Benefits of Nasal Breathing

To begin nasal breathing, you have to be conscious of it. The easiest way to start nasal breathing is to hold a mouth full of water in your mouth. Once you do this for a while you can then press your tongue flat to the roof of your mouth, relax your jaw (whilst keeping your mouth shut), and breathe through your nose. This is the way we should all breathe.

“An athlete should focus primarily on breathing to improve his/her performance.”

If an athlete does not get enough oxygen into the body, they will quickly reach their physical limits. Nasal breathing allows an athlete to maintain the naturally balanced circulation of air in our body. Providing enough oxygen to our muscles allows us to recover more quickly from an effort and gain endurance.

There are many benefits to Nasal Breathing:

• Sleep: Improved quality of sleep and reduced snoring.

• Performance: Increase in V02Max as you are optimizing nasal breathing.

• Strength: Allowing you to push yourself beyond your comfort zone so that you may benefit from extra repetitions at the end of your workout.

• By nasal breathing you can get 10-20% more oxygen uptake than breathing through the mouth

• Nasal breathing warms and humidifies incoming air. Air coming in through the nose at 6 degrees will be warmed to 30 degrees by the time it touches the back of the throat, and 37 degrees (body temperature), upon reaching the lungs

• Nasal breathing removes a lot of germs and bacteria from the air you breathe in

• Nasal breathing increases the amount of nitric oxide available to the body. Nitric oxide has many benefits to the body such as preventing high blood pressure, lowering cholesterol, keeping the arteries flexible, and preventing clotting of the arteries. These benefits help reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke

Patrick McKeown says that by switching to nasal breathing if you are a mouth breather, you can reduce asthma symptoms by 30% and reverse the habit of over-breathing for improved lifelong health. He also says that by breathing through the nose you can maintain correct breathing volume, reduce allergies and illnesses, improve sleep (as mentioned above), and even aid in weight loss.

This is not a new concept. It has been written about over 100 years ago in yoga books.

References / further reading:

https://oxygenadvantage.com/oxygen-advantage-book/