2023-04-28 20:02:07
Since childhood, journalist James Nestor had difficulty breathing. Various diseases of the respiratory tract suffocated him alternately. After years of dealing with severe lung diseases, he came to a meditation workshop. According to his testimony, his life was a shadow of life then. He worked very little, barely ate and spent the rest of his time consuming oxygen.
The meditation made him feel better. Finally, he even felt qualified to take on a journalistic assignment abroad: a trip to Greece to trace the world of free divers, those who can stay underwater for long minutes at unusual depths, without diving equipment, thanks to a series of lung exercises.
The divers’ instructor wanted to convince the group, and Nestor, that just as “we are what we eat”, we are how we breathe. “The number of ways we can breathe does not fall short of the number of foods we can eat, and each way we breathe will affect our body in other ways,” she said.
The participants in the course told about the virtues of the breath change: one reduced his weight, another was cured of an infectious disease, and another participant significantly increased his lung capacity. Nestor was fired up and began searching the scientific literature for official records of such stories. He found rich literature, but ancient, hundreds of years old. In modern scientific literature, no importance has been attributed to the form of breathing.
But a deeper dig into the scientific literature revealed hints that the way we breathe may indeed matter, and most of us don’t do it well enough. Nestor wrote about these findings in the book “Breathing – How we lost the ability to breathe properly and how we can fix it for our future”, which was published in the USA in 2020 and became a bestseller. Recently, it was translated into Hebrew by Mater Publishing. If only we knew how to breathe.
James Nestor / Photo: Yeh’ach
“Breathing allows us to break into our nervous system, control our immune response and restore our health,” Nestor writes. “Changing the way we breathe will help prolong our lives, it doesn’t matter what we eat, how much we exercise, how resilient our genes are, how thin or young or smart we are – none of this will change if we don’t breathe correctly.”
Not all of these statements are agreed upon in the scientific community, but Nestor provides enough research to support them that the idea cannot be completely ignored.
More room for the brain, less room to breathe
The great trouble that the book refers to is breathing through the mouth, and Nestor is convinced that the breathing difficulties he suffered from over the years are related to changes in the structure of the mouth. He cites the research of Dr. Mariana Evans, an orthodontist and dental researcher, who photographed ancient skulls and showed that their nostrils were significantly larger than ours. Their mouths were large, and their teeth were straight, unlike modern humans, whose mouths are smaller and their teeth are at least a little crooked. No. Nice to say, but humans are the only species in the world that suffers from this problem.
The changes that happened to our face also had good reasons. The structure of the human head leaves more room for the brain. It also allows us to produce the sounds with which we speak. But it had a price: difficulty breathing through the nose.
3 studies on breathing
1
Over the years the structure of the human head changed so that the brain took up more space but the mouth became smaller and the teeth more crooked. It also changed the ability to breathe properly
2
James Nestor claims in his book that slow breathing keeps more carbon dioxide in the cells and circulation, therefore attracting more oxygen to the cells and improving their activity and sports performance
3
Data from the Framingham Study, a longitudinal study designed to find risk factors for disease, reveals that the smaller and less efficient the lungs, the faster the subjects got sick and died
40% of the population, Nestor claims, breathe mainly through the mouth because of allergies, a chronically blocked nose and problems with the structure of the facial bones. When the airways are blocked, it is easier for bacteria to develop in them, and the bacteria irritate the nose to create more congestion. It’s the stuffy nose horror cycle.
The experiment whose results are controversial
What happens when the nose is blocked and we breathe through the mouth? Big trouble, as Prof. Jayakar Naik of Stanford University, an expert in head and neck surgery, especially in sinus surgery, claims. Naik decided to conduct an experiment on Nestor and another subject, freediving enthusiast Anders Olsson: he would prevent his subjects from breathing through their noses for ten days, then prevent them from drinking through their mouths, and see when they were healthier.
On the first night of the experiment, the volume of Nestor’s snoring increased by 1,300%, and they took up 75 minutes of sleep time. He also suffered four episodes of sleep apnea. Last night there was already an increase of more than 4,000% in snoring and 25 episodes of apnea. He describes how his throat snored from the unfiltered breathing through the mouth only. His blood pressure increased significantly, to a dangerous level. His pulse was faster. Body temperature was lower. He woke up at night with a dry mouth and needed fluids. These frequent awakenings prevented him from reaching a deep sleep. It is known today, and it is a scientific consensus, that sleep apnea increases the risk of heart disease, obesity, attention disorders, depression, impotence, and more.
Nestor reports that during the breathing experiment, he lost some of his mental clarity. In the past it was documented that people who breathe through their mouth suffer more from attention disorders. A 2013 study showed differences in oxygen levels in the frontal lobe of the brain when breathing through the nose versus the mouth.
By breathing through the nose, we are able to absorb more oxygen from the air. Nestor cites a study conducted on athletes that showed that when they are required to breathe through their mouths, their chances of going into a state of anaerobic respiration, meaning the creation of energy in the body’s cells without oxygen consumption, is higher. Exercising while breathing anaerobically is more exhausting. It may be possible to improve the performance of athletes if they just make sure to breathe through the nose, as many fitness trainers recommend.
In the next phase of the experiment, Nestor was asked to breathe only through his nose as much as possible, and he did so by closing his mouth with a small plaster, whenever he did not need his mouth for other purposes, especially when sleeping. At this point, as he reports, he had no sleep apnea events at all. He concluded that the necessity of breathing through the nose simply “fixed” his problem.
This solution is very controversial. Doctors fear that patients will choke on vomit at night because they won’t be able to open their mouths or that they will put plasters on their mouths instead of getting a medical diagnosis. Nestor himself admitted in an interview to the journal “Sleep Review” that there are many causes of sleep apnea, not just mouth breathing. Only some patients will benefit from strict nasal breathing. And some are simply unable to do so.
The mystery of the erection of the nose
Nevertheless, it is agreed that it is recommended to breathe through the nose. But from which nostril? You probably didn’t think about that. “Nasal cycles” is the name given to the phenomenon known to science in which sometimes one nostril is more open and sometimes the other, and they alternate between them in cycles. But for what? Science is just beginning to discover this.
It turns out that the nasal cavity is lined with erect tissue, similar to the one that covers the penis and the clitoris. It also turns out, as Nestor claims, that when we are sexually stimulated, our nose also experiences a kind of erection – in some people to the point of sneezing or difficulty breathing. Even without connection to sexual arousal, this erectile tissue allows one nostril to close and the other to expand as needed.
And what is the need? This is where the disputes begin. Nestor cites preliminary research linking right nostril breathing (for righties) to arousal of the sympathetic system, associated with alertness, while left nostril breathing stimulates the parasympathetic system, associated with relaxation. How can it be? Because each nostril flows more oxygen to a different side of the brain.
The goal is to reach a balance between the systems. Preliminary studies showed that deliberate practice of breathing from only one nostril, then breathing only from the other nostril, led to a decrease in stress levels and better sports performance. These are practices that have existed for many years in the world of yoga, but only recently has there been scientific interest in them.
Alongside the studies that Nestor cites there are other studies that examine other explanations, for example that we want to let one nostril “rest” to prevent dehydration, or that the cycle encourages us to change body positions during sleep, in order to absorb more oxygen from the active nostril, and this prevents pressure sores.
Big lungs, long life
Let’s leave the nose for a moment and ask: is it possible to prolong life by increasing lung capacity? Nestor claims that this is one of the physical measures most highly correlated with longevity, according to data from the famous Framingham Study – a longitudinal study designed to find risk factors for disease. “They collected data measured among 2,500 subjects, and found that the smaller and less efficient the lungs were, the faster the subjects got sick and died,” Nestor writes in his book. “In 2000, researchers at the University of Buffalo conducted a similar study, with more than a thousand subjects. The results were the same.”
A decrease in lung capacity is considered a natural process in aging, but it doesn’t have to be, Nestor claims. “A typical adult uses as little as ten percent of the diaphragm’s capacity range when breathing, an action that overloads the heart, raises blood pressure and causes a whole collection of blood circulation problems,” he writes. After years of flat breathing, our diaphragm degenerates.
A full exhalation will activate it better. For example, if we count out loud as we exhale and continue until we can’t anymore, we will then feel the diaphragm muscle. It’s a good exercise for the pelvic floor as well. You can also blow out through pursed lips, like a whistle. This is a well-known technique in physical therapy, which critics of Nestor’s book were surprised to find was not mentioned in it.
The person who developed the method of full exhalation was a singing teacher and choir conductor named Carl Stow, who taught opera singers to expand their lung capacity. He was recruited to reproduce the success in the medical system as well, even though he had no formal education in the field, and he also trained athletes.
Breathe out the fat
Exhalation may also play a role in removing fat products from the body. If we thought that the process of losing fat is the opposite of heat, then it turns out that this is not the complete answer. The cells break down and the carbon part in the fatty acids turns into carbon dioxide which is eliminated through exhalation.
Will controlling the amount of carbon dioxide we exhale help us lose weight? well no. Correct breathing may help us to be more relaxed and sleep better, which in themselves can certainly contribute to weight loss, but we cannot deliberately breathe out the fat.
However, carbon dioxide levels do matter. Nestor describes a study according to which muscles we use more accumulate more carbon dioxide and therefore attract more oxygen to them. This is an oxymoron – actually having more carbon dioxide in the muscles attracts more oxygen, while breathing pure oxygen from an oxygen balloon does not change the amount of oxygen in the muscles at all, Nestor claims. His claim is that slow breathing keeps more carbon dioxide in the cells and in the blood circulation, therefore attracting more oxygen to the cells and improving cell activity and sports performance.
Upon its publication, Nestor’s book received some criticism, mainly for the part where he claims that proper breathing has direct effects on digestion and the immune system and suggests potentially dangerous breathing techniques. It is also claimed that in the breathing study that Nestor himself participated in, it is difficult to neutralize the placebo effect. However, the positive effects of breathing through the nose, deep and attentive breathing, and the importance of preventing sleep apnea have already received scientific support.
The empty nose syndrome that drives patients crazy
In his book, Nestor places a lot of emphasis on the narrowness of the blocked nose, but attempts to open blocked noses with surgery led to a mysterious phenomenon: patients experience their noses as being too open, and this aggravates them.
Although surgeons remove a very small amount of tissue, a small proportion of patients report that the nose feels empty. They are bothered by the fact that they cannot feel the air passing through the nose, and for some reason this causes a feeling of suffocation. This disruption sometimes also manifests itself in a feeling of numbness, even emotional numbness.
“It’s all in the head,” say doctors and suggest simply breathing through the mouth, but several signs have accumulated that this is a condition with physiological roots. Following the testimonies of patients, a doctor named Steven Hauser developed an implant that restores the missing tissue. It is an expensive procedure, but the few who have undergone it have reported good results. Hauser and Prof. Naik also sometimes treat by injecting fillers into the nose, and this also has a positive effect, although in this case too it may be a placebo effect.
Because the patients suffer from lack of sleep, irritability and an obsession with the “empty” nose, and are frustrated that they are not believed and even laughed at, the medical community finds it difficult emotionally to treat them. It’s a vicious cycle, because when patients seem so emotionally disturbed, it’s easy for doctors to assume that the syndrome is only in their brain, and not in their nose. And maybe she is in both, because the nose is so close to the brain, that the operation may have damaged something nerve-wracking. Another possible explanation is that when the nose is too open and the patients do not feel the air flowing through it, the brain interprets this as a lack of oxygen and reacts with a warning of suffocation.
#breathe #properly