1. Shut Your Mouth:
There are essentially two ways we can breathe – through our mouth or through our nose. Research suggests to only breath through your nose (especially with everyday breathing).
- Mouth breathing pushes the brain to think you are under physical and mental stress (activating the sympathetic nervous system) – making us more stressed, anxious and tired.
- Mouth breathing can increase blood pressure
- Mouth breathing should only be used for a short period of time (after high amounts of physical exertion).
- Disfigures your jaw – it transforms the structure of your jaw to be more narrow and droopy (like old people in a nursing home).
2. Breathe Through Your Nose
Nasal (nose) breathing increases the amount of oxygen being absorbed in the blood due to nitric oxide presence in the nose.
- Increases physical health and strength
- Can reduce tiredness, mental health conditions
- Increases concentration
- Can reduce sleep apnoea
3. Chew
From the beginning of time, we have changed what we eat. Previously we chewed the meat off bones, ate veggies raw, etc. Now we eat slow cooked beef brisket (its nice, I know), roast veggies and sip on our soups.
This has slowly weakened our jaw and the muscles of the jaw.
Research actually suggests doing the opposite to strengthen up the jaw and its muscles. Chewing gum, especially the Turkish gum that’s super chewy are great things that can help you gain good strength. This all improves the shape of our jaw and improves our ability to breath.
Fun Fact – we can expand and remodel our jaw even into our 70’s so its never too late!
4. Breathe More, on Occasion
Did you know we can actually control our body through our breathing? Breathing slowly turns on the nervous system that looks after relaxation, whereas breathing fast turns on the nervous system looking after the hypervigilant state/fight or flight response.
So research suggests breathing fast is actually good because it trains our body in regulating which nervous system to activate. This then helps your body to relax when you want it to. It’s like training your dog to be a guard dog so that way when the perfect opportunity comes he can fulfil that but other times he can be super loving and cuddly.
5. How we Breathe Matters
Just like we discussed in the previous point, the way we breathe changes the way our body functions, its crazy!
So how we breathe can control the way our body works.
The perfect steady, everyday breath is actually – breathe for about 5.5 seconds, exhale for about 5.5 seconds also. So that’s about 5.5 breaths a minute.
If you want to try it out, google “breathing exercise” and there will be a timer/video that shows you the appropriate pace. Try it out!
It’s a lot to take in I know, some of you are probable a little sceptical, but try it out! It plays a huge role in our everyday life and also the way we optimally use our body!
