Sponsor: RePowerU -- a free fitness practices assessment (a 10-minute questionnaire)
Nasal breathing is not a trick or hack to get an unnatural advantage. Nasal breathing is the designed in way to breathe properly. Not nasal breathing causes health and performance problems. But it's never too late to do it right. Learn the why's and how's of nasal breathing from George Dallam, PhD.
Dr. Dallam says, "One simple rule: breath through nose all the time, or as much as possible."
Benefits of nasal breathing:
- Better filtering of particles and viruses (less nasal infection, bronchitis). Filtering becomes even more important when exercising because we take in so much more air.
- Less water lost though breathing
- Less energy spent on breathing (more energy for locomotion); higher O2 extracted per breath (higher efficiency)
- Recovery from "EIB" exercise induced bronchoconstriction (exercise induced asthma)
- Provides a powerful training stimulus to improve fitness…make you faster even if you go back to mouth breathing in high intensity efforts, such as races
- Improved stress management
- Better sleep, and overall improved recovery from exercise (lower stress, avoidance of snoring)
- Better posture and movement ability with improved diaphragm activity
- Functional movement benefits —diaphragm is a major core muscle that is under strength when we mouth breathe.
- Avoids possible damage to the heart from over breathing (a hypothesis from Dr Dallam)
Time marks to find particular parts of discussion:
- Dr. Dallam background and the beginning of interest in nasal breathing: 4:58
- Myths about breathing:18:51
- What does the nose do? 31:00
- More problems from mouth breathing: 39:30
- Stress and related lower performance from over breathing: 46:30
- Intro to transition to nasal breathing: 50:50
- Advantages of nasal breathing: 53:58
- Potential heart damage (related to AFib) from mouth breathing during hard exercise: 1:05:23
- How long does it take to adapt to nasal breathing during exercise: 1:07:15
- Summary of adaptations in transition to nasal breathing: 1:12:13
- Recommendation for getting started: 1:20:14
- How to find Dr. Dallam: 1:26:10
Notes from discussion with George Dallam, PhD
Myths about breathing:
- I feel the need to breath faster when I need more oxygen — mostly false. It is the presence of higher than usual CO2 in the blood that causes the “air hunger”
- CO2 is bad, and needs to be removed as fast as possible — false; CO2 is necessary for normal bodily functions. Too much AND too little CO2 are bad for the body.
- Breathing faster brings in more oxygen (superoxygenation) — no; red blood cells are generally 95-98% oxygenated after passing by lungs. You don’t get more oxygen into red blood cells, you just lose more CO2 from blood plasma, which creates problems for the body
- Breathing doesn’t take much energy or oxygen to do — false. During exercise, breathing can use as much as 15% of the total energy burn of the body…15% of the oxygen being used. If we can save 25% of that by breathing more efficiently (less breathing for same oxygen), we’ll have more oxygen left over for other muscles to use.
- An athlete cannot get enough oxygen for exercise though just nasal breathing — false. It is easy to see why people would come to this
