Breath

Highlights from: Breath by James Nestor; (34)

They were part of the Morton Collection, named after a racist scientist named Samuel Morton

When we run our cells aerobically with oxygen, we gain some 16 times more energy efficiency over anaerobic

Because anaerobic respiration is intended as a backup system, our bodies are built with fewer anaerobic muscle fibers.

Anaerobic energy is generated only with glucose (a simple sugar), and it’s quicker and easier for our bodies to access. It’s a kind of backup system and turbo boost when the body doesn’t have enough oxygen. But anaerobic energy is inefficient and can be toxic, creating an excess of lactic acid. The nausea, muscle weakness, and sweating you experience after you’ve pushed it too hard at the gym is the feeling of anaerobic overload

And contrary to what most of us might think, no amount of snoring is normal, and no amount of sleep apnea comes without risks of serious health effects. Dr. Christian Guilleminault, a sleep researcher at Stanford, found that children who experienced no apnea events at all—only heavy breathing and light snoring, or “increased respiratory effort”—could suffer from mood disorders, blood pressure derangements, learning disabilities, and more.

Ninety percent of children have acquired some degree of deformity in their mouths and noses. Forty-five percent of adults snore occasionally, and a quarter of the population snores constantly. Twenty-five percent of American adults over 30 choke on themselves because of sleep apnea; and an estimated 80 percent of moderate or severe cases are undiagnosed. Meanwhile, the majority of the population suffers from some form of breathing difficulty or resistance.

Smell is life’s oldest sense. Standing here alone, nostrils flaring, it occurs to me that breathing is so much more than just getting air into our bodies. It’s the most intimate connection to our surroundings

Thirteen hundred years ago, an ancient Tantric text, the Shiva Swarodaya, described how one nostril will open to let breath in as the other will softly close throughout the day. Some days, the right nostril yawns awake to greet the sun; other days, the left awakens to the fullness of the moon. According to the text, these rhythms are the same throughout every month and they’re shared by all humanity. It’s a method our bodies use to stay balanced and grounded to the rhythms of the cosmos, and each other.

The interior of the nose, it turned out, is blanketed with erectile tissue, the same flesh that covers the penis, clitoris, and nipples. Noses get erections

This happens because the nose is more intimately connected to the genitals than any other organ; when one gets aroused, the other responds. The mere thought of sex for some people causes such severe bouts of nasal erections that they’ll have trouble breathing and will start to sneeze uncontrollably, an inconvenient condition called “honeymoon rhinitis.” As sexual stimulation weakens and erectile tissue becomes flaccid, the nose will, too.

The right nostril is a gas pedal. When you’re inhaling primarily through this channel, circulation speeds up, your body gets hotter, and cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate all increase. This happens because breathing through the right side of the nose activates the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight or flight” mechanism that puts the body in a more elevated state of alertness and readiness. Breathing through the right nostril will also feed more blood to the opposite hemisphere of the brain, specifically to the prefrontal cortex, which has been associated with logical decisions, language, and computing.
Inhaling through the left nostril has the opposite effect: it works as a kind of brake system to the right nostril’s accelerator. The left nostril is more deeply connected to the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest-and-relax side that lowers temperature and blood pressure, cools the body, and reduces anxiety. Left-nostril breathing shifts blood flow to the opposite side of the prefrontal cortex, the right area that plays a role in creative thought, emotions, formation of mental abstractions, and negative emotions.

Imagine for a moment that you’re holding a billiard ball at eye level a few inches from your face. Then imagine slowly pushing that entire ball inside the center of your face. The volume the ball would take up, some six cubic inches, is equivalent to the total space of all the cavities and passageways that make up the interior of the adult nose.

the mucus is the body’s “first line of defense.” It’s constantly on the move, sweeping along at a rate of about half an inch every minute, more than 60 feet per day. Like a giant conveyor belt, it collects inhaled debris in the nose, then moves all the junk down the throat and into the stomach, where it’s sterilized by stomach acid, delivered to the intestines, and sent out of your body.

The Native Americans explained to Catlin that breath inhaled through the mouth sapped the body of strength, deformed the face, and caused stress and disease. On the other hand, breath inhaled through the nose kept the body strong, made the face beautiful, and prevented disease. “The air which enters the lungs is as different from that which enters the nostrils as distilled water is different from the water in an ordinary cistern or a frog-pond,” he wrote.

He wrote about his experiences in The Breath of Life, published in 1862. The book was devoted solely to documenting the wonders of nasal breathing and the hazards of mouthbreathing.

“And if I were to endeavor to bequeath to posterity the most important Motto which human language can convey, it should be in three words—SHUT-YOUR-MOUTH. . . . Where I would paint and engrave it, in every Nursery, and on every Bed-post in the Universe, its meaning could not be mistaken.
“And if obeyed,” he continued, “its importance would soon be realized.”

Four years passed until Kelder received a call from his building’s doorman. The Colonel was waiting downstairs. He looked 20 years younger. He was standing straight, his face vibrant and alive, and his once-balding head was covered in thick, dark hair. He’d found the monastery, studied the ancient manuscripts, and learned restorative practices from the monks. He’d reversed aging through nothing more than stretching and breathing.

They gathered two decades of data from 5,200 subjects, crunched the numbers, and discovered that the greatest indicator of life span wasn’t genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. It was lung capacity.
The smaller and less efficient lungs became, the quicker subjects got sick and died. The cause of deterioration didn’t matter. Smaller meant shorter. But larger lungs equaled longer lives.

Schroth had other thoughts about the human body’s potential. She’d watched how balloons collapsed or expanded, pushing or pulling in whatever was around them. The lungs, she felt, were no different. If she could expand her lungs, maybe she could also expand her skeletal structure. Maybe she could straighten her spine and improve the quality and quantity of her life.
At age 16, Schroth began training herself in something called “orthopedic breathing.” She would stand in front of a mirror, twist her body, and inhale into one lung while limiting air intake to the other. Then she’d hobble over to a table, sling her body on its side, and arch her chest back and forth to loosen her rib cage while breathing into the empty space. Schroth spent five years doing this. At the end, she’d effectively cured herself of “incurable” scoliosis; she’d breathed her spine straight again.

Olsson claimed that we have 100 times more carbon dioxide in our bodies than oxygen (which is true), and that most of us need even more of it (also true). He said it wasn’t just oxygen but huge quantities of carbon dioxide that fostered the burst of life during the Cambrian Explosion 500 million years ago. He said that, today, humans can increase this toxic gas in our bodies and sharpen our minds, burn fat, and, in some cases, heal disease.

And the way the body loses weight isn’t through profusely sweating or “burning it off.” We lose weight through exhaled breath.
For every ten pounds of fat lost in our bodies, eight and a half pounds of it comes out through the lungs; most of it is carbon dioxide mixed with a bit of water vapor. The rest is sweated or urinated out. This is a fact that most doctors, nutritionists, and other medical professionals have historically gotten wrong. The lungs are the weight-regulating system of the body.

For a healthy body, overbreathing or inhaling pure oxygen would have no benefit, no effect on oxygen delivery to our tissues and organs, and could actually create a state of oxygen deficiency, leading to relative suffocation. In other words, the pure oxygen a quarterback might huff between plays, or that a jet-lagged traveler might shell out 50 dollars for at an airport “oxygen bar,” are of no benefit. Inhaling the gas might increase blood oxygen levels one or two percent, but that oxygen will never make it into our hungry cells. We’ll simply breathe it back out.*

Carbon dioxide is the chief hormone of the entire body; it is the only one that is produced by every tissue and that probably acts on every organ,” Henderson later wrote. “Carbon dioxide is, in fact, a more fundamental component of living matter than is oxygen.”

When the War ended, I decided to start researching the most complex machine, the Man,” he said. “I thought if I learnt him, I’d be able to diagnose his diseases as easily as I had diagnosed machine disorders.”

It was the constant stress of chewing that was lacking from our diets—not vitamin A, B, C, or D. Ninety-five percent of the modern, processed diet was soft. Even what’s considered healthy food today—smoothies, nut butters, oatmeal, avocados, whole wheat bread, vegetable soups. It’s all soft.

Our ancient ancestors chewed for hours a day, every day. And because they chewed so much, their mouths, teeth, throats, and faces grew to be wide and strong and pronounced. Food in industrialized societies was so processed that it hardly required any chewing at all

Academy of Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy.

Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order.
At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week.

Eighteen percent of Americans suffer from some form of anxiety or panic, with these numbers rising every year. Perhaps the best step in treating them, and hundreds of millions of others around the world, was by first conditioning the central chemoreceptors and the rest of the brain to become more flexible to carbon dioxide levels. By teaching anxious people the art of holding their breath.

Donald Klein, another renowned psychiatrist and expert in panic and anxiety, suggested years later that the gas might help reset the chemoreceptors in the brain, allowing patients to breathe normally so they could think normally

People with anorexia or panic or obsessive-compulsive disorders consistently have low carbon dioxide levels and a much greater fear of holding their breath. To avoid another attack, they breathe far too much and eventually become hypersensitized to carbon dioxide and panic if they sense a rise in this gas. They are anxious because they’re overbreathing, overbreathing because they’re anxious.

Open up a book or website or article or Instagram feed on yoga and chances are you’ll see the word prana, which translates to “life force” or “vital energy.” Prana is, basically, an ancient theory of atoms. The concrete in your driveway, clothes on your body, spouse clanking dishes in your kitchen—they’re all made of swirling atomic bits. It’s energy. It’s prana.
The concept of prana was first documented around the same time in India and China, some 3,000 years ago, and became the bedrock of medicine. The Chinese called it ch’i and believed the body contained channels that functioned like prana power lines connecting organs and tissues. The Japanese had their own name for prana, ki, as did the Greeks (pneuma), Hebrews (ruah), Iroquois (orenda), and so on.

He noticed that the tissue lining one nostril of his patients seemed to quickly congest and close while the other would mysteriously open

If surgeons drill out or remove too much tissue, especially the turbinates, the nose can’t effectively filter, humidify, clean, or even sense inhaled air. For this small and unfortunate group of patients, each breath comes in too quickly, a hideous condition called empty nose syndrome.