Breath The New Science of a Lost Art

James Nestor writes about some of these in his book, breath.

He wrote Breath, the new science of a lost art came out a couple of years ago during the pandemic.

And then after researching nose breathing, which by the way, I think you got this original article from How Stuff Works, right?

And he isn't it nice Chuck to be able to say things like that in past tense?

James Nestor says you want to nose breathe, mouth breathing bad, nose breathing good.

He said he doesn't even know why God came up with breathing through the mouth. It's so stupid.

He wrote Breath, the new science of a lost art came out a couple of years ago during the pandemic.

And then nitric oxide is released in nasal breathing and nitric oxide actually has a bunch of different effects. But a big one is that it's a vasodilator, which means that it opens up your, your blood vessels so that more blood can flow.

And James Nestor, the author and breathing researcher, he says there's a kind that's called coherent breathing.

And he said a good way to work on breathing is to try this coherent breathing where you breathe in slowly for about five to six seconds and then you exhale over about five to six seconds.

And that makes sense because if you've ever trained your lungs on one of those little like breathing trainers, you know what I'm talking about?

it's a good idea to be a nose breather unless you need to mouth breathe and it's a great idea it's a superb idea to be a nose breather in sleep and one way to really get good at that is to take a little bit of medical tape and to tape your mouth shut before going to sleep you heard me right puts a medical tape over your mouth and force yourself to nose breathe during sleep it also prevents snoring in most cases really offset sleep apnea sleep apnea again being a very serious health concern I should also mention as a tool that if you have a hard time being a nose breather in sleep you can try doing your cardiovascular exercise at least the lower intensity cardiovascular exercise through purely nasal breathing and one way to do that again is to tape your mouth shut or put a gulp of water in your mouth but don't actually swallow that mouthful of water or to use a mouthpiece or just deliberately keep your mouth closed and then cyst on breathing through your nose most people find that when they start doing cardiovascular exercise that way it's really challenging at first but over time they actually can feel quite calm and still can generate a lot of physical effort purely using nose breathing the reason that doing nose breathing during cardiovascular exercise translates to being a nose breather during sleep is that your son is is actually can dilate their plastic and over time plastic meaning they're they're sh- they're malleable that is and they can become wider you're not going to get giant nostrils don't worry about it your airways within your your skull because that's what the sinuses really are these little passages within the skull and of course within the nasal passages art will dilate and will allow you to breathe more easily through your nose but for those of you that are waking up in the middle of the night breathing on your back or your partner is telling you that or other people are telling you that or that person on the plane with your mouth hanging open and drooling in your mouth breathing terrible terrible terrible for health reasons and other reasons puts a medical take over your mouth learn to be a nose breather during sleep your sleep will improve and your daytime feelings of wakefulness and focus will improve your cardiovascular health will improve and on and on and on so now we've largely covered the tools that one could use to get and stay asleep and we talked about exercise we talked about temperature we talked about supplements and we talked about of course keeping the sleeping environment both cool and as dark as possible

There's the recent book, Breath by James Nestor, which is an excellent book that describes some of the positive effects of nasal breathing as well as other breathing practices.

This sounds a little bit extreme and you certainly don't want to do this in any way that's dangerous. James Nester talked about this in his book, breath the new science of a lost art that simply taping shut the mouth with some tape that will allow you to open your mouth if you really need to during sleep can allow people to shift over from being mouth breathers and snores to nose breathers.

There's a plethora of information out there now because of James Nester's book breath the new science of a law start which came out this last year excellent book as well as jaws which is from Sandra con Paul Erlich with a forward by Jared Diamond and Robert Sapolsky

I'd recommend Breath by James Nestor.

In 2020, James released his New York Times and internationally bestselling book, "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art". It was awarded the prize for Best General Nonfiction Book of 2020 by the American Society of Journalists and Authors, it was a finalist for Best Science Book of 2021 by the Royal Society, and has been translated into 35 languages.

I didn't want to do this experiment on myself. I really did not want to do it.

There had never been a human trial of nasal breathing versus mouth breathing for this amount of time.

It was the first few days. So I did this with breathing researcher and breathing therapist Anders Olsen from Sweden. He was the only person that would do this.

So the first few days we were kind of laughing. It was like, how bad did you sleep? We went from zero snoring to full on snoring and sleep apnea within a couple of days.

His name is James Nestor. He has a NewYorkTimes bestseller, a book called Breath.

Earlier this week, we posted an interview with James Nestor who wrote a book called Breath, the new science of a lost art.

James Nestor is somebody I've wanted to have on the show for a long time. He's a science journalist who wrote a book called "Breath, the New Science of a Lost Art," which spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into 35 languages.

Breathing, you say, breathing is a missing pillar of health. What do you mean by that?

You call us, I'm going to quote you again, you call us the worst breathers in the animal kingdom. What's going on that that is the case?

You have all chapter about the surprising power of the nose. Can you just educate us a little bit about the marvels of the nose?

So, I was trying to find a word that encompassed everybody who has a deep interest in breathing. And a lot of those people are researchers and academics, but not all of them. Some of them are people like me who couldn't find any help for their chronic respiratory issues, found a way of fixing it, and got really interested in breathing. Some of them are people who had emphysema and managed to significantly reduce the symptoms of emphysema. Some of them are people who had mild to moderate scoliosis and straighten their spines with proper breathing. It's true. This actually happened. So under that umbrella is you don't have to have an MD to be a pulmonaut, but these are people who have spent a large portion of their lives dedicated to understanding and bettering their breathing and the breathing of other people around them.

James Nester, as somebody I've wanted to have on this show for a long time, he's a science journalist who wrote a book called Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art which spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into 35 languages.

My wife who's a pulmonologist, a lung specialist has your book and it's been on the show for a long time so I've been feeling guilty that I haven't had you on.

Breathing, you say, breathing is a missing pillar of health.

no matter what you eat or how much you exercise or how much you sleep or whatever, you can never ever really be healthy if you have dysfunctional breathing and the vast majority of us are breathing in a dysfunctional way.

You call us the worst breathers in the animal kingdom.

I really encourage people there's books like James Nester wrote breathe Patrick McCune wrote the oxygen advantage.

Have you read the book James Nester's book, Breathe?

I'm just talking about the lost start of breathing.

I don't know.

I'm serious.

Mothers like me once had no recourse. No power to hold off the lash, to hold on indefinitely, to fight back when they crushed your heart and life.

there is still a future as harrowing as it might be to face of this every bit of sweetness to indulge and to spoil to delight.

I read this beautiful book called Breathe by James Nestor and he recommended it.