Breath

Just reading the book Breath by James Nestor and really enjoying it. Easy to read, enjoyable and some parts are fascinating.

I always knew that breathing was important, but typically, like most, I focused on meditative deep breathing exercises. I corrected my chest breathing some time ago and replaced it with diaphragmatic breathing.

But I’ve always been a mouth breather. I breathe through my mouth often in a quick, hyperventalive way. I guess I just didn’t realize how bad the effects on your health can be, particularly with immunity and stress.

I have two brothers. One is exactly like me. Had braces as a kid, breathes through his mouth, and has anxiety and autoimmunity like me. The other is a nose breather and super healthy. Quite interesting.

I guess the lack of chewing that we do with our modern diet has created a scenario where our heads jaws and nose are smaller, which causes things like the need for braces and mouth breathing. Apparently indigenous tribes don’t have this problem, and they also don’t have a lot of the same health issues we do. Of course the book tries to make it out to be a 1:1 correlation, when in reality it’s a whole host of differences from diet to stress that causes this chronic illness, but regardless it’s interesting. They did an experiment where they taped the guys nose shut for 2w and measured his health vitals like blood pressure and glucose, and then the same when they taped his mouth shut. The results, if accurate, were quite telling.

Anyway, i mouth breathe every night. Although my sleep is much better on keto and I can actually fall asleep now, I do wake up at 4-5 am every night thirsty and unable to go back to sleep.

The recommendation is to tape your mouth shut at night (1 small piece of tape in the middle, not dangerous they say) and force yourself to nose breath. Will try it out if curiosity, maybe another hack to improve my sleep and health

Nothing super relevant but in found it interesting and figured I’d share, maybe someone else will too

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 1/8/2021 11:15:33 AM (GMT-7)

Ugh these industries are super evil. Realizing that more and more, everything is about the $5k machine when a $5 mask will do. I will look for one of those masks.

Apparently, the nosal passage is like a muscle. In 6w if you "train" (with the taped mouth), the muscles and fascia in the back of your nose and throat will open up and you will be mouth breathing normally.

Awesome, will def read this. Just skimming it, it looks right up my alley. Another piece of the puzzle. I'm slowing putting together these stressors that have thrown my homeostasis off. The big ones for me seem to be diet/microbiome, poor methylation/MTHFR, possible metals toxicity. Poor breathing may be contributing as well.

I've had both my boxing coach and my cranio-sacral therapist tell me on multiple occasions each that I hyperventilate when I breathe, and this certainly amps up the autonomic nervous system. What's my chief complaint? Surprise, autonomic neruopathy...