Your Mouth, Nasal Breathing & Health

Since 2017, I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to shift my breathing to be predominantly nasal (through my nose). I had played with breathwork for a longtime before that, but this was a very intentional focus to nasal only; and this went for whether I was sitting, standing, taking a walk, exercising, or even sleeping.

Why your the nose, you ask? Many reasons…

While a new app or book focused on breath seems to pop up each day suggesting we try the same, my interest spurred from qualities I noticed in myself and my clients that changed with the practice and then habit of breathing in and out through my nose. Many of these books and apps are very useful, and I have read some of these like Breath, Jaws, etc.; but a lot of what I noticed began when doing work as a research assistant in cognitive neuroscience labs that looked at breathing as it pertains to meditation. This fascinated me since I had messed around with some of these principals both intuitively and sometimes clumsily trying to improve my performance in various sports. I really had no idea at first as I was learning, but I did find that certain types of breathing helped my performance in endurance endeavors like long distance outrigger canoe races where you would have to paddle sometimes tens of miles at varying intensities.

A great deal of the previous and some current literature on the topic of nasal breathing and other related topics like the recent surge in jaw and dental issues can be somewhat speculative in nature but a growing body is not. Interventional studies have been done, are now published, and happening more and more. These all seem to confirm the benefits myself and others had been experiencing while “playing” with breath and jaw posture, gearing, and focus. Much of these aren’t by any means new ideas and they are definitely intertwined.

In fact, much of this has been played with for centuries or longer, coming in and out of vogue.  AND, while we can all read these popular books mentioned above or Google Scholar some of the studies, I always think the most important litmus with anything is whether it works for you. For many of my clients and myself, it did, and that was what I needed to continue digging and experimenting years later.

As more is discovered, it has already paid off in both health and performance.

Jaws and Breath:

In Dr. Sandra Kahn and Paul Ehrlich’s Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic, the point is driven that our mouth/jaws are more messed up than ever and this has happened in a very short period of time evolutionarily speaking. As argued, this is due to various biological, dietary and cultural changes rather than genetics as argued. In the end, this has caused quite a few issues and breathing problems like sleep apnea are just one of them. We can use the lenses of biological anthropology and evolution and see the increase of ever shrinking jaws, softer palates, more crowded crooked teeth, and sleep apnea and know that this is likely not a genetic issue since it is happening within a generation (not over many). This is not just fossil evidence of hunter gatherer’s that by in large all had perfectly straight uncrowded jaws and teeth. A grandparent’s jaw and teeth who was raised and lived in a traditional environment/habitat can be compared to his son’s that moved to a more industrialized area, and then to his grandson’s to see even more problematic development as we go down the lineage. This isn’t just the jaw/maxilla that is mostly referred to in this blog though, as the accompanying physiology also changes. We can then look at things more closely in terms of the physiology. We can see the impacts more closely that these anatomical and mechanical changes are having on our health whether expressed as cardiovascular issues/disease and other diseases, and as emotional and behavioral issues.

Others along with James Nestor in his book Breath make similar arguments. Nestor really focuses his own around nasal vs mouth breathing, and how nasal breathing can be a panacea for so many health issues including those related to jaws and teeth. He ties mouth breathing quite heavily to the jaw and dental issues he and others he references have experienced, which I tend to agree with. However, I also tend to not go quite as far into it being as big a cure-all. Nevertheless, it can be an incredibly impactful shift and if there is an area within human health that we can affect multiple systems with, I’m all in (at least to try).

With these problems mentioned above, I always like to look for solutions or ways we can balance out the equation. In this case looking to better improve the structure and tone of the mouth and jaw and improve other areas of health simultaneously is a win-win. Improving the tone of the muscles of the jaw and the palate can help your healthspan quite a bit, and whether this is as potent a side effect of nasal breathing unless caught early on or not does not matter to me if there are other benefits to nasal breathing as well. It just so happens that nasal breathing does have MANY other benefits!

AND, since nasal breathing is something we all have access to, why not try to make it your main mode if that’s what noses are for after all?

KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT & BREATH THROUGH YOUR NOSE:

What seems to be a great way to improve oral posture and simultaneously confer other health benefits is using your mouth for eating and your nose for breathing as much as you can. If you aren’t eating food or drinking, keep your mouth and jaw closed, teeth touching lightly and tongue on palate.

But breathing through my nose is difficult all the time, you say?!

Yes- it may be at first if you have not been, but it does get easer and doing it more can actually make it easier over time.

You can also do things to encourage greater ease at first like neck, face and sinus massage (i.e. zygomatic arch soft tissues), water holding in the mouth to make nasal breathing a must as you practice in various scenarios, nasal pulling to start feeling the sensation of what larger nasal breaths feel like, rinses for overly sensitive sinuses and to help encourage proper sinus drainage, Ujjayi breathing drills, alternate nasal breathing drills, etc.; and not necessarily in that order.

Nasal breathing can help with quite a few things whether we are talking allergies, cardiovascular health, mood, sleep, aerobic efficiency, and even combatting viruses.

Did you know that nasal breathing has been found to have anti-viral properties due to the structure of the nose as a filtering mechanism and the production of nitric-oxide? Well, it just so happens both are true and some studies have even looked at this in relation to COVID-19 and show the same.

Take a look at the summary graphic below for a comparison picture of nose vs mouth:

These benefits outlined above can also be taken further and explored in exercise performance and sleep.

Nasal Breathing- Easing it into EXERCISE

Some reasons to use nasal breathing normally and also in exercise are to improve blood oxygen saturation (your blood carries my oxygen to tissues so you can do more metabolically), improve lung volume, help the diaphragm function properly, slow down breathing for greater aerobic efficiency , better modulate nervous system activity in response to the stress that exercise indeed can be, and the list goes on. With that all said, it doesn’t need to be complicated, and a way to incorporate nasal breathing into exercise to improve is to simply do it while exercising. Start slow and see how long you can keep up your nasal breathing under increasingly higher cardiorespiratory demand or different tasks (light jogging vs running, bodyweight drills vs lifting weights vs HIIT). You can use some of the techniques mentioned above (like water or stone holding).

Think of walks that get faster, turning into light jogs that get faster, turning into runs. Of course, there may be a threshold somewhere when we do indeed enter into mouth breathing to keep up with the demand for clearing CO2 and taking in more oxygen, so if you get there, practice taking it back down and know that nasal breathing may actually be more effective at oxygenating the system. Eventually you will be able to do this until you are at near max efforts.

Again, start slow and incorporate it into daily life, then give it a whirl at lower intensities/demands at first and go from there. We like to use this in warm-ups with clients in our 1-1s at Resilient Body.

Nasal Breathing- SLEEP

Nasal breathing while asleep can be very rewarding but a challenge for many as well, especially if you have issues breathing while asleep from snoring or sleep apnea. However, the challenge here can also be the remedy. Some of the nasal breathing practices mentioned above can translate into better sleep through nasal breathing at night.

This also works the other way around, as we have noticed that with nasal breathing at night, you may have even greater ease with it during the day. Part of this may be due to how long we get to “practice”/do it while sleeping to normalize it and the other part may be due to getting better sleep as well.

Some ways we have played with this at Resilient Body are through mouth taping.

Wait, what?!…Shut your mouth!…

YES! – Mouth taping.

It may sound a little scary to some, but you don’t need to necessarily cover your lips (Myotape, around the mouth muscles to encourage a closed mouth can work well and there are many other methods). This will over time force nasal breathing and transformation in improved sleep and ease with which nasal breathing happens during the day can be rather quick and quite noticeable. Imagine much better sleep very soon after trying and getting through some awkwardness and then picture waking up feeling refreshed rather than like you’re dragging and in a fog.

TIPS to improve nasal breathing:

As our about page quote from Viktor Frankl reads, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Whether you decide to try some of these practices out and inquire further or not, see what you can do to gain more awareness around your breath. It is likely the most immediate and powerful mediator and modulator of our nervous system as the space “between stimulus and response”. In other words, our breath allows us that opportunity to change and grow both immediately and over the long term, and with that myriad health benefits can be realized.