08/08/2023
Breath
Undoubtedly, breath is much more important source of human nourishment than water or food. You only stop breathing for a few minutes and you die. However, little is known about the breath’s quality.
We often hear the advice "take a deep breath, it will calm you down". However, is it really a good advice? In these times, we eat more, breathe more, but it does not mean that it is the right direction towards health.
Hyperventilation affects more people than we think, it is often caused by deep, frequent breaths. Then we lose too much carbon dioxide (just the one that has a bad reputation these days) and that reduces the ability to absorb oxygen. This phenomenon has been thoroughly studied by Christian Bohr. The Bohr Effect explains why we do not absorb enough oxygen into our body when we breathe too frequently. As a result, we starve for air, which makes us want to breathe more often, then we lose even more oxygen. This mechanism will cause chronic hyperventilation. And so the circle goes round.
The good news is that we can change abnormal breathing patterns through our willpower. However, it all depends on the motivation and commitment of the person. The 70-year-old Framingham Study found that the best predictor of lifespan was not genetics, diet, or daily exercise, but only the lung capacity.
Lung capacity reflects the quality of your breath. The more disturbed the breathing pattern, the smaller the capacity of the lungs.
What is the easiest way to check if our breathing is correct?
First of all, the breath should be inaudible, almost imperceptible, rhythmic, calm, regular, slow and most importantly through the nose. The breath should be inaudible even during sleep.
There are many tests for examining the quality of breath, below I will describe one of them.
Measure the number of breaths in one minute. If you take more than 12 breaths, it means that your breathing pattern is disturbed. According to the latest research, it is most beneficial to have 5.5 breaths per minute. This is called coherent breathing. By breathing like that, we are able to absorb more oxygen, calm the nervous system, and even increase blood flow to the brain.
The most important factor that affects the quality of breath is the nose. Many researchers or ancient books talk about how harmful mouth breathing is.
There are a lot of studies comparing the effects of breathing through the nose versus the mouth on human health. A very interesting study was conducted on 2 volunteers by Dr. Jayakar Nayak, a nose and sinus surgeon at Stanford University. It is described in the book "Breath" by James Nestor. The study, that lasted 20 days, showed very clearly how negatively human physiology changes if we breathe through the mouth. The easiest way to present that is in the table below:
