Breathing In And Out - A Diary Of A Mouth Breather

In March of this year I watched an Andrew Huberman podcast about how to breathe properly. Usually this is the sort of content I would skip right past, as it seems silly to even watch something by someone telling you how to do the thing you have been doing automatically and without trouble, since birth. However Andrew Huberman is a content creator I respect, he is a professor of ophthalmology and a highly respected neurobiologist.

I discovered that mouth-breathing can lead to dental problems and changes the shape of the human face. No problem, I thought to myself, 'I'm not a mouth-breather, I don't need this.' But I watched on out of fascination. Huberman introduced a book called "Jaws The Story of A Hidden Epidemic" by Dr. Sandra Kahn and Paul R. Ehrlich. In their book the two highlight how in the Western world our jaws are getting smaller and our teeth more crooked and they attribute this to an excess of mouth-breathing.

During the podcast Huberman showed a few striking before and after pictures from the book, whereby someone had engaged in nose-breathing after being a mouth-breather and the changes in their faces were remarkable. The one that got me the most, was the graphic depicting two identical twins who had been adopted and brought up under different circumstances. The first was a mouth-breathing, soft-food-eating male of about thirty years of age, his chin was extremely recessed and his eyes droopy. Whereas his twin brother who had been brought up in a crunchy food eating household and breathed through his nose, looked very different from his twin, as you can see from the image below.

Becoming A Nasal Breather

So somewhat obviously, I started monitoring myself and to my utter surprise I discovered that I breathed via my mouth way more than I'd previously realised. I noticed I was often breathing through both nose and mouth and sometimes I was just plain old mouth-breathing!

This shocked and alarmed me, so I resolved to do something about it. I started doing the nasal breathing exercises suggested in the Huberman podcast and started to pay attention to how I was breathing. For the first few weeks the main thing I noticed, was I breathed through my mouth when walking, this was the hardest habit to adjust, because I felt out of breath when I switched to nasal breathing (I walk very fast). Eventually, I got more comfortable with it and now when I walk, my mouth is closed and I breathe through my nose.

The next hardest one was nasal breathing when exercising, this was very difficult and I still haven't mastered it. Although what I've found, is I can get just as big quality breath (maybe even better) through my nose as I can sucking in air via my mouth.

Nasal Results

So, has the shape of my face changed? Hmm, I'm not sure, I thought I would take a picture of myself every week for a year or so to see if I noticed the difference, but that just felt extremely narcissistic, plus looking at pictures of yourself all the time, just leads you to highlighting your own flaws, so I gave up.

I've compared recent pics of myself to ones then and my jaw does look a little squarer, though I notice little, if any change in my cheekbones and eyes.

Smell

There's a point in the Huberman podcast when he points out one of the benefits (if you can call it that) of nasal breathing, is that your sense of smell improves. He said that it might sound like a duh kind of statement, but it was worth mentioning.

I didn't really think about this till lately, because over the last few weeks I've noticed a marked improvement in my sense of smell, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it's great, last night for instance, just before I went to bed I was standing in my bathroom with the window open and a warm summer's breeze brought in the smell of my neighbour's roses. That is something I would not have noticed in my former life as a mouth-breather.

However, I'm noticing bad smells as well and they are really visceral and stomach churning. Another example from yesterday was when I was running for a bus to come back home, I ran straight through a cloud of the most pungent aroma, it made me gag and once on the bus, I really had to concentrate on not heaving and being sick right there all over the bus floor. Then when I got to my stop and came downstairs, I could smell the body odour of a fellow passenger and it was not good.

Sleep

This is another one that's hard to gauge, though I'm pretty sure my sleep quality has improved. Huberman suggested using medical tape to seal the mouth at night, in order to force yourself to breathe through the nose whilst asleep, but I found that simply making a conscious effort to close my mouth before falling asleep, seemed to work for me. I monitored myself when I woke and I always seemed to wake with my mouth closed.

Conclusion

All-in-all, I'm glad I discovered nasal breathing (still feels weird to say it) and I do think it has enhanced my quality of life. Although I will say it's not just the nasal breathing on its own, but the introduction of the various breathing exercises Huberman shared in his podcast. At the end of the day, I would definitely recommend this to anyone and would suggest that they monitor their own breathing habits. As for me, I'm just happy to be part of the nasal breathing community!

WHAT ABOUT YOU, ARE YOU A MOUTH OR NOSE BREATHER? OR PERHAPS YOUR BOTH? HAVE YOU EVER EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT THIS? WILL YOU MONITOR YOUR BREATHING FROM NOW ON?

AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!