Ever wondered how something as simple as breathing could dramatically shift your health and athletic prowess? Prepare to be enlightened as I, Dana Jones, team up with the insightful Danika Munro to unpack James Nestor's "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art." We'll take you on a laughter-filled but eye-opening tour of how your breath, a basic life function, is a game changer for managing pain, optimizing fitness, and infusing wellness into every inhalation.
James Nestor’s Book
James Nestor Website
5 ways to improve your breathing
Podcast Disclaimer:
The Pain-Free Podcast is presented solely for general information, education, and entertainment purposes. Any information presented in this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional diagnosis. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. As always, users should not disregard or delay obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition that they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.
@djsfitnessevolution
Ever wondered how something as simple as breathing could dramatically shift your health and athletic prowess? Prepare to be enlightened as I, Dana Jones, team up with the insightful Danika Munro to unpack James Nestor's "Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art." We'll take you on a laughter-filled but eye-opening tour of how your breath, a basic life function, is a game changer for managing pain, optimizing fitness, and infusing wellness into every inhalation.
James Nestor’s Book
James Nestor Website
5 ways to improve your breathing
Podcast Disclaimer:
The Pain-Free Podcast is presented solely for general information, education, and entertainment purposes. Any information presented in this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional diagnosis. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user’s own risk. As always, users should not disregard or delay obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition that they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions.
@djsfitnessevolution
Welcome to the Pain-Free Athlete Podcast. I'm your host, dana Jones. I am a certified personal trainer and I'm here to help you achieve your fitness goals without pain. In each episode, I'll share tips and strategies that will help you stay safe and pain-free while you're working out. I'll also interview experts in the field of fitness and pain management. So if you're ready to learn how to stay active and pain-free, then subscribe to the Pain-Free Athlete Podcast today. Welcome to the Pain-Free Athlete Podcast and I'm your host, dana Jones. Today I am joined by a guest co-host, danica Monroe. Welcome, danica, hi. Guest co -host Donika Monroe. Welcome, donika, you're back.
Speaker 1:We decided that we enjoy our conversation so much and each other's company and thought like, hey, we should probably come online and chat about I don't know, the ramblings of our minds and all kinds of good stuff. So this is our first installment and I was, before I even got on. I was like, oh, we should think of like a cute little name to call ourselves or something. And then it got weird, because the first day I came up, I was like double D's, and then I gave them. That's what came to my mind too. I was like double D's. Well, I mean, you know.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I'm not against double D's Right. I mean, you know I'm all for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then I was like the dynamic duo and then I chat, gpt'd it and then I got like delightful dialogues with Dana and Donika and then it was like Dana and Donika delve deep and I was like that kind of sounds like a porn, so that's weird Deep throat.
Speaker 1:We're delving into mindfulness and breathing today. Wow, made my palm sweat. Okay, I embarrassed myself, that was amazing, and so, anyway, we can go on forever and ever. But, um, so the main point of this and our gathering and what we'd like to do was um book reviews, and so we kind of batted around a couple of different books that we were interested in and we settled on for our first book, jane Nestor's book breath, the new science of lost art, which, interestingly, was released in 2020, which I think is kind of funny, considering that we were like neck deep in COVID. I mean, obviously started reading it before COVID, but it must've been pretty interesting for a lot of people who were in a fear state to read. Yeah, so, yeah, so that's what you know. So I guess we can just start off with my first question for you, and, of course, we'll back and forth. It's like did you notice when you were reading the book that you changed your breathing?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, Like I mean, as soon as he gave me the most minute amount of evidence about, like breathing through your nose versus your mouth being a good thing, I started getting hyper aware of every time I opened my mouth. You know, and would, just, you know, sit, stand whatever, pursing my lips to try and make sure I was breathing through my nose. Yeah, um, reading this book will definitely make you hyper aware of how you're breathing. Um, hopefully it won't induce more anxiety than anything, but, but, um, but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of ways that I try to change my breathing. It definitely made me more conscious of my congestion, you know, like ongoing congestion through allergies. You know, he really he makes a pretty big statement in there where, you know, people think that allergies aren't a big deal. He's like, if you're not able to breathe through your nose, there are a huge amount of other downstream effects to that.
Speaker 1:Well, he made that they did that experiment and that's so for those of you. I mean, we're going to ruin the book, so just spoiler alert all the way through. But you know he starts off with oh, it's not tracking, we'll have the book in there. Just trying to show the book on Zoom right now. It's kind of funny. You know, yellow book, big word breath on top Um.
Speaker 1:But he starts the book on where he does this experiment with himself and a gentleman friend of his, that um is also a scientist and um does research on CO2 and oxygen levels and they forcefully plug their nose shut for a period of time. It was like 10 days or something. It was insane and my thought was like holy shit, why would you do that? But you know he's, he's kind of that. You know he needs to be in it to experience all this stuff, because as you read through the book he's in a lot of experiences. But as he's documenting like essentially all the shit that goes wrong, um, as he's mouth breathing for this period of time, and how his sleep has changed and how, um, he had an increase of, uh, sleep apnea episodes and brain fog, yeah, just all the thing.
Speaker 2:And on top of the exercise, yeah, he tried to exercise, I mean, and his blood pressure went up. There were tons of things happening to him. It was, you know, his heart rate. Very the variability went down which, as you know, if you know about heart rate variability, it's you know higher ranges are generally better. Um, all of it, like his, all of his markers got worse, like way worse yeah, and I all I could think of is like, no, and you know.
Speaker 1:So there's a couple things that he brought up and some people know and some people don't.
Speaker 1:You know, obviously, if you're listening to this first time, you have no idea who the hell I am and what I'm doing. But so I had, um, I thought I had sleep apnea and that was also part of my quest of trying to you know, quote unquote solve my migraines. Because I had read somewhere that wow, if you, you know, are not getting enough air, then that's going to cause your head to hurt and you know the brain fog and all the things. And then one of the side effects of also having sleep apnea is that you get up to go to the bathroom about 500 times a night, which is incredibly annoying if you're doing those things. So I had decided I had sleep apnea and the normal determination is that every regular human who doesn't have a breathing disorder will stop breathing about five times an hour when you're sleeping, because it's just a normal function of our system is that there's that moment where we kind of catch and everything stops and then it restarts and that's fine. If you're in the apnea realm, it's higher, it's six and higher. My brother is something like 55 times an hour. He stopped breathing, so he's been wearing his um. What is it that? If we tease him? Cause he looks like a firefight, a firefighter pilot um with the mask, cause he I don't know if he's updated it since you know, the nineties Um, but that's what essentially keeps him alive.
Speaker 1:And I had, when I went for my sleep test, I had six times I stopped and I was like that's it I have. You know, yeah, and so I went and got the little machine and did all my things and there were some changes that happened, but you know, the headaches were still there, no kidding. And then, of course, I added in another stressor by having the machine and you know, whatever. But one of the comments that one of the ladies made in the doctor's office is that the amount of oxygen that was being pushed into my face by the apnea machine was that of a 450 pound male and not realizing that it was this thing on my face that was not allowing air to go into my body, which I'm pointing to my nose. Um and so, um, I eventually went to an ENT and then I had the and Nestor talks about this in the book about the apnea uh surgery which is or not apnea surgery?
Speaker 1:Because it's apnea is more a throat thing, um, but sinus surgery is a turbinate reduction and so I ended up having that reduction due to my exposure to allergens all my life and you know, um, and I also had a deviated septum, which was kind of weird because I had never broken my nose, um, but I guess it happens when you're um, struggling to breathe and you're pulling things out of alignment. So, yeah, so I've done the mouth breathing thing probably all my life, and so I was kind of surprised about I wish I read the book before I decided to go all down. I probably would have just gone through the ENT instead of going through all the other stuff first, but you know, who knows?
Speaker 2:Anyway, I mean he, he doesn't, you know, speak highly of the ENT surgery or what he says, you know, the turbinate. I forget the name.
Speaker 1:Turbinates.
Speaker 2:Turbinates are really important, and then I guess there are some folks who had really really terrible experiences removing them, but it sounds like for you it was a really great thing.
Speaker 1:You finally got to breathe through your nose. Yeah, I mean I'm glad. And on the other end, I'm glad I read the book after, because he talks about the empty nose syndrome. Yes that was the one that I read the turban is out and I was like, oh shit, I'm like oh yeah, you never would have done it if you'd read that.
Speaker 1:I would have freaked myself out, so, um, but you know, going into that right, so my belief was sucking in as much oxygen as possible was going to help me. I don't know, be a better athlete, all that other stuff, and he obviously knocks that down as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he, completely. That was what totally blew my mind. Now, you know, when I, when I exercise, I'm actually trying to get less oxygen in, and I know for those of you out there who have not read the book yet, trust me on this he does actually fully explain it. Um, cause we're all thinking like more oxygen is better, right, we need oxygen, um, to you know, to oxygenate all of our cells in our bodies, our muscle cells, our brain cells, all of the things, right? Well, it turns out that if you're taking in a lot of oxygen and your ratio of carbon dioxide goes down too low, that it's hard for the oxygen to actually dislodge from your blood cells into your other body cells. And the reason for that is carbon dioxide is like a basket or like a little carrier. So it goes to the blood cell and you know, your oxygen is attached to the hemoglobin and the carbon dioxide goes and carries that oxygen like a basket into your other cell. So if you don't have enough carbon dioxide, you're actually not fully breathing.
Speaker 2:There's like the two parts of the breathing right, there's sucking the air in and then there's the part that happens physiologically at the cellular level, where you actually get the oxygen you need. So what he says is you're supposed to breathe less. So what he says is you're supposed to breathe less, breathe slower and exhale more. You know, you focus on those things and what's interesting is, in mindfulness practices and mental health, that's what we do, right? We slow the breath, we exhale more, we hold the breath, we exhale more, we hold the breath. Um, you know, I didn't know this side of it, physiologically, what we were doing with that. I knew that it, you know, that kind of breathing regulates the nervous system and allows us to come back into, you know, um sort of a parasympathetic nervous system state, which basically just means you're calm.
Speaker 1:Present.
Speaker 2:Present, open to social connection, able to just be in your body and notice the things around you and not be sort of dissociated off into space. Yeah, so I knew about that, but I didn't know what was happening physiologically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I, when I was reading it, I was just like, oh cause, you know, as an athlete, I've always watched sports on TV and I remember, like you know, it was probably like seventies or whatever when they first started rolling the oxygen mask out on the sidelines for the football players and how they would you know be sucking in the air or whatever, and it never looked like.
Speaker 1:I never saw anybody go. Oh yeah, I got oxygen and I feel great, like they always look very stressed out as they were taking in the oxygen. But then you know, obviously the camera's not going to stay on them for a long period of time to see if something shifted. But they never needed a lot, like whenever they did it, they did like a couple of breaths of it and then they're like, okay, I'm good. And of course I read in the book that, like that doesn't mean anything. And probably what it did on the subconscious level is that because they were breathing in oxygen, they probably slowed their breath down, which was going to do the same thing whether they had the mask on or not.
Speaker 2:So it probably just calmed down. Which? Does a lot of things for you, you know. I mean as soon as you're able to calm your nervous system, amazing things happen for your body, right when you're in fight or flight. You're not, you're just not really thinking clearly, you're not able to respond to to stimuli in a in a nuanced way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so one of the things that I learned when I was on my quest to solve my headaches and breathing issues and whatever. When I went to the ENT and he told me cause I, um, I started sleeping on my left side because my right nostril would clog. And, um, so I would sleep on my left side because my right nostril would clog, and so I would sleep on my left side in hopes that it would drain, or whatever I thought I was doing so that I would be able to breathe better and snore less and and whatnot. And so what he said is you know, you know that your body chooses or has a rhythm. And I was like, okay, well, whatever.
Speaker 1:And he's like no, there's like a certain amount of hours a day that you breathe through your right nostril, a certain amount of hours that you breathe through your left nostril, and I was like no shit really. And he's like yeah, so you can't necessarily make yourself breathe. I mean, you can, obviously by physically putting your finger on your nostril, but but he's like your body just decides, like, okay, we're going to do this for a few hours. And I can't remember what he said. I think he said the cycle is like four hours. It's like four hours you will breathe in through your left side, four hours you'll breathe in through your right side, and then you just kind of go back and forth. And so you were saying that you, like had awareness of this and in terms of what brain activity happens as a result of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, in the book I mean, james Nestor actually says that, and so this is all very interesting, let's. There are a lot of different pieces to this. One is that you know, there's this like natural thing that happens with your body right, where you're switching from right nostril, right nostril, to left nostril, and you know, I was like, well, why would why would that happen? Well, later in the book he explains that your right nostril, when you're breathing through it, it activates your sympathetic nervous system, which is the, the activating part of your nervous system. People like to call it fight or flight. It can also just be it's a higher energy state. Um brings more heat to the body. It's, it's an activating state. Your left nostril is associated with your parasympathetic nervous system. When you're, you know it's the state where you're resting, you're digesting, you're just calmer.
Speaker 2:And what's interesting about this, too, is that there is this ancient practice, right of pranayama breathing, or alternate nostril breathing. That has been done by yogis for thousands of years. And I'm not sure I don't remember all of the things he said about alternate nostril breathing, but I imagine that, as you you know, alternate from one side to the other and you activate one, one part of your nervous system and then the other. What you're doing is improving what we call vagal tone, so, like your, your body's ability to switch from activation into calm. We do that in a lot of semantics, like it's.
Speaker 2:It's called pendulating and and it you know, you can actually go down this whole rabbit hole. Heart rate variability is like synonymous with vagal tone, um, and your heart rate variability, you know, if you know, you know it has a lot to do with your, your overall health, um, and if you're able to essentially respond, if you're, if your body's able to respond by activating and deactivating quickly and easily, it just means that you're more resilient, you have a more resilient response to anything that comes up in life. So I, you know I went, I digress, but you know, I just found it really, really interesting that our body naturally does this and we can, we can do things to continue to help our body sort of respond to life stressors in a really flexible way through breathing, through breath, you know.
Speaker 1:Right and it's, and it's pretty easy. You know, there's no equipment required, although there is equipment out there to help you, um, but honestly, it's through your day. And I remember I think it was my acupuncturist uh, shout out to David Field, um, who brought it to my attention a long time ago about breathing and, um, I started being mindful of it and it's one of those things that you know goes in, like, when you think about it it's great, and when you forget about it you're don't understand why you feel so shitty. Um, but he, you know, he's like.
Speaker 1:Well, how often do you, you know, hold your breath when you're at work? And Nestor does talk about that, uh, that there was a study done that about 80% of us suffer from something called, uh, email apnea, and that, as we're sitting at our computers, you know tethered to our screens, um, and we get the email from the supervisor we're not happy with, or, um, you know a client or something like that that makes you kind of clench, that not only are you like clenching all your orifices, you're also like clenching your chest right, which is stopping from getting that good breath, or you're holding your breath in a very stressful manner, in a non-mindful way, right A non-mindful way.
Speaker 2:yes, there's like holding your breath when you're mindful about it, which is a good thing, and then there's the holding your breath when you're not aware that you're doing it right. Something shocking happens or you're opening an email that, also you know, shocks you, and you just go and you don't know that you're doing it Right.
Speaker 1:And even so, you know, a long time ago, in a different life, I was a FedEx driver and I would find myself, you know, clenching right, you know gripping the steering wheel, you know shoulders were around my ears, teeth were mashed together and I was holding my breath a lot of times and just taking time to try to breathe through my nose and just do that, would you know, I could feel my blood pressure dropping. You know, from that point I could feel like the heat leaving my ears and going into my body. You know those kinds of things and you know, when you look at our stress response, right, and that's, and that's initially right. Why I was reading this book is just because one breathing has never been easy for me, obviously. And then, of course I'm sad to, as you get older, your lungs shrink and so that kind of changes your capacity for a lot of things. Right.
Speaker 2:Oh man, more bad news. Dana, I didn't need that news today. I'm like ah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so our lungs shrink as we get older, you know, and. But just kind of looking at it and realizing, like you know, this is something, this is a muscle we need to exercise, right. So you know, walking and running, and those are probably good things, or anything that increases your heart rate, hell, you can do the table. What is a desk cycle kind of stuff, just anything to kind of get you to do that. But holding the breath in a mindful manner also does the same thing, and I like that because does the same thing.
Speaker 1:And I like that because of the heart rate. Well, he talks about like when you hold your breath, right, because most people feel like, oh, if I hold my breath, I'm depriving my body of oxygen and immediately my you know my oxygen rate is going to go down. He's like no, it doesn't happen overnight, or like you know, within three minutes, or something like that. Like we have to talk about um, and I think he has another book where he's talking about the people who are the?
Speaker 1:um, deep divers, the ones that I can't I can't remember what it is but the deep water people that really go down, you know, like 150 feet or something like that, and um, but you know, holding your breath is not a bad thing because of the fact that it does calm your body down. And you know, I was thinking about this because he talks about the, the CO2 stuff. Um, because the person that he's working with does a lot of talks about the benefits of CO2 and it can't be straight CO2., right. So for those of you who want to run out and go grab a machine and go, oh, if I just have CO2, I'm going to be able to run faster, what? No, it's not that there's a mixture, right, and there's an ideal mixture for every person. So, unless you want to go play scientist with yourself, you're going to have to figure out what your percentage is. That is going to do it. But he talks about that idea of working with what was it? Add and he was talking about ADHD, yeah, and go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, well, I the part you know.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, I don't remember much of that part of the book, but I do remember the experiments where he did the you know he actually administered, or well, he wrote about an experiment where someone was administering CO2, right, and how you have this panic response that comes up in response for lack of a better term to receiving just straight CO2, because our bodies are wired to to survive and essentially, you know, that's something that would make us think our bodies think that we're drowning um you know, or or being suffocated at least, yes, yeah, yeah and so, but what happens, though, is that, like we were talking about before, how CO2, when CO2 goes up, you actually have a better chance of oxygenating your cells, right, so breathing in CO2 is it can increase your performance, your performance, but most of us, like, have this incredible panic response when we're not getting as much oxygen as we think we need, right, and so you know, he basically talks about how, if you can work with that panic response and just try to, you know, sort of um, increase your tolerance to that panic that comes up, that you can also then really do some amazing things for your body, for your performance and exercise, for, uh and I think you know your mental health as well.
Speaker 1:I like the um the section where he kind of talked about the schizophrenia piece and how, um, like for pen, for people who are straight panic, um, the CO2 probably wasn't going to be terribly helpful because they were already, um, hypervigilant and already cued to panic, um, so it was just, you know, again, finding the right percentages of maybe a slow introduction of CO2 into their system so they build up their tolerance, as opposed to what their number of, um, uh, visualizations and hallucinations Um, it didn't cure it, um, but it definitely brought it down to a manageable level.
Speaker 1:And obviously, you know, his thing was, you know, not encouraging anybody to come off any meds and start huffing CO2, but that it's a complimentary therapy to the meds that you're already taking and hopefully you would see some results. Now it's again, that's not something that's terribly out there and I'm not schizophrenic, so I don't know if that's ever an option for anybody to offer. It seems like, you know, we're a society of throw a pill at me and that's going to make things better, yeah, but you know, it's just, it's something to think about and I thought about, you know, because of the fact that we do struggle so deeply with mental health these days, yeah, and anything that can be supportive where you're not introducing a chemical into your body that you know your body can adapt to or you know can't sustain levels or whatever. It is Right. I mean, how many people you know that are probably listening have been on mental health medications and either they didn't work or you had an adverse reaction, which was not, you know, ideal?
Speaker 2:Right, so then you know.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of mix and matching and trying to get together. So it was really interesting, I think piece to to kind of hear about.
Speaker 2:There's a piece too that he talks about. It's interesting. You brought up the schizophrenia that was. The one thing that did stick about the mental health piece in this book was that they had there was someone who did an experiment or did some testing on a woman who had schizophrenia and noticed that she was breathing more through her left nostril than her right. Her body wasn't pendulating back and forth as often as most people's do, and so they did an experiment where they closed off her left nostril and had her only breathing through her right for longer periods of time and her hallucinations went down. She had fewer hallucinations. Her hallucinations went down, she had fewer hallucinations, and it was essentially they were saying the left nostril was oxygenating more of the right hemisphere of the brain, I think, which is our more creative side.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, really interesting things about breath right, like breath is important, I think, is the point of this Right, we need to breathe better and apparently it's not as like what do you? It's not as like innate as we realize, like we don't really know how to breathe. Well, you know that's something he talks about, that there are. I really enjoyed the part where he he talked about a lot of um indigenous cultures where people would teach children how to breathe, like, as in telling them to close their mouths and breathe through their nose. Um, as often as possible, and keep their mouths closed as often as possible. Yeah, and I just feel like we don't. It's something you know. We've lost that. We don't know, but, like you know, I read this. I was like what? There's no difference between you know breathing through your mouth or your nose and there's no. But yeah, this is you know. We don't necessarily innately know how to breathe.
Speaker 1:well, that's, it's a, a, it's a skill well, and, as you say that, I remember my brother. When we were kids, my mother would yell at him all the time because he'd breathe through his mouth and he's the one with sleep apnea. Um, and it was, you know, because he's like, but all the time, like he just really struggled with that but he has the physiological piece of the short neck, um, and all the things that go along with the sleep apnea diagnosis in you know real form, like for me, like I said, mine was a reach because I was, I was pushing, you know, doctors to figure something out for me and you know, you know, that was the closest. But for him it's definitely like it's a part of who he is, unfortunately, and he's been suffering for I mean, I remember when he and I were little and we used to share a room and I would get great pleasure when he'd stop making noises because he would snore so loud. It was like kind of annoying.
Speaker 1:Not realizing that he's not breathing, and that is hard to stopping, you know kind of stuff. But yeah, I mean, you know there's a there's something to be said about that and you know, culturally, because it is kind of tacky, right, you know, if you're ever, because if you're only breathing through your mouth, right, think about it, you're sitting at the dinner table. Somebody only breathes through the mouth, like how, what is their eating? Like, right, they're smacking, they're chomping, you know, right, and then that was one of the cultural piece right Of, like, you know, shut your mouth when you're chewing, you know. And what he's essentially saying is like when you shut your mouth and you chew, and he goes into a whole big thing about chewing and the dental aspect of your mouths and how our teeth are constructed and how big are.
Speaker 1:You know why our teeth are all jammed in our faces when you know in ancient times the teeth were straight and they were, the mouths were or the faces were bigger. But you know, when you're chewing like that you're when you close your mouth you're really allowing your biological duties to occur, right, because you know the saliva production is up, you're probably chewing thoroughly. You know all those things. Where your mouth is open, you're probably taking big bites. You're just trying to chop it down so that you could shove it down. And then there's a whole host of you know physiological things that, um, you know come as a result of big chunks of food sliding into your stomach and you know the digestion gets slowed down. And then you know, um, you know things aren't going into the intestine in a nice manner, right, because they're big chunks and takes forever. And that's where probably constipation and, um, you know even what did. What was he saying? The percentage of how much water we lose?
Speaker 2:So when we're breathing out of our mouths, we lose 40% more water. And that's not even the whole story. Like we, we also then I guess? Um, when you breathe through your nose, there's, it activates, like the pituitary gland and various other glands, which has a whole, whole hormonal cascade that, um, you know, helps us retain our water, keep, keep our water in our bodies. If we're breathing through our mouths, that doesn't happen, and that's why we're peeing all night, because we don't get the hormonal cascade that tells our kidneys to hang on to water, and then instead we're just peeing all the time. And then so we're dehydrated because we're losing 40% more water out of our mouths, and we're dehydrated because we're peeing more water than we really should be peeing.
Speaker 1:And when you're dehydrated, your intestines are not working appropriately, and so that's probably leading to a higher rate of constipation in a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so breathe through your nose. Folks tape your mouth shut. I mean, I know it's not sexy, but shoot, I'm starting it.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about it too. I was like cause I was trying to do some research because I've seen on some fitness sites how people have the hostage tape, which is like the black thing that you just write across your lips. Oh, that's too much, I think I don't know.
Speaker 1:I was like I don't think I can do that I don't know, I was like I don't think I could do that. Yeah, I guess, if you like that or not, but I think he said the easiest one was like um, you know, next care tape or whatever, like the first day tape, like just extend, like the little Charlie Chaplin mustache over your lips and it allows you to cough or burp or whatever you need to do while you're sleeping, but for the most part keeps your mouth shut, you know. And of course there's dental aspects to it too. Um, and I've noticed something since um, I've taken care of my nose and I actually use um. There's this machine called a Navaj which is um for people with chronic um. I almost said constipation of your head. Uh, kind of right, that's what it feels like. I mean constipation of your head.
Speaker 1:That's what it feels like I mean, I have booger constipation yes, it kind of constipation of my nostrils, um congestion, and it's fantastic. So it's like a vacuum system, right. It shoves water up one nostril and sucks it out through the other and just really pulls out all the things. And one of the things that I've realized as a result of that is that the last dental exam I went for, the dental cleaning I went for went by a lot nicer because I had less plaque on my teeth as a result of breathing through my nose and not so much of breathing through my mouth wow, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Oh, I had no idea that makes sense. If your mouth is dry, you're gonna retain more of that plaque because it's going to dry up and stay on your teeth. It's harder to get off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I will tell you, I like I am religious about going to the dentist, but I hate it. I absolutely like there's nothing worse than sitting there for 45 minutes and have somebody like I try to have a conversation with you grinding that stuff at your teeth, right, and you're supposed to respond. You're like, right, you know, and it's just, I don't know, I've gotten, as I've gotten older, I've gotten like more weird about it and it's. I imagine it's fine and I have nice teeth and I paid a lot of money for them. So it's like I try to keep them all dialed in, but you have nice teeth. You nobody can see you on the podcast, but but yes, dana has very nice teeth. Thank you, um, and I take really good care of them. But it was, it was a relief Like I actually finished early because of the fact that there was less plaque on my teeth due to me breathing through my nose. Now, you know, maybe I won't have to go at all if I just tape my mouth shut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know I'm really. I'm looking into it. I think he said that the medical tape was the best kind to use so and I have to go back to that section of the book, but I'm going to try it out.
Speaker 1:So he like a lot of times, you know, if you go to YouTube there's like tips, and so I rallied like the five most important tips that he kind of talks about, and the first one is stop breathing through your mouth. He said taking too much air into your body or oxygen into your body increases your cortisol response. As those levels increase, all your bodily functions get thrown off because your body is in a state of fight or flight or at least unease. And you know, as longer we stay in that unease then that's, you know, and cortisol response, as we know, like that's the little spare tire that you have around your belly, um, you know. And then again, when we're talking about athletics, we're talking about the heart rate variability, we're talking about blood pressure, all those things, um.
Speaker 1:Number two, he's like use your nose, right. So don't just stop breathing through your mouth, but also use your nose. And uh, donica already pointed out, right, the reason why we use our nose is it heats up the air and moistens it, right, which makes it prime for your lungs to kind of take it in. It filters out contaminants, right, which is always a good thing, especially if you're an allergy sufferer. And then, of course, the mental health aspects are it just allows us to be in a state of calm, and that's not a bad thing considering the time that we live in.
Speaker 1:Number three is it improves lung capacity. And you know, through his study and I didn't catch the name of the study but the number one marker for longevity, you know, in terms of your life, is your lung capacity, and that includes proper posture, right. So for those of us who are leaning forward, looking at our phones, right, you are decreasing your lung capacity. If you're a runner, you know this, right. If you're all hunched over, you're not getting good air, and then, of course, I have to throw out my reading thing. Also, if you're sitting upright and you're reading, it allows you to retain the information when you're reading and it puts you in a better state to actually read, as opposed to being hunched over, and then you're getting less air and then you feel sleepy and then you don't want to read anymore.
Speaker 1:Number four slow down. Right, inhale and exhale slowly. When you're getting that email from your supervisor that you're not really thrilled about, just take your time, get in. He has a formula and he says 5.5 seconds inhale and then 5.5 out. Right, that is normal stasis. Obviously, you can change it and you can drop down the inhale and extend the exhale, and that's the most ideal situation is to really extend, make sure your exhale is longer than your inhale, and that really does all the things right. It lowers your heart rate, it lowers your blood pressure and it signals to your brain that you are in a state of safety.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it calms your nervous system, gets you out of the chest breathing. Chest breathing is what essentially, we do when we're in fight or flight. So yeah, get out of your chest and into your belly, breathe through the belly.
Speaker 1:That's it. And then number five is hold your breath, not in the weird, you know what is it, email apnea way, but in you know the conscious way, right so?
Speaker 2:I know that. What is it the box breathing has? You hold on the inhale and hold on the exhale, right? Yeah, so you inhale for. So box breathing is just think of a box and think of four seconds on each side of the box, right. Just think of a box and think of four seconds on each side of the box, right. So you inhale for four seconds. You hold that inhale for four seconds, which is the top of the box. We were going to start from the left right. Then you exhale for four seconds and you hold your, you pause before you take another inhale for four seconds. So it's you hold between the inhale and the exhale each time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a good way. Right, and that's I know that was recommended to me a lot of times during panic was to try to do the box breathing, but sometimes when you're panicking that shit isn't happening. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, this is something that I think we need to maybe talk about more. If we had enough time, I would. I would want to go into more on this because I feel like so many people are like oh, you know, breath work doesn't work for me. And and the thing about breath work, I think it's we're using it like a pill, like, oh, you know, I'm like an anxiety pill or something like, oh, I'm feeling really anxious, let me do this breathing technique and it'll calm me down. Well, it will if you do it long enough and if you do it well enough. But the thing is, you probably won't be able to do it long enough or well enough if you haven't been practicing it when you're not feeling panicked. It's like a muscle. You can't just go and like lift a really heavy weight and say like, oh okay, yeah, now my muscle's nice and big and resilient and strong. You know, breathing techniques are a practice and a skill that you really need to develop over time so that they can be there for you when you're in a panic.
Speaker 1:Oh, look at you, that's awesome, all right. So what else about holding the breath? It increases CO2 levels in your body, which also helps, right, so it participates in that calming you down, and it also helps increase athletic performance. So, just in case you were wondering about that, um, think about it. If you're doing especially a athletic event where it requires some skill and focus, um, that's always a good thing and you can, you know, I imagine, if you go back and look at any Olympics right, the Olympics are coming this summer you will see, especially like skiers, snowboarders, you know anybody who has to do one thing, gymnast for that particular moment, you'll watch their breath and you'll see what they do as um, they prepare for their performance and I mean, that's something that's so obvious for all of us, right?
Speaker 1:The visualization and the breathing, um, and then, of course, one of the cool things is actually, when you hold your breath, it increases your body temperature, um, so you know, if you're in a state where you're a little chilly or whatever, that's not a bad thing. If you breathe for like five or six minutes and just warm yourself back up and take care of that. Um, on the other end, just there's, you know, like there's, um, what are the breath tools? Um, you know, there's the training mask, which I don't really advocate for too much, but the one that I did see that I thought was kind of cool, is called the breather, and basically you hold it in your mouth and it really helps you time your breathing, your exhales, and you know so. If you're into toys and want to play, then that's something that you can do. But, like we had said earlier, you know, the reality is that you have all the tools that you need, uh, within you and you don't have to pay anything extra. Right, oxygen is free.
Speaker 2:Uh, co2 is free. All the stuff, exactly CO2 is free. Just, you know, mindfully, hold your breath.
Speaker 1:There you go. All right, as we wrap up, do you have anything that else that you'd like to share about this experience?
Speaker 2:I think that's it. You know, breath is a practice, folks. I guess I could not say that enough. It's a practice practice folks.
Speaker 1:I guess I could not say that enough. It's a practice, it's not a pill. Breath is a practice, not a pill. I love that we can end on that one.
Speaker 2:All right. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll catch you next time.