The average person takes about 20,000 breaths per day, yet not many people pay attention to how they’re breathing. The quality of your breathing can have a profound impact on your health, causing a wide range of physiological changes beyond the simple exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Many ancient cultures knew about the healing potential of breathing and developed entire traditions around this – such as yoga and qigong. You may have also heard of Wim Hof, the famous extreme athlete who uses breathing techniques to tolerate extreme temperatures.
Harnessing the power of the breath has some seemingly-miraculous benefits, even beyond tolerating a polar plunge. Optimizing your breath can be transformative to your immunity and overall health in ways that we’re just now beginning to understand. The best part is that your breath is free and accessible to you at all times, with no harmful side effects!
What Is the Best Way to Breathe to Support Health?
If you’ve ever attended a yoga or breathwork class, you probably know that there are many different types of breathing techniques, and they all come with their own unique effects. While there isn’t really a “best way to breathe”, it’s important to know how certain breathing patterns are affecting your physiology.
When talking about your habitual breathing throughout the day, research tends to point toward a best practice as taking slow and deep breaths through the nose and focusing on exhalation. Breathing through the mouth is highly problematic and does not filter air properly, which introduces pathogens and contributes to water loss in the body. When people chronically breathe through their nose, they can become dehydrated as it promotes a decrease in the release of the hormone vasopressin, which causes more frequent urination. Think about how often you may wake in the middle of the night to urinate. Is it because you are mouth breathing?
Breathing slowly through the nose, when practiced regularly, can increase Carbon dioxide retention which studies have shown decrease panic, anxiety, and asthma. This pattern promotes emotional regulation and immune health. It can boost longevity in healthy individuals and offers supportive benefits to those facing chronic conditions.
Some people have difficulty with nasal breathing due to congestion, a deviated septum, polyps, or other blockages in the nasal passages. In these cases, it may be necessary to make an appointment so we can properly assess what needs you may have – whether to refer to a dentist or another provider to alleviate these blockages.
Breathing Reduces Chronic Stress and Inflammation
Chronic stress is such a huge problem in our fast-paced world, and it’s at the root of so many health imbalances. If you experience a stressful event, your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) will respond appropriately, and is designed to return to baseline soon after the stressful event. These days, however, we are often facing a constant onslaught of stressors and unable to switch back to a parasympathic state (rest and digest). This leaves us in a constant sympathetic state, ultimately resulting in immune dysfunction. This can also disrupt the body’s HPA axis, the neuroendocrine pathways that play a role in emotional regulation.¹ Stress-induced inflammation reduces your capacity to cope with stress, keeping you stuck in a feedback loop of stress.
A healthy breathing pattern is an effective way to support the body in breaking out of this feedback loop. Depending on the severity of your immune dysfunction, this may not be a cure-all, but it can certainly help promote vagal tone and a more relaxed state. And best of all, it is not another supplement or medication to take.
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve, and it’s one of the main nerves responsible for regulating the emotional state. When you’re breathing in a slow and deep manner, you’re essentially sending calming signals through the vagus nerve to your brain. A recent study found that just one five-minute slow breathing exercise was effective in taming anxiety and improving vagal tone.² In fact, many breathing techniques promote five and a half breaths per minute. This works out to 5.5 seconds per inhale and 5.5 seconds per exhale.
Breathing Can Protect Against Viruses and Bacteria
Breathing has several different mechanisms in how it supports the immune system. In particular, nasal breathing provides a barrier of protection against pathogens. If you look at the anatomy of the nasal passages, it makes sense why nasal breathing is so much better for you when compared to mouth-breathing as they contain their own built in filtration system. The nasal passages also serve to moisten the air that comes in, which also helps to also act like a filter, more easily trapping pollutants and protecting against pathogens. When air is warmed and humidified it also serves to keep moisture inside the body. In fact, mouth breathing results in a chronic state of dehydration.
Nasal breathing can naturally boost the body’s supply of nitric oxide (NO), a compound that causes vasodilation and allows more oxygen to absorb into the body’s tissues. Nitric oxide also has antiviral and antibacterial properties, and it’s even proven to be an effective therapy for hospitalized patients with COVID-19.³
When you breathe through your mouth, you’re not getting the same protective and supportive benefits of nasal breathing. Without the filtrating mechanisms of the nasal passages, you may be more prone to inhaling harmful particles. Mouth breathing doesn’t effectively release nitric oxide, and so the tissues may not oxygenate as effectively. Because of this, people who habitually mouth-breathe tend to experience higher levels of chronic fatigue and brain fog. Our ability to do nasal breathing, researchers at the University of Buffalo in 2006 declared, is so important that it is “literally a measure of living capacity”.⁴
Deep belly breathing supports immunity by promoting lymphatic circulation. The lymphatic system is a network of vessels throughout the body responsible for providing immune support and filtering out waste products from the tissues. Unlike your cardiovascular system, the lymphatic vessels don’t have a pump to circulate fluid. When you practice deep belly breathing, the diaphragm moves up and down, acting as a pump to circulate lymph fluid more effectively. This can help prevent lymphatic stagnation, which can often contribute to illness.⁵
Deep belly breathing also promotes the stimulation of the parasympathic nervous system and can help you shift out of a sympathetic state. As a physician who does bodywork, it is the one things I notice most often in my patients when I am doing a physical exam or when I am observing how my patients tell me their stories. Sometimes, I can see and hear that they are only speaking from the top half of their lungs. Doing a daily practice of breathing into the belly and not into the upper half of the body has probably been one of my most prescribed treatments for my patients over my last 20 years of practice.
Breathe Better to Support Longevity
Breathing is about so much more than exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. There are so many physiological benefits that come with a healthy breathing pattern, so it’s not surprising that lung function is now proving to be a predictor of longevity.⁶
Over our lifespan, the lungs tend to get smaller with reduced capacity and function. However, you can expand your lung capacity and function at any age. Exercise and yoga are both great ways to do this. It’s also important to take note of your habitual breathing pattern throughout the day. If you notice that you tend towards shallow and rapid breathing, you can try setting reminders on your phone to practice slower breathing. Some people even practice “mouth-taping” where they place a small piece of tape on their lips to gently hold their mouth closed.
As more research is being done on breathing, we’re seeing its significant role in so many areas of human health. Believe it or not, there are even more wide-ranging benefits beyond the scope of this article. Many that we still have yet to to even discover.