“Breathing is a lost art,” says James Nestor in his 2020 book Breath. We take somewhere around 20,000 breaths each day and rarely do we think about them. About their quality, depth, or how they’re entering and exiting the body.

The human body is designed for nasal breathing but we know that breathing can also occur through the mouth. If we don’t use the nose for breathing, its only role is the sense of smell which feels like an undervalue for such a prominent feature of our face. The mouth already has a few roles that cannot be filled by other structures, mastication (chewing) of food and sound (talking). It’s estimated that 50% of the population are mouth breathers which brings on a myriad of negative consequences. But WHY?

Newborn babies are nasal breathers unless they’re crying or congested (which usually leads to crying). Crying is an obvious sign of distress and distress is a sympathetic response which is the same response as if you were being held hostage (fight, flight, or freeze). Mouth breathing is linked to: dark eye circles, slack jaw, narrower face, increased blood pressure, poor digestion, increased depression, increased headaches, periodontal disease (WORSE for you than candy), increased size of adenoids, erectile dysfunction, snoring, sleep apnea, and MANY other conditions. While nasal breathing is a parasympathetic response (rest and digest). Breathing through the nose cleans, heats, & moistens air for easy absorption, decreases blood pressure, ease digestion, trigger hormones, decreases erectile dysfunction (without the little blue pill), decreases insomnia (which some link to decreased oxygen absorption), decreased exertion during exercise, increased nitric oxide production (which promotes oxygen exchange in the lungs), plus a lot of other things.

If we’re born nasal breathers, where (or why) do some of us lose it? Likely it starts with congestion leading to mouth breathing and then mouth breathing becoming a habit. Mouth breathing begets mouth breathing just as nasal breathing begets nasal breathing. When people switch to primarily mouth breathing, the face grows longer and the upper palate creates a v-shape which compresses the area where the nasal passages normally grow. Learning more about this in adulthood, it makes a lot of sense looking back. I’ve been a mouth breather for most of my life, it started in childhood likely as a way to not smell cigarette smoke or as a consequence of always having a stuffy nose. Now I have an overbite, malocclusion of my teeth, and teeth crowding. Dentists often ask if I sucked my thumb a lot as a kid and I don’t think I did it more than others but now I’m seeing the link between mouth breathing and having a narrower upper palate and think mouth breathing is the cause of my dental woes. It’s also a contributor to my history of exercise induced asthma (which went away once I lived in a smoke-free environment), enlarged (now removed) adenoids, and narrower nasal passages.

I’ve been working on nasal breathing and at first it was REALLY HARD, I’m still often a little congested but it’s getting better over time. I have to remind myself less and I feel better. I sleep better and I’m more relaxed. I think breathing is a hidden key to health and longevity. Here are a few tricks that have helped me become a nasal breather.

Buteyko Clinic International Nasal Unblocking Technique (skip to about 5:00 to get into the technique). This one is great for when you wake up with congestion, have a head cold, or just feel a little stuffy.

September 3, 2019 - now I use a shorter piece of tape (roughly a square) over the center of my lips.

Sleeping with my mouth taped shut. I know this one sounds both crazy and scary (plus it’s incredibly unattractive). I first heard of such at thing when I attended an Art of Breath seminar in the spring of 2019 and I thought they were CRAZY. Who tapes their mouth shut to sleep besides killers trying to silence their prey? Well it turns out, perfectly sane people who want to breathe more through their nose. The first try was ROUGH, I got a little panicked but I was able to calm myself down. I’ve been taping my mouth shut to sleep for just over a year now and in addition to the benefits related to sleeping, I feel like it has made breathing through my nose during the day more natural and easier (think of it as “use it or lose it”). The benefits were almost immediate (these are copied from my Facebook post on September 4, 2019) I don’t wake up with a dry mouth, my REM sleep increased (based on data from my Garmin), I remember more of my dreams, I wake up feeling more rested, I probably don’t snore as much (the dogs never tell me about it). The negative is I can’t talk to the dogs as easily…they give me puzzled looks and I look a bit weird (I guess it’s helpful that I’m not dating now). I like the 3M Durable Cloth First Aid Tape but there are also companies making specialized mouth tapes that have a slit for mouth breathing.

Use breathing drills to promote expansion of my rib cage in all directions & proper diaphragm engagement. The simplest of these is to just take deeper breaths to fill the lungs fully. I would say this is something I started practicing as a method of controlling my asthma when I was a teenager. The first breathing exercise I use with patients or clients to get them to understand diaphragmatic breathing is hook lying breathing. This is just the start of how you can use breath to enhance strength, stability, or mobility. Next week I will share more breathing related exercises.

If you have any questions about how breathing effects your body or how you can use breath to enhance your performance, please contact me below or on the contact form.

The Power of the Breath