The Magic of Breathing Through Your Nose

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

It takes about 3.3 seconds to breathe in and out.  Over a lifetime, we do this an average of 670 million times.  You might think something so frequent and automatic would not cause problems.  But it certainly does.  The challenges include allergies and asthma, loss of taste and smell, and the threatening symptoms of COVID 19.  We gasp, snort, sneeze, and snore through our days and spend billions of dollars on medications to make breathing more tolerable.  

 

Every day I expect it will be difficult to rely just on my nose, so I have always turned to mouth breathing without ever thinking much about it.  That is, until recently, when my nephew Ron sent me a current best seller titled Breath, written by James Nestor, a popular science journalist.  Nestor’s far-flung investigations combine accounts of applied medical research, eons of ancient history, and personal experimentation, all leading to the conclusion that changing the way we breathe can dramatically improve our health.

 

By design, our noses are meant for breathing and our mouths for eating or drinking.  However, when the mouth becomes our backup passageway for air, we are more likely to choke or cough, exhale more moisture and thus grow thirstier, take in more unfiltered impurities, and suffer from bad breath, snoring, and possibly sleep apnea.   

 

None of this is too surprising, but what startles me are the many advantages of learning to breathe more through my nose.  Doing so can reportedly cut our athletic exertions in half and enhance endurance.  I tested this on a stationary bike, an ergometer, and a treadmill.  The results blew me away.  Staying within my aerobic capacity, not sacrificing much extra time, I discovered I could breathe more deeply and evenly, perspire less, and feel more residual energy than when I was mouth breathing.

 

So what gives?  Studies reveal that nasal breathing alone can increase oxygen intake by more than 18 percent.  A combination of constantly churning mucus and waving cilia in the nose will heat, clean, slow, moisturize, and pressurize air to enable more oxygen uptake. 

 

In short, the nose is loaded with magic. The biggest nasal revelation is carbon dioxide.  When we breathe more heavily, and take in more oxygen, naturally we expel more carbon dioxide.  But losing too much carbon dioxide quickly stops its crucial internal job of helping our blood release reservoirs of oxygen to our organs.  Nasal breathing slows down our breathing rate significantly, thereby reducing Co2 loss and helping oxygen do its job better inside our bodies.

 

All of this can sound pretty technical, but some practical lessons come to light.  For instance, on my college freshman swimming team, the coach liked to have us exhale all air, sink to the bottom of the pool, and sit there with empty lungs.  Torture yes, but his purpose was to challenge our lungs to expel all carbon dioxide.

 

When I took trombone lessons as a high school kid, my teacher emphasized breathing in deeply and then pushing up air from my diaphragm or lower lungs.  He was right!  Nose breathing facilitates this.  It drives oxygen efficiently into the lower lobes of the lungs where the lung capacity expands and the heart rate and blood pressure slow down. I swear I could think more calmly and clearly.  The trombone even sounded better!

 

Preserving and increasing our lung capacity is probably the single most important predictor of longevity.  The nose knows how to make this happen.  We just have to give our nasal passages plenty of practice and encouragement.

 

Understanding BOCES

 

Understanding BOCES    

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

 

The big school bell that sits atop our garage in rural western New York has quite a history. Salvaged from a nearby one-room school that was torn down years ago, in our minds as retired educators, the bell seems to signal the birth of a sharing spectacular called BOCES, otherwise known as boards of cooperative educational services, or cooperative boards.   

 

Nowadays school bells are no longer needed.  But more than 70 years ago, hundreds of small poor rural school districts with ringing bells dotted the map of New York state.  Most could not offer the array of vocational programs demanded by our post world war economy.  Farming organizations were acutely aware of the need to realize economies of scale.  Via their statewide council, they pressed for a new type of supervisory district to meet rural needs more cost effectively.

 

In 1948 the state legislature responded by enacting legislation to create “intermediate school districts”.  Although none ever appeared, a temporary alternative for educational service sharing took root.  It was called a BOCES.  New York was the first state in the nation to create this adaptable creature.

 

 Today no two of the state’s 37 BOCES are alike.  Their built-in sharing mechanisms reflect the programs and services needed by their component districts.  Four different BOCES are physically centered in western New York.  Although between 30 and 40 other states now have something similar, virtually none renders services as diversified and responsive as ours.

 

BOCES is a unique organization.  Unlike school districts where local taxing and governing jurisdictions operate, a BOCES is a cooperative association of districts on a larger geographical scale.  Only the Big Five City districts, including Buffalo, are legislatively excluded.  Pioneer school district and 21 others are served by the Cattaraugus Allegany BOCES (aka CABOCES) which has three centers, employs about 600 staff, and spans more than 12,000 square miles.   

 

 Component school districts contract with BOCES for services and programs that cover a huge range of career and technical education, special education, planning, technology systems and management services.  Districts can choose among hundreds of potential offerings, all designed to enable educational activities to be shared more efficiently, economically, and equitably than can be provided by an individual district.  Once the state approves a service, districts that participate will budget for it and receive substantial state aid to offset their costs and those charged by the BOCES.  Special education is aided separately.

 

 As for public accountability, like local school districts, cooperative boards have specific powers and duties detailed in education law.  Elected by their component boards, up to 15 members serve three-year terms.  A few continue to serve on both local and cooperative boards.  Former Pioneer board member Michael Conroy has ably served for upwards of a decade. For several decades previously, Pioneer veteran Heinke Lillenstein represented our educational community.       

 

 BOCES flexible partnerships have proven invaluable during the current COVID pandemic.  For part of their day, our high school students still travel to and from BOCES for mostly career and technical education.  However, the BOCES have responsively transformed electronic communication links, curriculum delivery, staff development, practical advisory information routes statewide, and logistical support.

 

CABOCES superintendent Scott Payne points to support for “kids at the margins” who may need special services or internet access with free wi-fi.  Regional coordination with health department liaisons has improved contact tracing.

 

 Pioneer assistant superintendent Nick Silvaroli adds that CABOCES and Erie 1 BOCES have “facilitated meetings and discussions to stay informed, share ideas, and stay on the same page to best navigate the pandemic.” Topics have included complex executive orders related to remote instruction, safety and hygiene, food service, and student and staff attendance requirements.

 

Skip Tillinghast, Pioneer’s coordinator of public communications and webmaster, praises valuable tech support from four ITS assignees who keep electronic networks humming, devices repaired, and virtual field trips scheduled for students.

 

Skip also highlights BOCES curriculum support, with three BOCES staff members helping teachers integrate remote instruction, best practices, and assessment tools.  On-site teamwork involves BOCES itinerant staff, specialists, and aides working side by side with home district staff and in classrooms of their own.  Among component districts, the BOCES rents up to 100 classrooms so instructional support can be geographically decentralized. 

 

 In a time of crisis, New York state’s BOCES are proving their ingenuity.  As reported by state association leaders, for example, 3D printers normally used in career and technical programs at Broome-Tioga BOCES were used to produce face masks and shields for healthcare workers.  A group of nurses from Monroe One BOCES assisted call centers with contact tracing and testing.  To enrich the hands-on learning of cosmetology students, Ulster BOCES teachers packed up 47 mannequin heads, shears, smocks and other items and sent them home.  

 

 Closer to home, a recent issue of the Arcade Herald (12/31) highlights adult outreach through an upcoming series of free CABOCES sponsored Zoom-based sessions on parenting during a pandemic, virtual learning, social-emotional competencies, and reducing youthful anxieties. 

 

Despite seven decades of history, many community residents remain unfamiliar with the shared services of BOCES unless their own children or relatives have participated in BOCES programs.  Typically graduates earn a career certification and a head start on employment and college credit.  Frequently they go on to earn higher education degrees in well-compensated technical fields.

 

 While New York’s public schooling has been forced to adapt in unprecedented ways during the pandemic, BOCES has responded with abundant partnerships and a beautifully organized system for educational sharing.        

The Nightmare of Donald Trump's Inauguration

 

The Nightmare of Donald Trump’s Inauguration

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

(January 2017)

 

Somewhere as I half slept

An inauguration drifted.

 I dreamed of seas that moaned and wept,

By morning fog had lifted.

I thought it time to celebrate

A president’s arrival.

But then I choked and gasped “No, wait!”

The question is survival.

Democracy assures us  

That we still have a voice,

 But discord oozing like some pus

Reveals a fateful choice.

Arrogance is the lot we drew,

The facts we just ignore.

Hidden motives still abound,

And disguise events in store.

Somehow this seemed familiar,

As I drifted on the sea.

The sky was blue, the surface glass,

Thrown back a century.

 I floated with my jacket cinched,

Above I saw the towers

Of a massive ship still inching on,

Debris cast off in showers.

From her tilted decks it rained,

Life torn apart and screaming

Like some great animal in pain,  

Its entrails bloody streaming.

I felt so cold, cried out in vain,

As bodies floated round me,

I’d chosen Lusitania

And now the judgment bound me.

I thought my ship invincible,

So big, so fast, so vast,

But then what seemed unthinkable,

Became torpedo’s blast.

Because of warnings overlooked,

I thought I was protected,

But now I float amid the hooks

Of destiny infected.

Somehow I knew the time could come,

I knew we’d rue the day.

An inauguration struck us dumb,

Yet still we chose this way.

There’s no escape to safety,

My hopes have sunk like stones,

The Lusitania haunts me

 With the lessons in her bones.

 

The Lusitania sank in May 1915.

Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

There is no such thing as a coincidence.