6 Key Takeaways: BREATH, by James Nestor

It's pretty exciting that whenever I encounter a bookshop, I see James Nestor’s Breath on the bestsellers table: I LOVE this book. Not only is it fascinating from cover-to-cover but it underlines a single health intervention that we can all do...for free. Breathe through our noses. As a terrible breather (chronic hyperventilator) I learned so much from James when we first spoke a couple of years ago—in fact, he kicked off my quest to resolve the tongue-tie and too-narrow palette that I share with my oldest son, Max. (We both have ALF expanders, which I highly recommend.) James recently came on Pulling the Thread.

6 KEY TEACHINGS:

1. Per Nestor, 90% of us are breathing incorrectly—and the impact on our health is significant.

As he writes: “On a more inspiring note, some of these researchers were also showing that many modern maladies—asthma, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, psoriasis, and more—could either be reduced or reversed simply by changing the way we inhale and exhale.”

A bit later, he reports: “This work was upending long-held beliefs in Western medical science. Yes, breathing in different patterns really can influence our body weight and overall health. Yes, how we breathe really does affect the size and capacity of our lungs. Yes, breathing allows us to hack into our own nervous system, control our immune response, and restore our health. Yes, changing how you breathe will help you live longer.”

And finally: “Of the 5,400 different species of mammals on the planet, humans are now the only ones to routinely have misaligned jaws, overbites, underbites, and snaggled teeth, a condition formally called malocclusion. To Evans, this raised a fundamental question: ‘Why would we evolve to make ourselves sick?’ she asked.”

2. We have erectile tissue inside our nostrils—”noses get erections,” he writes. And this has a health-protective function.