

What's up y'all! Spencer here.

All my life my body has been begging me to go see an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat specialist) but those guys are expensive!!! Even with insurance, which is also expensive, I would need to take a loan out to go see one of those guys.

They likely would have had a field day with me though, so I'll apologize to any ENT reading this, you coulda made some money off me. All my life I have been plagued with asthma, allergies, a bit of sleep apnea here, some mouth breathing and malocclusion there, just an absolute cluster of issues related to my breathing! I inherited it from my mother, who dealt with sinus issues all her life, and had to get regular surgeries on her sinuses. In fact, she had very little sense of smell for most of her life.

All of that absolutely sucks! And as a lifetime athlete, having issues with my breathing has always been a huge annoyance and limiting factor in my training. As a result I have been dealing with inhalers and allergy medication all my life, which is not fun, and only sometimes works. (I'm looking at you, Claritin. That stuff does absolutely nothing).

But a big side effect of all of this was that it really messed with my sleep. Since I was constantly dealing with stuffy noses as a kid, I developed a bad habit of breathing through my mouth when I sleep. As a result I would wake up with a really dry mouth every morning, and I would frequently develop sores on the insides of my cheeks and gums, assumedly due to the poor breathing. In addition, my wife told me that I would frequently snore, and she insisted that sleep apnea was an issue. So I was waking up at night constantly and it messed with my deep sleeping patterns, making me exhausted throughout the day. At just about any point in my life leading up to now, if I sat down in a chair without doing anything for more than a few minutes, I would pass out. This also made driving long distances challenging.

At one point I had a job as a beekeeper, and I would have to drive the large trucks to and from the bee yards as early as four or five in the morning, and I was constantly nodding off and stressing out my coworkers, who began to insist I had narcolepsy. I don't, but my sleep schedule was undoubtedly bad.

However, I recently made a commitment to myself to improve my sleeping. I did a lot of research, and found out some interesting things, some of which are pretty common knowledge. As a result I made a few changes with how I wind down and prepare for bed and I use the same routine every night now. I also keep the bedroom cool, and use blackout covers over the windows and tape over small lights on the AC, TV, and phone chargers to make sure the room is pitch black.

But the two biggest changes that I made are things I did to improve my breathing.

First, I started using nose strips, hence the Hormozi thumbnail. I had tried using them once or twice before, but my sensitive nose rejected them. These were the cheap plastic band-aid looking things you can get at Wal-Mart. This time, my wife found a hard molded plastic strip that attached to sticky patches with magnets. It kind of looks like a hyoid bone, in my opinion.

These were an absolute game-changer. They opened up my tiny nostrils and allowed them to actually work! Instead of going to bed with a stuffy nose, these allowed my nose to drain, and oxygen to flow. If I'm honest, I had never experienced what it felt like to breathe deeply through my nose before. It feels great!!! Now, anytime my nose feels even remotely stuffy as I'm lying down to sleep, I strap one of these things on and it keeps me breathing easy all night long.

The seconds thing is inspired by Erling Haaland of Manchester United, which is fitting because I am writing this during the Round of 32 in the 2026 World Cup. Haaland tapes his mouth shut at night to force himself to breath through his nose!

Since my mouth unconsciously flops open at night and I default breathe that way, I figured this might do the trick to force my newly opened nose-holes to do their job. I did some research, and there are a surprising amount of products out there that are designed to do this. I decided I didn't want to pay for what amounted to expensive athletic tape, and so I decided to use just that. Simple athletic tape designed for ankles and wrists, repurposed to help a dorky 27-year old breathe properly! And it works great! Every night right as I'm getting sleepy in bed, I rip off a piece of tape about two inches long and slap it over my mouth like I'm kidnapping myself, mumble good night to my wife through the tape (which she does not like) and pass out.

My experience doing so has been wonderful. Apart from waking up with tape residue on my lips and adhesive residue on my nose, this works amazingly well. My wife told me that she had never heard me breath so deep and easy before. As for me, I am able to sleep all the way through the night without waking up to an uncomfortable dry mouth, and the annoying sores are gone. In fact, I have been waking up a little sore around my ribs, which I can only assume is due to my lungs breathing deeper than they ever have before.

Overall, the results have been great, and I wish I had figured this out years ago. I also really wish I had bought a health monitoring device so I could have tracked my sleep score both before and after, but I didn't. Regardless, I can tell a huge difference. Maybe this all was TMI, but I found it interesting!

See ya!

Contacts

spencerhumpherys@gmail.com 509-350-3780

Spencer Humpherys