Health & Wellness Highlights Ep.1: Breath

In this article, I highlight my favorite learnings from the book - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by author James Nestor. 

Mouth Breathing VS Nasal Breathing

"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 overall space and making breathing more difficult. Inhaling from the nose has the opposite effect."

It forces air against all those flabby tissues at the back of the throat, making airways wider and breathing easier. After a while, these tissues and muscles get toned and stay in this opened and wide position." - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - Author: James Nestor.

Breathing through the mouth weakens and tightens tissues and makes breathing harder. Breathing through the nose strengthens and opens tissues making breathing easier.

"Working together, 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." - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - Author: James Nestor.

Breathing through our noses is far more complex than we can imagine. It delivers our lungs optimum air that is already warm and clean. It reminds me of an A/C Heater with air that goes in, gets warmed, and filters before being supplied.

The Perfect Breath 

 "The perfect breath is this, breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That's 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air. To be clear, breathing less is not the same as breathing slowly. Average age adult lungs can hold about 4-6 liters of air. This means that, even if we practice slow breathing at 5.5 breaths per minute, we could still be easily taking in twice the air we need.

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. By taking longer fewer breaths, we allow our lungs to soak up more in fewer breaths" - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - Author: James Nestor.

For further clarity, I will explain this in my own words. The perfect breath is a continuous 5.5-second inhale followed by a 5.5-second exhale. The key is to keep the breaths slow and shallow (not deep breaths) while following the 5.5 rhythm, only utilizing about 50% of your lung's capacity on the inhale and exhale.

"Whenever they followed this slow breathing pattern, blood flow to the brain increased and the systems in the body entered a state of coherence, when the functions of the heart, circulation, and nervous system are coordinated to peak efficiency.

The best way to prevent many chronic health problems, improve athletic performance, and extend longevity was to focus on how we breathed, specifically to balance oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the body.

Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity." - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - Author: James Nestor.

This perfect breath balances oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and enables the body to thrive by functioning at peak efficiency!

Exercise & Athletic Performance

"This measurement of highest oxygen consumption, called VO2 max, is the best gauge of cardiorespiratory fitness. Training the body to breathe less actually increases VO2 max, which can not only boosts athletic stamina but also help us live longer healthier lives." - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - Author: James Nestor.

These optimal and efficient breathing benefits transfer over to exercise too. The more efficiently you get rid of your muscle's waste (burnt carbon), the more efficiently they can be supplied energy (oxygen), to sustain your efforts. From my experience as well as author James Nestors this is not easy in practice.

At first, your brain tells your body that it's starved of oxygen. However, you will also notice your endurance and strength lasting much longer. The breathing gets much easier after some time when your brain realizes it's performing optimally. It is more than worth the effort and satisfying when you realize the benefits.

"The way the body loses weight isn't through profusely sweating or "burning it off." We lose weight through exhaled breaths. For every 10 pounds of fat lost in our bodies, 8.5 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. The lungs are the weight-regulating system of the body." - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - Author: James Nestor.

All I can think is no wonder those garbage bag jackets and sweat belts don't work! If we lose about 85% of weight through breathing, it sounds like efficiently breathing out more carbon will aid weight loss more than trying to sweat more.

Chewing

"It was the constant stress of chewing that was lacking from our diet, not vitamin A, B, C, or D. 95% of the modern, processed diet was soft. Even what's considered healthy food today, smoothies, nut butter, oatmeal, avocados, whole wheat bread, and vegetable soups. It’s all soft. Our ancient ancestors chewed for hours a day, every day.

Because they chewed so much, their mouths, teeth, throat, and face is going to be wide and strong and pronounced. Food in industrialized societies was so process that is hardly required any chewing it all. It starts at infancy. The chewing and sucking stress required for breast-feeding exercises the masseter and other facial muscles and stimulates more stem cell growth, stronger bones, and more pronounced airways.

Unlike other bones in the body, the bone that makes up the center of the face, called the maxilla, is made up of a membrane bone that is highly plastic. That maxilla can remodel and grow denser into our 70s, and likely longer. 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.

Nobody needs a Homeoblock or retainer to get the bone-building and airway expanding benefits of chewing. Hard, natural foods in chewing gum likely work just as effectively." - Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art - Author: James Nestor.

Our face structure, teeth, and nasal cavities are built through the power of chewing and stem cell release. The lack of it can cause endless issues from breathing, to sleep, to teeth deformities.

Luckily we can kick start this stem cell growth almost at any age from breastfeeding after birth to chewing more into our late years. All we have to do is chew, mostly raw hard foods (imagine nuts, carrots, apples, etc.) and we can even supplement extra chewing of gum.

My Takeaways

To summarize my highlights from this article we could all likely benefit from solely breathing through our noses, breathing around a 5.5-second pace of shallow and slow breaths at rest and while exercising, and chewing more solid hard raw foods. 

Here is a link to a Youtube video guiding you through 5.5 breaths per minute through sound. You can also search the same title for different sounds to your liking.