How to Use Breathing to Improve Your Health, With Journalist James Nestor
This week, we’ll learn how to breathe better – and how it can dramatically improve our overall health – with the help of journalist James Nestor. James is the author of the new book Breathing: The New Science of the Lost Art , which covers extensive research into the many ways we sometimes try to breathe – from asthma to allergies to snoring – and what we can do about it. This. He talks to Lifehacker Editor-in-Chief Alice Bradley about the dangers of mouth breathing, how our complex nasal cavities improve the quality of the air we take in, and how nasal breathing training can lower blood pressure and relieve anxiety. and improve your immune system.
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Highlights from this week’s series
From an interview with James Nestor
On why breathing through your nose is a huge step forward compared to breathing through your mouth:
[I] if you took a human head and cut it in half, which many scientists have done, you would see that the nose is very similar to a seashell and got its name, Nasal concha because it looks so much like a seashell. So, the shells are designed in such a way as to keep invaders out. And our nose does the same. The reason we have all these bones in our nose that extend under our eyes and that have this labyrinthine pattern is to help filter out particles, bacteria, and other problems. And then all these bacteria and other pathogens have to interact with nitric oxide, which kills a lot of these substances in its path. This air will be conditioned. It will keep warm. It will be filtered out, so by the time it reaches your lungs, it will be much easier to load it into the bloodstream. So, you know, people have known this for so long, but it still shocks me that I live so much of my life breathing through my mouth and so many other people are doing the same thing right now.
About how he trained to breathe through his nose:
All you have to do is just train your mouth to stay shut at night. I use this tiny piece of surgical tape with a very light glue and place it in the center of my lips. I could still breathe through my mouth if I had to. If I wanted, I could even talk. But I was just training my jaw. And by simply doing this breathing through your nose, you get 20 percent more oxygen in one breath than breathing through your mouth. So, you can imagine at night, a third of your life, if you can breathe through your nose, use your nose to filter out particles of other problems, get more oxygen. This is so beneficial. Again, there is no doubt about that. We know that nasal breathing is much better. It’s just a fact. I think a lot of people have ignored this.
To learn more about James’s approach to improving your health through breathing, watch the entire episode!
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