IT MAY be the most natural thing in the world, but breathing is surprisingly easy to get wrong 鈥� and that matters more than you might think.
Most of the time, the right way to breathe is through your nose. The pointy thing stuck to your face is exquisitely designed to trap dust and other foreign bodies in its hairs and snot. Beyond your visible nose lies the nasal cavity, a cavernous space the size of a gaping mouth. This is lined with folded membranes designed to warm or cool the air to body temperature, add moisture and trap pathogens in yet more mucus. Your sinuses 鈥� air-filled spaces that connect to the nasal cavity 鈥� swirl the air around more and add nitric oxide, which kills bacteria and viruses and relaxes the blood vessels in the respiratory tract, allowing more oxygen to pass into the blood.
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The upshot of all this is that nose breathing adds 50 per cent more air resistance than breathing through the mouth. That gives your heart and lungs a workout and increases the vacuum in your lungs, which allows you to draw in up to 20 per cent more oxygen than breathing by mouth.
As if that wasn鈥檛 enough, nasal breathing boosts brain function too. were slower to complete a maze than nose breathers and, when they reached adulthood, they had fewer neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain important for learning and memory. Studies in people reveal that when we breathe through our noses.
The explanation is that the to the emotional and memory processing centres of the brain, via sensory neurons that connect to the brain鈥檚 olfactory bulb. As well as carrying messages about scent, these neurons sense air moving in and out of the nasal cavity and . Synchronised brainwaves then spread beyond the scent-processing brain areas into regions responsible for memory, emotion and cognition.
Nil by mouth
Many of us are missing out on these benefits. According to some estimates, more than and breathe through their mouths too often. As a result, we also risk bad breath, poor sleep, , tooth decay and even .
If you suspect you are an accidental mouth breather, you could set an alarm to remind yourself to check how you are breathing throughout the day. You can buy strips to tape your mouth shut at night. However, the evidence that this works is confined to one small study, which found that it in people with mild obstructive sleep apnoea.
As for how fast to breathe, if it is calm you seek, slow it down to about six breaths per minute. This triggers a reflex that widens blood vessels and reduces heart rate. Concentrating on a long, slow exhalation also stimulates the vagus nerve, which is in charge of the rest-and-digest response, the opposite of fight or flight. Breathing more slowly still might even lull you into an altered state of consciousness. At three breaths per minute, , together with a zoned-out state that looks like slow-wave sleep, a deep state of slumber.
Whatever the rate, nose breathing is the way to go. And you might want to hum a little tune too. Humming sets up swirls of air in the sinuses, which 15-fold, with all its immune and cardiovascular benefits. The only time that nose breathing falls short is when you need to fill your lungs quickly. In an emergency, a gasp of air through the mouth works wonders. Just try not to make a habit of it.
Simple changes to your everyday habits could help transform your life. Follow our guide on how to do things better:
