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.