Your Nose: An Overlooked Piece of Your Health

When you think about how important nutrients are to your life, I would imagine most people rarely think about oxygen. Yet, most people can only survive a few minutes without it.

The world record for someone holding their breath is 24 mins. This feat was achieved by Budimir Sobat of Croatia, underwater (mind blown emoji).

Even then, how many things in your life can you only survive without for 24 mins?

Virtually everything, right?

I don’t often think about it, but it’s amazing that every day we take approximately 22,000 breaths and we never have to think about it. It just works.

We don’t have to think about the 25 sextillion molecules we breath in each time we take a breath. Yet your body organizes them, uses the good, dishes out the bad, all without our conscious thought.

Imagine you had to do this all yourself, by thinking about it. Would you do anything but breathe?

I recently read Breath by James Nestor. Great book! He talks about how we have become a society of mouth breathers who are breathing too quickly.

In his book he recounts his experience being a part of an experiment at Stanford University. In that experiment he spent 10 days with his nose completely blocked. Everyone in the study was fed the same food, exercised the same amount, went to sleep at the same time each day. After 10 days this was what happened to his body:

His blood pressure increased dramatically. His heart rate variability tanked. His sleep apnea episodes went up 4000%. He started to urinate frequently. His cardiovascular capacity dropped. His energy was shot.

The following 10 days he spent only breathing through his nose. Everything else was the same. Amazingly, everything reversed and his performance improved in almost every area from his original baseline.

This led me to the question: How much do I breath through my nose?

Since reading the book, I spent the last 2 weeks focusing on breathing through my nose.

Oddly enough in just a couple days, my energy got better, I get better sleep, my hands don’t get as cold and I don’t need to use the washroom as often. All in just a few days.

Prior to this I didn’t even believe I was a mouth breather. I also don’t experience sleep apnea, asthma or any other breathing issues. So you can imagine if I am seeing these changes with only mild symptoms, it makes me wonder how much someone with greater issues would benefit.

If you’re experiencing breathing issues, energy issues, frequent urination or problems with blood pressure, you may want to consider trying to focus on your breathing habits. Below I wrote some of the tips from the book. Try it for a couple weeks and let me know how it feels:

Major takeaways from the book (If you want a more complete list read Breath by James Nestor):

• Close your mouth: breathing through your nose you use 40% less water. Your nose is important in filtering out bad bacteria and important in stimulating areas of your brain that regulate autonomic function.

• Take longer breaths: most people are breathing too quickly and this can affect you mental state, energy levels, hormones secreted from the pituitary gland… in the book James recommends 5.5 sec inhale, 5.5 second exhales.

• Spend time each day focusing on breathing: There are a lot of different breathing practices in the book that are beneficial for different needs. Spending only 5-10 mins to focus on breathing through your nose with longer breaths, helps you create the habit through the rest of the day. You also inherently become more aware of your mouth breathing. Trust me you don’t know if you are a mouth breather till you focus on closing your mouth.

Stay Healthy,

Dr. Jean Paul Bohemier DC