Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum Here. Breathing is something we do naturally, often without thinking, but many of us are doing it completely wrong. According to science journalist James Nestor, he spent a decade investigating all the ways we breathe and compiled the information into the instant bestseller Breath The New Science
of a Lost Art, which published in May. He calls breathing the missing part of health, says it's as vital to our well being as how much we exercise, what foods we eat, and how much we sleep. Doing it wrong can have dire consequences on our health, he says, and contributes to sleep disordered breathing problems like snoring, sleep apnea, and insomnia, mental and behavioral conditions like anxiety, depression and a d h D, and medical issues like high blood pressure,
increased heart rate, and diabetes. Decades of studies back this up, Nestor says, Yet the way we breathe is largely overlooked by the general population. The good news we have the power to combat many of these conditions, and we can start with our breath. Breathing well begins with nasal breathing for starters, the lungs don't like cold, dry air. A Nasal breathing warms and humidifies your breath before it reaches
the lungs. When you breathe through your nose, air travels past bony structures in the nasal cavity called turbinates, which are covered in soft tissue known as mucosa. These turbinates are what warm and humidify your breath. Nasal breathing also cleans the air you breathe thanks to tiny hair like filters in the nasal cavity called cilia that act as filters. Cilia capture dust, pollution, allergens, smoke, bacteria, viruses, and disordered other debris in the air that you inhale and traps
them in the mucus. From there, the debris is eventually pushed into your throat and swallowed. Nose breathing also forces you to use your diaphragm, the muscle that sits below the lungs. Diafragmatic breathing, or belly breathing, as opposed to chest breathing, increases the efficiency of the lungs by activating the lower lobes, which contain a larger percentage of blood than the upper lobes. Breathing through your nose also increases the amount of oxygen in your blood more than mouth breathing.
That's because nasal breathing brings the nitric oxide produced in the paranasal sinuses into your lungs. Nitric Oxide is a vasodilator, meaning that it relaxes and widens the blood vessels, causing them to increase circulation. This allows blood, nutrients and oxygen to travel more efficiently throughout the body. It also decreases plat growth and blood clotting. Nasal breathing can improve athletic
performance as well. A trainer of elite athletes conducted several studies in the nineteen nineties comparing nose breathing exercises to mouth breathing exercises. By hooking a group of cyclists up to sensors and recording their breathing and heart rates. He found that there was no significant difference in heart rate between the nose breathing and mouth breathing exercises, but breath
rates were consistently lower during the nasal breathing exercises. For example, one subject at maximum exertion on a stationary bike had a nasal breathing rate of fourteen breaths per minute compared to a mouth breathing rate of forty eight breaths per minute. Perceived exertion was also significantly lower with nasal breathing, based on a self reported scale of one to ten, with
ten being the most stressful. At maximum exertion on the stationary bike, participants rated their perceived exertion at ten while mouth breathing, but rated their perceived exertion a comfortable for while nose breathing. Nasal breathing also activated the athletes parasympathetic nervous system, which indicated that they were calmer and more relaxed when breathing through their noses compared with their mouths. And Nestor said, when you exhale, you're listening your parasympathetic response.
You're actually hacking into your nervous system and lowering your heart rate. On top of practicing nasal breathing on the regular, he recommends using this information if you're prone to anxiety when experiencing increased heart rate. It might help if you exhale for longer than you inhale, say inhaling for account of three than exhaling for account of six. Today's episode was written by Jennifer Walker Journey and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit
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