Short Stuff: Nose Breathing

Nose breathing > mouth breathing for many reasons. Listen and learn!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant this short stuff, so let's
short it up. Yeah, this is about breathing, about the
benefits of nose breathing. But it could be the shortest
short stuff ever ever if we just said the biggest

(00:21):
benefit of nose breathing is that you're not a mouth breather.
Yeah for real, I've never remember I I do mouth
breathe if I'm not paying attention to it. Sometimes it's
all right, I'm just gonna say it. I do try
to nose breathe. But I was recently diagnosed with a
deviated septum and it makes sense to me. Like, I'm like, yeah,
it's hard for me to breathe through my nose. Interesting.

(00:43):
And then after researching nose breathing, which by the way,
I think you got this original article from House to Works, right,
that's right, Um, I'm like, I'm going to get my
deviated septum fixed. I want to be able to breathe
through my nose properly. Now is that code for nose jobs? Still?
I don't think so. I'm fine with my nose. I mean,
it's a big old thirties comic strip gangster like hook nose.

(01:06):
But I like it. You know, it is not to
say other noses are irregular. I love wacky shape noses. Well,
then you gotta love my nose because it's a it's
a honker. I never thought it was much of a honker,
but that it sort of used to be. Code is
like someone would come back to to class from spring
break with like a brand new nose. They're like, I

(01:28):
had a deviated septem. I know what you're talking about.
That is super eighties. They would be wearing like chunky
socks and have like their sweater tied together over their
shoulders and eating like a little cup of yogurt. Uh So,
what's the big deal? Why should you breathe through your nose? Well,
there's a guy named James Nestor. He is a nose
breathing researcher who is also an author on nose breathing.

(01:49):
He wrote Breath the New Science of a Lost Art
came out a couple of years ago during the pandemic,
And um, he isn't it nice, Chuck to be able
to say things like that in past tense? I just
said that in past tense, as if the pandemic is over. Yeah,
not over, but things are certainly much much better. So
with you wow we anyway, James Nestor says, you you

(02:13):
want to nose breathe, mouth breathing bad, nose breathing good.
Like your body is basically equipped for breathing through your nose.
He said, he doesn't even know why God came up
with breathing through the mouth. It's so stupid. That's right,
because your lungs want moist warm or moisture and warmer air,
and breathing through your nose provides that. It it goes

(02:36):
when it goes through the nose, it goes through passes
by these turbinates, these bony structures, and they're covered in
soft tissue called mucosa, and that stuff is gonna warm
up and moist uff that air as it goes into
your lungs, and your lungs gonna be much happier. Plus
that's not even to mention the cilia, the little hairs
that lying um your nasal airway. And in addition to

(02:58):
the big old hairs, but you also have a little
tiny microscopic here silia that can catch smoke. I mean
that's just showing off. If you're silly, you're like, watch
this and you catch a piece of smoke. Um, they
can catch anything. If you can catch smoke, you can
filter out basically anything. And that's a big role that
they play, and they hang onto it and when they're
sure it's not going to go into your lungs, they

(03:19):
kind of throw it down your gullet and you end
up swallowing all that stuff, dander, smoke, paul in, tiny
little mites, all that stuff goes into your stomach where
they go through the acid rent cycle and are pulverized
into nothingness. But that's a that's that just kind of
underlines like how well equipped for nose breathing we actually are. Yeah,

(03:42):
it also encourages what's known as die a frammic breathing,
A funny looking word that g always throws me off. Uh,
this is that deep breathing. When they talk about, like
if you've ever taken voice lessons or anything like that,
or even yoga they talk about or meta tation, they
talk about diaphragm breathing. That's activating the lower part, the

(04:04):
lower lobes of your lungs, and that's that's where you
want to be breathing from as opposed to chest breathing,
because down there you've got many more um well, there's
just a bigger percentage of blood than in the upper levels,
and that's gonna do a whole host of great things
for you. Yeah, so you're oxygen eating more blood, which
is good because that means that you're going to get

(04:26):
more oxygen all throughout your body, because that's one of
the roles that blood plays. But also, um it releases
nitric oxide. Nasal breathing does. And I don't understand why
just nasal breathing, but I could not figure it out.
But let's just suffice to say that James Nestor knows
what he's talking about. And then nitric oxide is released
in nasal breathing, and nitric oxide actually has a bunch

(04:48):
of different effects, but a big one is that it's
a vasodilator, which means that it opens up your your
blood um vessels so that more blood can flow, your
blood pressure is lower, and you're actually calmer and healthier
than you would be. And apparently this happens through nasal
breathing and not through mouth breathing. That's right, So let's

(05:10):
take a break. If you weren't on board with nose breathing,
I think you will be when we come back and
give you a few more reasons. Ask you should know,

(05:37):
are you an athlete? I exercise, But no, I would
not say I'm an athlete. I I know it would
be shameful for me to say yes. If you were
an athlete, you might want a nose breathe. Uh. There's
a doctor named Dr John Duilliard who did some studies
in the nineties when he kind of put mouth breathers

(05:59):
and nose breathers, uh, neck to neck and said, go
exercise and let's talk about it. Let's hook you up
to some machines and stuff like that. And interestingly he
found there there wasn't really a big difference in your
heart rate depending on how you breathe, but a really
pretty substantial difference between your breathing rate. Uh. A lot

(06:19):
more mouth breathing going on. I think forty eight breasts
per minute compared to fourteen nasal breaths per minute when
you're exercising on that stationary bike, and that I guess
that's just because you're deeper breathing, would be my guess. Y, Yes,
supposedly because you'd be using those lower lobes if you're

(06:40):
if you're no nasal breathing over mouth breathing, it's a
big difference fourteen eight. Yeah, and it's a big difference
in your perception of how hard and torturous the exercises too,
because you'd you'd be like, well, who cares if you're
if you're taking more breaths through your mouth, well, that
that creates the perception of more exertion. So apparently athlete

(07:00):
who um, who were put through the study and we're
basically reached like their max capacity on a stationary bike. Um.
Then the nose breathers said that they were hitting about
a four in exertion, while the mouth breathers said that
they were hitting about a ten. And these are people
who are like equally fit equally athletics, so when they
max out, it's basically the same thing. The only difference,

(07:23):
The only variable was whether they were mouth breathing or
nose breathing. That is astounding. Remember when those uh, I
don't remember the brand, and I don't want to buzz
market anyway, but the little strips that you put on
your nose to open your nose up a little bit.
Remember when those made the rounds, especially with athletes, Yeah,

(07:43):
like football, Like you didn't see a football player that
wouldn't wearing one of those, And now you never see
those anymore. I think they turned everybody's nose green. I
wonder if they were just like I don't know, I
wonder if they realize a it maybe didn't have a benefit,
or just kind of went through that fat cycle. My
experience with them was that it worked too well, Like

(08:04):
it opened up my nostrils so much I got a toothache.
Really yeah, I've never released them again. They really worked?
Is that a joke? Though? It real toothache? But what's
the How does that mechanism work? I don't know, but
the two were definitely related. Yeah you just said that

(08:25):
as in like, don't ask any more questions. So back
to whether or not I'm an athlete, No I'm not.
But I did try this, actually chucked just this very morning,
after after doing some researching, I went and jogged and
I tried breathing through my nose, and my stupid deviated
septum kept me from doing it. But I really want
to be able to do this. I want to be

(08:45):
able to nose breathe while I'm exercising, because I really
like start panting like after a while because I'm mouth breathing,
and you end up taking these short, gulpie shallow breaths,
you know, when you're really exerting yourself towards the end
of the the um run or what ever. Yeah, and
it's it's not fun, Like everything else can be fun,
but the breathing part can really kind of make it
feel like you're suffering, you know. Yeah, I mean the

(09:08):
the that's yeah, that's where I suffer the most with
my cardio. Yeah, I can, I can commiserate. Uh, let
me see. Oh, the other big thing is a lung capacity.
You can train yourself to increase your lung capacity because
people that do like things like free diving or just
the whole breath for competition. I'm sure that exists. Yeah,

(09:29):
like at the swimming pool in the summertime, you can
increase your lung capacity. And there was a study, I
think it was a twenty nine almost thirty year study
in the journal chest that's a great name, great read
in two thousand that showed that you can increase your
lung capacity by nose breathing and that that goes a
long way toward being healthier. Like if you have bigger

(09:53):
lungs capable of breathing more, you're you're literally going to
live longer. Yeah, and UM, it's no coincidence that breathing
and especially like really paying attention to your breath and
like UM creating like a slower, longer breathing pattern is
a huge part of meditation and UM. James Nestor, the

(10:13):
author and breathing researcher, he says the UM there's a
kind that's called coherent breathing, and he said, a good
way to UM to work on breathing is to try
this coherent breathing where you breathe in uh slowly for
about five to six seconds, and then you exhale over
about five to six seconds. And it's surprisingly hard, especially
the exhaling part. And that makes sense because if you've

(10:36):
ever trained your lungs on one of those little like
UM breathing trainers, you know what I'm talking about. It's
like a handheld piece of plastic with like a blue
corrugated tube coming out of it that you blow into.
You know what I'm talking You usually see him at
the hospital. You me got him for us UM during
the beginning of the pandemic because she was worried our

(10:56):
lungs we're gonna collapse if we got COVID. She was like,
we need to practice on these. It's really hard. Um.
But it's not the it's not the um the breathing
out part that's the easy parts. The breathing in part
that's the hardest part. But for me, with the coherent breathing,
the exhale is the hardest. It's it's weird and interesting, yeah,
but it's it's fun to try, actually, and you definitely

(11:19):
can see like huge improvements in a very short time
if you actually do try to expand your lung capacity. Yeah,
I'm gonna work on the sum. Uh. They say, if
you have anxiety to to exhale for longer, if you'd
like do that five or six second inhale, try and
do like an eight to nine second out exhale outdale.
So you need an outhale. Uh So yeah, this is

(11:42):
all you know, it's funny, like exercises great, and it's
certainly something that people should do. But the more I
learned about stuff, like, the more it seems like stretching
and breathing and like these really fundamental things. If you
really tackle that when you're younger, can really extend your
life in healthier years, you know, definitely, But it's also

(12:05):
never too late to start to never too late. Um so, Chuck,
you said, never too late. I think that's the end
of the short stuff. I think so. Stuff You Should
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