The hit Netflix series “Stranger Things” has done a great service to its viewers.
While it has an excellent story with a good sense of mystery, humor, horror and a loveable
cast, what I’m talking about is…
"Mouth breather, mouth breather,
I was tripped by this mouth breather Troy, OK?
Mouth breather?
Yea, you know, a dumb person?"
This phrase actually only comes up 3 times, but hopefully it made viewers more aware of
how they are breathing throughout the day.
As the character Will explains, Mouth Breather refers to a “dumb person,”
But is it because leaving your mouth open just looks dumb or you could say the person
is dumb for not being aware of their own face, or does breathing through the mouth actually
decrease intelligence somehow?
Actually, there is evidence that simply taking air into the mouth rather than the nose can
result in reduced IQ.
A systematic review of medical literature done by the Federal University Sergipe in
Brazil found that after applying certain criteria “Overall, 80% of the articles showed a higher
incidence of learning disabilities among mouth breathers,” concluding that “This systematic
review has shown that mouth breathers are more likely to have learning difficulties
than nasal breathers.”
In the book “Adenoids and Diseased Tonsils: Their Effect on General Intelligence” by
Margaret Rogers, she quotes a H. Addington Bruce saying “mouth-breathing means difficult
breathing, and this in turn means deficient oxygenation of the tissues, with a resultant
lowering of vital activities generally and of the activity of the brain in particular."
George Catlin, author of the 1869 book “Shut your mouth and save your life” stresses
the importance of breathing through your nose at ALL times, while awake or sleeping.
He says “there is no perfect sleep for man or brute, with the mouth open; it is unnatural,
and a strain upon the lungs” and he describes how impressed he was to see a Native American
woman gently press on the lips of her baby to keep its mouth closed while sleeping.
But how could simply getting Oxygen from one route rather than another be so important
that it affect your cognitive ability or anything else?
Well, the nose is extremely complex and takes up much more space than just the knob in the
middle of your face.
That’s only only 30% of it and the other 70% of the nasal cavity is deep within the
skull.
While smell is a very important sense, it wouldn’t be necessary to allocate all that
real estate unless the nose had other important responsibilities.
When someone breathes through the mouth, they are bypassing several critical functions of
the nose.
To name a few, the nose filters, warms and moistens the air you breathe to make it more
suitable for your lungs.
Nasal breathing also increases levels of nitric oxide, a key signaling molecule used throughout
the body.
Another very important function of the nose is that it regulates airflow and helps prevent
overbreathing.
So how can you ‘over breathe’?
Well, breathing in and out more air than is necessary results in hypocapnia, or a state
of reduced carbon dioxide in the blood.
This is why people breathe into a paper bag when hyperventilating from intense stress
or an anxiety attack.
The excessive breathing depleted too much carbon dioxide, so the bag helps trap that
carbon dioxide they are exhaling and keep it in the body until their carbon dioxide
blood levels and breathing rhythm return to normal.
And here is a key point in why mouth breathing can affect people’s intelligence.
Breathing through the mouth during the day or while you’re asleep not only means the
air is not conditioned by the nasal cavity, but you tend to exhale too much carbon dioxide,
meaning your tissues are actually getting less oxygen.
Each 2.5% drop in the partial pressure of arterial carbon dioxide reduces blood flow
to the brain by 2%.”
In other words, oxygenation of your brain significantly decreases when you breathe too
much.
The loss of carbon dioxide from improper breathing isn’t drastic enough to be easily noticeable,
but over time the habit can take its toll on the brain and body.
But this is a bit counter intuitive.
How could taking in more air through a bigger passage - the mouth, lead to less oxygenation
of your tissues?
People mainly think of oxygen when discussing breathing, but Carbon Dioxide is a key factor
in this equation.
As Patrick McKeown, author of the Oxygen advantage explains, “The amount of Oxygen, your muscles,
organs and tissues are able to use is not entirely dependent on the amount of oxygen
in your blood.
Our red blood cells are almost always saturated with between 95 and 99% oxygen and that’s
plenty for even the most strenuous exercise.”
So, since your red blood cells are already saturated with oxygen, taking in more oxygen
with big breaths isn’t going to do anything.
What is important, is getting that Oxygen out of the red blood cells so it can be used
by the body.
And Carbon Dioxide is what allows the release of oxygen from the red blood cells.
This physiological phenomenon is called the Bohr effect, it was first described in 1904
by Christian Bohr and it states that “hemoglobin's oxygen binding affinity is inversely related
both to acidity and to the concentration of carbon dioxide.”
Hemoglobin is the protein inside red blood cells that carries oxygen.
An increase in carbon dioxide decreases blood pH and hemoglobin proteins release their load
of oxygen so it can be used by the muscles and organs.
A decrease in carbon dioxide increases pH and causes haemoglobin to hold on to more
oxygen.
That is, the oxygen stays stuck to the hemoglobin so it’s not available for your tissues to
use.
If you’re taking large breaths through the mouth, you’re going to exhale and lose a
proportionally large amount of precious carbon dioxide.
Patrick McKeown explains that if we breathe a lower volume of air by breathing in a slow
controlled fashion through the nose, we increase the amount of carbon dioxide inside us and
can deliver more oxygen to our muscles and organs, including the heart and the brain.
Scott Jurek is one of the most dominant ultramarathon runners in the world, winning many of the
sport’s prestigious race events multiple times.
He won the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run seven consecutive times.
In his memoir “Eat and Run” he says: “One of the most important things you can do … is
to breathe abdominally, and a good way to learn that skill is to practice nasal breathing.”
The Tarahumara native Indians of Mexico are able to run up to 62 miles a day, twice that
of a typical elite athlete.
Studies of the Tarahumara show that they breathe almost entirely through the nose.
Of course there are other factors that allow them to accomplish such impressive feats of
endurance, but this is an excellent display of nasal breathing during athletic performance.
Anthropologist Wade Davis has studied and lived with fifteen groups of indigenous people,
including tribal hunters of the Amazon.
While staying with the tribe, Davis was allowed to accompany them on hunting expeditions.
Hunts began in the morning and they would persistently chase animals at a jogging and
running pace over many hours.
After a while the animal would collapse from exhaustion and they would kill it at short
range.”
Davis was most impressed by the fact that these hunters never opened their mouths to
breath during the hunt.
To maintain proper carbon dioxide levels and better facilitate the oxygenation of the body,
you’ll want to lower the volume of air you take in and out over time.
What that means is while taking deep breaths can be good, taking deep breaths quickly is
not.
Some well meaning yoga instructors may teach that you should take deep breaths that expand
the lungs, but fail to stress the importance of having the breath be slow and controlled.
In The Hathapradīpikạ, a seminal text of Hatha yoga, compiled in the 15th century,
one of the passages says:.
“Just as lions, elephants and tigers are calm and controlled, the breath too must be
controlled by slow degrees.
Hasty or forceful breath kills the practiser himself.”
In the animal world, mouth breathing is a rarity to the extent that it is usually a
sign of illness.
Farmers know this; they will immediately know if an animal is sick not by noticing whether
it breathes through the mouth.
Aside from dogs, who pant to regulate their body temperature when they’re hot, most
all land mammals breathe regularly through their nose except in times of distress.
In humans, chronic mouth breathing can lead to cavities, gum disease, lowered immune function,
digestive disturbances, poor sleep quality, and can result in crooked teeth and even poorly
developed facial structure.
“During the 1960s, dentist Egil Harvold conducted a number of experiments where young
monkeys’ noses were blocked with silicone nose plugs.
This caused these monkeys to breathe through the mouth and they gradually acquired a facial
appearance different from the control monkeys.
The mouth-breathing monkeys developed crooked teeth, a lowered chin and other facial deformities.
Essentially mouth breathing leads to a longer face with a set back jaw, less pronounced
cheekbones and restricted airways.
I’ve sometimes wondered why most athletes usually tend to be pretty good looking.
I figured there would be an equal amount of facially challenged athletes as there are
attractive ones.
Patrick McKeown argues that breathing plays a role here too.
Because the athletes had been breathing properly, it set them up for better physical conditioning
as a child meaning better sports performance, and proper breathing supports the development
of good facial structure.
Now I’ve only covered some of the important aspects of nasal breathing, Check out the
book The Oxygen Advantage for an impressively thorough exploration of this topic.
But I’ll leave you with one important tip to help get the most out of your breathing.
Just put some micropore tape on your mouth when you sleep.
As weird and slightly scary as that may sound, the quality of sleep you get from ensuring
that you breathe through your nose, will definitely be worth getting used to the tape.
This has helped me personally, and even people with asthma report that this drastically improves
their quality of their sleep.
Of course it’s best to avoid this if you have certain medical conditions, or in certain
situations like after drinking alcohol.
After wearing the tape for about 3 months, it should have you naturally breathing through
your nose during sleep and improve your breathing pattern during day.
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