Noses are for breathing
To give you an idea of the capacity of the nasal cavity, run your tongue from the front of the roof of your mouth to right back as far as it will go. The roof of your mouth is the floor of your nose, we can actually only see 30% of the nasal cavity volume on the outside. This huge volume of space in our skulls dedicated to our nasal cavity, goes to show the important function our noses have and the role it has in our breathing and overall health. We have this amazing function of our body, and studies show about 50% of us are not using it₁.
So what happens when we breath through our nose?
Airs enters the nose, swirls up through spongy bones called turbinates which directs the volume and velocity of the air to reach a network of arteries and veins that then warm, humidify and sterlise the air before being drawn down into our throats. From our throat the air flows into our windpipe (known as the trachea), or the trunk of our tree-lungs as you can see below, which then divides into two branches which lead to either lung. These branches then split into further smaller branches and into a series of small air sacs called alveoli (think of these as the leaves or the big beautiful bunches of blossom that embellish the trees in spring).
As Patrick McKeown, writer of The Oxygen Advantage says "It is quite a striking example of evolutionary balance and beauty that the trees around us that give off oxygen and the trees in our lungs that absorb it share a similar structure."
why we should be breathing into our nose?
Well, put simply if we don't use it, we lose it. And many of us don’t which means our nasal cavity is not being utilised and is underdeveloped. This isn't uncommon, As James Nestor writes in his book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art "40% of today's population suffer from chronic nasal obstruction, and around half of us are habitual mouth breathers, with females and children suffering most.₂"
Stuffy noses, snoring, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, cancers, ADHD, insomnia, anxiety, depression have been linked to breathing and the health of our breath. Our breath is an important biological function that needs our attention. We all breathe, but few of us do it well.
We've evolved to be mouth breathers - but as Nestor writes “evolution doesn't always mean progress₃”, instead it refers to the process of development. The way we breath now, with a high percentage of us breathing though our mouths, is detrimental to our health. And the sad thing is, it's going to continue to be this way for future generations unless we change our behaviour.
But the good news is we can control how we breath and learn to change our breathing patterns.
Our capacity to breath through our noses can improve, it takes practice and consistency, just like going to the gym. For me, in the past 3 years I've gone from being a chronic mouth-breather, with anxiety, depression, constantly getting colds and every bug going, to breathing in and out of my nose, so now my sleep has improved, I don’t have anxiety attacks and no longer suffer with depression. And a huge factor in that is learning to breath better.
So how did I change how I breathe?
I first noticed a shift in my breathing after practicing yoga for some time, my partner at the time noticed my snoring had reduced. The only thing that had changed was my yoga practice, frequently attending classes that encouraged breathing in and out of my nose for a couple of hours every week. I was training myself to breathe better.
In recent years, I’ve supercharged my breathing training - I began taping my mouth at night to ensure I was getting the maximum amount of unconscious nasal breathing time in my 24 hours. I now sleep with my mouth taped every night and feel huge benefits from waking up more refreshed, less dehydrated and better rested.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
I offer 1:1 breathwork training for anyone ready to commit to changing their breathing habits, or simply join a SLOW FLOW yoga class or BREATHE class each week to begin your breathwork journey.
REFERENCES
₁ 50% of us are not using it “Epidemiology and Burden of Nasal Congestion.” International Journal of General Medicine 3 (2010): 37-45; David W. Hsu and Jeffrey D. Suh, “Anatomy and Physiology of Nasal Obstruction,” Otolaryngologic Clinics of North America 51, no.5 (Oct 2018): 853-65
₂ 40% of today's population suffer from chronic nasal obstruction, and around half of us are habitual mouth breathers, with females and children suffering most. You can read more about Breath in James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (Great Britain, Penguin Life, 2020) The quote is from page 5
₃evolution doesn't always mean progress You can read more about Breath in James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (Great Britain, Penguin Life, 2020) The quote is from page 12
Join me for BREATHE each week, a breathwork class to help improve our breath for optimal health.