Nasal vs Oral Breathing: Which is Better?

p m here let's tease out nasal breathing versus oral breathing during running I know you're down to know I suppose if if there was nothing in between it people will be talking about it more I just this is something I really haven't got my head around when we tease this out how come very few Sports Medicine scientists are talking about it how come the haven't really investigated it yes a few have and it's growing but why did it take them so long I don't have an answer to that but you know what that doesn't mean there's something absolutely vitally important especially for recreational athletes why should you breathe through your mouth when you can get so many benefits breathing through your nose so teasing it out when you breathe in and out through your nose you have your nasal Airway you have your nasal cavity you have your TR and of course your nose isn't there just for the fun of it your nose is performing so many different functions warming the air moistening the air filtering the air harnessing nasal nitric oxide better recruitment of the diaphragm nose breathing during physical exercise better oxygen transfer from the lungs to The Blood Better transfer from the blood to the working muscles increased carbon dioxide in the blood associated with nasal breathing allows hemoglobin to release oxygen more readily so the fraction of expired oxygen in other words when you do your run with your mouth closed your body utilizes oxygen better and blood flow throughout the body improves including the brain so here you have your nasal Airway nostrils are quite small this kind of speeds up the air and here you have turbinates and the air then is swirled here and it's staying in the nose for a considerable period of time so for that air to be warmed and that air to be moistened and that a to harness nasal nitric oxide and of course we have all of the communication going from the nose to the brain via the olfactory nerve so for example visual spatial awareness is improving with nasal breathing versus mouth breathing and visual spatial awareness is your ability to have your eyes on the target but at the same time to be scanning the environment so you can think of the application of this in any sport especially you say for example team sports so now you're taking this warm moist air down your throat and trachea and then we have our two main branches which are our broni and then these further subdivide into about 23 branches of Airways come bronchioles and from Branch 16 to 23 is for gas exchange takes place and you can imagine these small little air socks in the lungs and they're called alvioli and it comes from the Greek word it means bunch of grapes so that kind of makes sense so really when we breed we want to be bringing that air in the best condition possible for that hair to come be into the lungs now of course when you breathe through your nose it's a little bit more difficult because there's a there's resistance you're breathing your nose when you take into consideration your two nostrils is a smaller hole than your mouth your mouth is pretty big a lot of air can come in and out and that's why people mou breed during physical exercise why it's easier but if you breathe through your nose what's nose breathing doing in terms of you're breathing overall well you know yourself if you want to train any muscle you need to work that muscle harder what about your di from breathing muscle that's located at the base of the ribs so this is your main breathing muscle and you have the intracostal muscles here we need to train this muscle as well so by breathing through the nose you're adding an extra load onto the diaphragm to help strengthen the diaphragm and with nasal breathing you've got a better recruitment of the diaphragm and the importance of diaphragm breathing is that it provides stabilization for the spine and there's a relationship between functional breathing and functional movement if you can move functionally you're less prone to injury and bearing in mind that a study in the Journal of strength and conditioning research published in 2022 looking at 1,933 athletes of different ages different sports and ra ranging from recreational right up to professional 90% of them had abnormal or dysfunctional breathing from a biomechanical point of view in other words these individuals are breathing too high and they have reduced recruitment of the diaphragm so there's a problem then with movement because when we think of the core the core isn't just you know about training the ABS we have to think about the die from the pelvic floor we have to think about the ABS and we have to think about the spinal muscles so anyway it's not going to be a great drawing this but I hope you get the gist of it so we have our two main branches of Airways they're subdividing down into 23 different branches when you're breathing through your nose the carbon dioxide that's coming back from the tissues back to the heart and back to the lungs the carbon dioxide isn't able to leave the body quickly enough through the nose because your breathing is less and as a result carbon dioxide is going to increase in your lungs and because carbon dioxide increases in your lungs it's going to increase in the blood leaving the lungs now what's the benefit of that so carbon dioxide is increasing in the blood leaving the lungs because you're breathing in a nitren no carbon dioxide is your main driver to breed so this is generating The Sensation that you're not getting enough air it's not because oxygen is dropping you have so much oxygen when you feel an increased sensation of air hunger that's going to be at least partly driven by the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the blood and your brain is reacting to the Increase of CO2 the droped blood B and sending an increased signaling to braed however if we expose our body to this increased carbon dioxide we train our body to be able to tolerate a higher partial pressure of CO2 and now our breathing becomes lighter so if you do your training with your mouth closed even when you go to competition and you have to breathe through an open mouth you'll still get benefits and it's not that you know for a recreational athlete think about nasal breathing during running you know staying at a pace at which you can comfortably breathe in and out of your nose I'm not talking about sprinting with your mouth closed if you're sprinting with your mou closed you will only do it for a short period of time but it is possible but here's the thing about nose breathing during running the more you do it your body adapts to a higher tolerance of carbon dioxide your air hunger is reducing your breathing is becoming lighter your ventilation is reducing and now when you do physical exercise you don't need just quite as much air you're becoming more efficient you can do more with less and the other aspect in terms of doing more at less is that you will have a stronger diaphragm if you have a stronger diaphragm because of the workload imposed by nasal breathing you're going to have a reduced sensation of breathlessness during physical exercise so when you think about your physical training you're training your body but we also need to train the breath because it's the sensation breathlessness that will very often dictate the intensity and duration of our physical movement and the other aspect to this is what happens if the diaphrag gets tired well if the diaphragm gets tired blood is stolen from the legs to feed the diaphrag and the legs give out so we really do need to think about breathing with nasal breathing versus mouth breathing yes in the short term the air hunger is stronger but the air hunger is stronger because of the increased CO2 but as I said the body will adopt to that how long will the body adopt to the increased 2 you'd want to be giving it about 6 to 8 weeks how would you know that your body is adapting to it well you will know by your B score body oxygen level test so this is when you breathe in and out and hold your breath and you hold your breath for a period of time until you feel the first definite desire to breathe and when you resume breathing your breathing should be normal every time your bow score is increasing by 5 Seconds your ability to do physical exercise with your mou closed is improving so there's three factors that are going to influence your ability to do your physical exercise with the mou closed number one is your Bol score very very important because it's your breathing in your normal every day that's going to influence your breathing during your physical exercise if you have poor breathing in your normal everyday life which of course your breathing is influenced by stress levels and Trauma and genetics and Asthma and you know so many factors that are feeding into our breathing but if our breathing is poor in our everyday life our breathing isn't going to suddenly correct itself when we do physical exercise so when you think about your breathing during Sports you have to think about your breathing outside of your physical exercise how do you breathe during the day how do you breathe when you get stressed how do you breathe when you sleep these are all the factors that influence your coping ability to do physical exercise whether it's with mouth open or mouth closed but of course we're focusing on mou closed here because the benefits totally out of way in terms of it's so Superior nasal breathing versus mouth breathing during physical exercise and yes I know people aren't talking about it because people often think I can't breathe through my nose during physical exercise let's try it and the more you breathe through your nose during physical exercise you need less air the respiratory rate is reducing you're becoming so much more efficient your fraction of expired oxygen is less your carbon dioxide tolerance is increased your oxygen delivery to the working muscles is improved and your lack at post physical exercise is reduced so you've got a faster recovery postphysical exercise and many people are doing physical exercise to help with their mental health is there a difference if you do your physical exercise with your mouth open versus mouth closed yes no comparison think of two main aspects that we can influence mental health by breathing through our nose during physical exercise our diaphragm is linked to our emotions the Greeks knew this the brain is connected to the the diaphram via the frenic nerve and then you think about schizophrenia schizophrenic so there's definitely a connection between the diaphram and the mind the diaphram and the brain so if you're breathing through your nose you tend to have a greater recruitment of the diaphragm and that will also help to stimulate the Vagas nerve that has a caling effect it is true the instruction to take a deep breath but the interpretation of that how is it interpreted many people they will often take a deep breath by that's not a deep breath that's a big breath and it's a chest breath that's a shallow breath and that will only feed into a stress response even though it feels initially it feels yes it feels comfortable because you've just all alleviated a sensation of air hunger but why do you have the air hunger in the first place so when you get used to breathing in and out of your nose with better recruitment of the diaphragm it is a calming effect on the mind the next aspect is when you do physical size which are my closed carbon dioxide in the blood is going to increase by about we'll say about 3 mm of mercury so CO2 the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the blood that's leaving the lungs increases by about 3 mm of mercury every 1 millimeter Increase of CO2 will improve blood flow to the brain by about 3 to 4% so if you do your physical exercise with your M closed your blood flow to the brain is increasing by between 9 to 12% now imagine that imagine the brain is this organ that you know it's 2% of our body weight but guess what our brain consumes 20% of our oxygen 20% can you influence Dash or if I was to say it this way what happens with somebody with poor breathing just as I had poor breathing for 20 plus years mouth open fast breathing shallow breathing hard breathing lower CO2 always feeling that you're not getting enough air cold hands and cold feet and brain fog and poor concentration and agitation of the mind so physiologically if we can improve blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain we can have a calming effect in the mind and we're less likely to have this agitation in terms of our thinking and our thoughts going all over the place so it's not just about focused attention on the breath it's actually influence our influencing our physiology for our body to tell the brain that we are safe and also improving blood flow and oxygen delivery the benefits that you are getting are so much better with nose breathing versus mouth breathing so just bringing this to a close in terms of the importance of nose breathing during physical exercise I've only spoken about a few of the different benefits here yes when you do first switch from mouth to nose breathing the air hunger is stronger be patient you know your ability to do physical exercise with your my cloes you will be certainly able to do Zone one and Zone Zone 2 training you know you're doing light and even if you train it and your body adapts to it which will happen over time you can actually do zone three training with your M closed now that's also going to be influenced by your nostril size your nasal Airway size and that's going to be my next video so be patient with it and realize that your mouth simply is not for breathing your nose does everything it's there in the body for a reason and it's not just there for you to be breathing in and out through your nose during rest do you think nature would have designed an organ and gave so much space in the skull with the intention that this organ called the nose and the nasal Airway this is only to be used during rest and forget about it during sleep breathe through your mouth and forget about it during physical exercise breathe through your mouth and of course that wasn't the intention of nature because there was so much you know space and attention and functions the nose is at least 30 functions and your mouth when it comes to breathing has I can think of only one function let air straight down your throat so I hope that we have teased it out a little bit but I'm going to have a few more videos and we're going to break it down a little bit more nice

Channel: Oxygen Advantage®

Views: 2,338

Keywords: nasal breathing, oral breathing, patrick mckeown, respiratory system

Id: u3rfItmULUw

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 30 2024