Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

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Big Ideas

Nestor reviews all the ways in which our breath is negatively and positively impacted by our behaviors, our culture, and our biology. To understand the landscape of medical conditions impacted by poor breathing he reviews not only the latest scientific literature and anthropological studies, but also discusses the ancient roots of many modern theories about breath and its clinical application. The main ideas are:

Your breath and the quality of your breathing is intimately linked to your health.
Most people breath poorly and this has a real impact on people's health and wellbeing
Poor breathing is largely treatable and better breathing can have real health benefits

How to Breath Better

Shut your mouth and breathe through your nose
More oxygen isn't necessarily better if it can't be absorbed. Carbon dioxide is not the enemy.
Chew more, tougher foods to increase the size of your mouth and open your nasal cavities.
Occasional use of intense breathing techniques can have powerful effects on your autonomic nervous system
Holding your breath can be good for you

Notes

I. The Experiment

The Worst Breathers in the Animal Kingdom

"The prevailing belief in Western medicine was that the nose was more or less an ancillary organ. We should breath out of it if we can ... but if not, no problem."
"When mouths don't grow wide enough, the roof of the mouth tends to rise up instead of out, forming what's called a V-shape or high-arched palate. The upward growth impedes the development of the nasal cavity, shrinking it and disrupting the delicate structures of the nose."
"Humans are now the only [species of mammal] to routinely have misaligned jaws, overbites, underbites, and snaggled teeth, a condition formally called malocclusion"
As human's evolved, the growth in brain size and decreased need to chew rough foods meant that our mouths could shrink, smaller mouths also made verbal communication easier
Author does experiment by intentionally plugging his nose for 10 days i.e. the Experiment

Mouthbreathing

"Mouthbreathing, it turns out, changes the physical body and transforms airways, all for the worse. Inhaling air through the mouth decreases pressure, which causes the soft tissues in the back of the mouth to become loose and flex inward, creating less pace and making breathing more difficult."
"Inhaling from the nose ... forces air against all those flabby tissues at the back of the throat, making the airways wider and breathing easier."
Chronic mouthbreathing impacted
~Blood pressure
~Sleep
~Stress
~Mental function

II. The Lost Art and Science of Breathing

Nose

"The right nostril is a gas pedal. When you're inhaling primarily through this channel, circulation speeds up, your body gets hotter, and cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate all increase."
"Inhaling through the left nostril has the opposite effect: it works as a kind of brake system to the right nostril's accelerator. The left nostril is more deeply connected to the parasympathetic nervous system, rest-and-relax side that lowers blood pressure, cools the body, and reduces anxiety."
Your nose acts as a complex filtration system to remove airborne debris
"The different areas of the turbinates will heat, clean, slow, and pressurize air so that the lungs can extract more oxygen with each breath. This is why nasal breathing is far more healthy and efficient than breathing through the mouth."
"Nasal breathing alone can boost nitric oxide sixfold, which is one of the reasons we can absorb about 18 more oxygen than by just breathing through the mouth."
"Keeping the nose constantly in use, however, trains the tissues inside the nasal cavity and throat to flex and stay open."
Sleep tape can make a big difference in alleviating symptoms by training the nasal tissues and improving sleep.

Exhale

"Just a few minutes of daily bending and breathing can expand lunch capacity. With that extra capacity we can expand our lives."
"Aging doesn't have to be a one-way path of decline. The internal organs are malleable, and we can change them at nearly any time."
"Any regular exercise that stretches the lungs and keeps them flexible can retain or increase lung capacity. Moderate walking or cycling has been shown to boost lung size by up to 15 percent."
"What influences much of the sped and strength of this circulation is the thoracic pump, the name for the pressure that builds inside the chest when we breathe. As we inhale, negative pressure draws blood into the heart; as we exhale, blood shoots back out into the body and lungs, where it recirculates."
The diaphragm powers the thoracic pump but the typical adult engages as little as 10 percent of the range of the diaphragm when breathing.
The lack of diaphragmatic strength "overburdens the heart, elevates blood pressure, and causes a rash of circulatory problems."
"Extending those breaths to 50-70 percent of the diaphragm's capacity will ease cardiovascular stress and allow the body to work more efficiently."

Slow

"The best way to prevent many chronic health problems, improve athletic performance, and extend longevity was to focus on how breathed, specifically to balance oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the body. To do this we'd need to learn how to inhale and exhale slowly."
"For every ten pounds of fat lost in our bodies, eight and a half pounds of it comes out through the lungs; most of it is carbon dioxide mixed with a bit of water vapor. The rest is sweated or urinated out."
"Carbon dioxide also had a profound dilating effect on blood vessels, opening these pathways so they could carry more oxygen-rich blood to hungry cells. Breathing less allowed animals to produce more energy, more efficiently."
"For a healthy body, over breathing or inhaling pure oxygen would have no benefit, no effect on oxygen delivery to our tissues and organs, and could actually create a state of oxygen deficiency."
"Inhaling the gas might increase blood oxygen levels one or two percent, but that oxygen will never make it into our hungry cells. We'll simply breathe it back out."
"It turns out that when breathing at a normal rate, our lungs will absorb only about a quarter of the available oxygen in the air. The majority of that oxygen is exhaled back out. By taking longer breaths, we allow our lungs to soak up more in fewer breaths."
Ideal rate of breath is about 5.5 breaths per minute.

Less

"What's considered medically normal today is any where between a dozen and 20 breaths a minute, with an average intake of about half a liter per breath."
"Most of us breathe too much, and up to a quarter of the modern population suffers from a more serious chronic over-overbreathing."
"The fix is easy: breathe less."
"The key to optimum breathing, and all the health, endurance, and longevity benefits that come with it, is to practice fewer inhales and exhales in a smaller volume. To breathe, but to breathe less."
"Slower, longer exhales, of course, mean higher carbon dioxide levels. With that bonus carbon dioxide, we gain a higher aerobic endurance. This measurement of highest oxygen consumption, called VO2 max, is the best gauge of cardiorespiratory fitness. Training the body to breathe less actually increase VO2 max, which can not only boost athletic stamina but also help us live longer and healthier lives."
"Breathing less offered huge benefits. If athletes kept at it for several weeks
Hypoventilation training can provide additional metabolic stress which over time increases metabolic efficiency
Ways to breath less
~Holding your breath after fully breathing out
~Breathe out longer than you breathe in
~Taking slow but smaller breaths as opposed to slow but but big breaths
"The optimum amount of air we should take in at rest per minute is 5.5 liters. The optimum breathing rate is about 5.5 breaths per minute. That's 5.5 second inhales and 5.5 second exhales. This is the perfect breath."

Chew

Early development of farming in ancient human cultures coincided with a corresponding beginning of crooked teeth and deformed mouths as our diet shifted away from rough food harvested in the wild.
"About 300 years ago, these maladies went viral. [ ... ] Much of the world's population began to suffer. Their mouths shrank, faces grew flatter, and sinuses plugged."
Rapid industrialization enabled widespread access to soft foods accelerated a transformation in our facial structure. This has had severe impacts on our ability to breathe effectively and efficiently.
"Mouths shrank and facial bones grew stunted. Dental disease became rampant, and the incidence of crooked teeth and jaws increased tenfold in the industrial age."
"The problem had less to do with what we were eating than how we at it. Chewing."
"Our ancient ancestors chewed for hours a day, every day. And because they chewed so much, their mouths, teeth, throats and faces grew to be wide and strong and pronounced."
"Ninety percent of the obstruction in the airway occurs around the tongue, soft palate, and tissues around the mouth. The smaller the mouth is, the more the tongue, uvula, and other tissues can obstruct airflow."
Posture can also impact our breathing quality. Hunched over, with heads pulled forward narrows the respiratory pathways in the neck and blocks correct breathing.
Can the size of ones mouth be expanded?
"All we need are stem cells. And the way we produce and signal stem cells to build more maxilla bone in the face is by engaging the masseter -- by clamping down on the back molars over and over."
"Chewing. The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we'll trigger, the younger we'll look and the better we'll breathe."

III. Breathing+

More, on Occasion

"Breathing is a power switch to a vast network called the autonomic nervous system."
Parasympathetic nervous system - stimulates relaxation and restoration, feed and breed system
"The lungs are covered with nerves that extend to both sides of the autonomic nervous system, and many of t he nerves connecting to the parasympathetic system are located in the lower lobes, which is one reason long and slow breaths are so relaxing."
Sympathetic nervous system - sends stimulation to our organs to prepare them for action, fight or flight system
"A profusion of the nerves to this system are spread out at th et top of the lungs. When we take short, hasty breaths, the molecules of air switch on the sympathetic nerves."
"Although sympathetic stress takes just a second to activate, turning it off and returning to a state of relaxation and restoration can take an hour ore more."
Some intense techniques can help restore a health balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic activation.
Particularly for those that are prone to chronic stress and sympathetic triggering.
Modern people commonly are afflicted by "communication problems along the vagal and autonomic network."
Breathing can stimulate the vagal nerve and push our bodies back into a parasympathetic state thus reducing stress and increasing blood flow to the organs.
Tummo (Inner Fire Meditation) has been practiced by Tibetan Buddhists for thousands of years
Holotropic Breathwork - poorly understood but can have therapeutic benefits for some patients

Hold It

"The nagging need to breathe is activated from a cluster of neurons called the central chemoreceptors, located at the base of the brain stem."
The amount of carbon dioxide in your body controls these neurons. More carbon dioxide, the stronger the feeling of needing to breathe.
Holding your breathe can help to train your chemoreceptors to tolerate higher carbon dioxide levels.
This has been used therapeutically for patients struggling with anxiety and stress disorders.

Summary of Advice

How to breathe better:

Shut your mouth
Breathe through your nose
Exhale
Chew
Breathe more, on occasion
Hold your breath

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