Why Being a "Mouth-Breather" Is Bad For You Feat. James Nestor

The vast majority of us breathe dysfunctionally. Just breathing through your mouth inhibits your ability to remember things, to make proper decisions, to control your emotions and your attitude. Just breathing through your mouth. You can adopt simple breathing practices and weave them into your daily life. Well, now that everyone's still standing, right, Almost. Let's all stand for a moment as they set up things. We're just going to take three, three breaths all together. Okay. The way these are gonna go. So you're gonna take an inhale. You're gonna take another inhale on top of that. You're gonna take another inhale on top of that. And then you're just gonna let it all out. You don't push it out. Don't get too aggro. You just let it fall out. Okay. Very easy. So we'll just take an inhale and pause and another inhale and pause. And then another inhale and let it out. Let's do that again. Inhale and pause. Another inhale and pause. Another inhale and let it out one more time. Inhale, pause, inhale, Pause and inhale and let it out. Thank you very much. You may be seated.

Thank you for being here. And here's. So some of you may remember when I did an interview with James during the pandemic on Zoom, and everyone loved that. It was awesome. And when I read this book, I was telling people, this is not just an amazing book, it's one of the best books on health I've ever read in my life. And I've read at least 150 books just on health. And this book is phenomenal. The amount of research is on. And then once I got to know you, I also really admired your ethics because this book became a massive bestseller. You've been on every podcast. Joe Rogan. Did Joe Rogan try to get you? Anna Lemki was saying that she was. Joe was trying to give her a pill and stuff. But did he try?

He offered me no pills.

Really?

No. No.

Were you feeling left out from that at all?

A little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Next time, if you were to get in a physical fight with Joe Rogan, do you think he could take him?

I don't think so.

Okay, so where do we start? So what has not been said about you and the introduction of what you're currently up to that would be useful for everyone to hear before I ask you some questions and stuff? Like, what's some of the stuff you've been working on right now?

I've basically been working on the concept that a Lot of people view human health and the way to better our health as a chemical process. So almost all of medicine is based on chemicals. But there was a quote from Tesla from 100 years ago said, if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. I think the same thing can be applied to human health. And so that's something I've been exploring pretty deeply the last couple years.

Gotcha. What do you think of how I display this? This is actually pretty clever.

I didn't even notice that. But now that you've brought it up, I think it's beautiful.

It's a good prop. Okay. No, that's good. That's good. All right, so let me launch into some questions that I definitely want to make sure we cover. And then we can go off script also, too. So in what ways do you think understanding and practicing the art of breathing can enhance entrepreneurial performance and decision making?

So one thing that I learned early on is that the vast majority of us breathe dysfunctionally. And CEOs and people who are under a lot of stress constantly are some of the worst breathers I've ever seen. So they may be healthy in many other regards, but their breathing is bad news. And we can go through a bit of this right now. Do you guys want to do some breathing assessments? Is this too early? Okay, let's do it so you don't have to stand. I'll just demonstrate this. First and foremost. I have not seen a very high powered billionaire CEO butt kicking corporate go getter who has not breathed in this paradoxical way. And what I mean by that is the way you're supposed to be breathing is when you inhale, your stomach is supposed to be lightly expanding outward when you're inhaling. I can almost guarantee that every single person here, when you're inhaling, it goes in. So that's called paradoxical breathing. And people do this because they are constantly feeling they're under threat or they are stressed out. So what you should be doing instead is relaxing the stomach. I know hot abs are important at the beach, the pool, whatever, but when you're breathing, the stomach should be relaxed. So if you guys would like to stand right now, we'll go through a couple tricks here that I learned. This is going to get a little weird. Just a heads up, but that's how it is. So you can take your fingers and tap against your stomach until you feel your stomach relaxed. Don't worry about your abs right now or your muscles. Okay? Now when you take an Inhale. You can place your hand on your stomach. I want you to feel your stomach coming outward. You can exaggerate it. Okay, take a breath in very deep. You should feel your stomach expanding. Should not be contracting. Okay. That's bad news. Causes a bunch of problems. Does everyone feel that, that expansion in the stomach? Okay, then take your other hand, place it up on your chest. You're gonna move that breath from your stomach up into your chest in one fluid movement. So you breathe in, then you expand your chest. You're not putting your shoulders up. You're feeling your chest expanding. You can try that again. Breathing in deep. Belly to the chest, and you let it out one more time to the belly, to the chest, and you let it out. The final thing you can do. I can see a lot of people sort of stressing out right now. Take your hands. It's okay. You've all had your coffee. Place them around your neck. This is not some strangulation deal. You're going to do that same move to the belly and to the chest. But your neck should feel completely soft and supple the whole time. Your shoulders should not be moving up and down so you can take a big breath into the belly, to the chest and let it out. Your neck should feel very soft the whole time. Again to the belly, to the chest and let it out one more time. Belly, chest, and let it out. So that is a proper biomechanical breath. You don't have to breathe this exaggerated all the time, but this is how your breath should be functioning. Should start down low, fill up. Your chest should feel very light and supple and soft in the neck area. So start with that proper biomechanics. We'll get into some trickier stuff in a bit.

So that's great. Thank you. So when you say that we all, not all, but most people breathe dysfunctionally, what caused this?

So there are a number of reasons why humans are the worst breathers in the animal kingdom, one of which is our faces have changed. I got a lot of pushback when I wrote about this in the book. So around 300, 400 years ago, before the advent of industrialized food, before that had taken over the world, we all had these very prognathic, forward growing faces, wide jaws, huge sinus cavities that allowed us to breathe a lot better. We had wider airways. As we adopted industrialized foods, our mouths shrank. Okay. And that's why our teeth are crooked. Okay. Doesn't have to do with genetics. Our mouths are so small that teeth have nowhere Else to grow. So they grow in crooked. With a smaller mouth, you have a smaller airway. So some of this is this cranial, functional cranial facial issues that we have suffered from the last few hundred years. Add in crappy air pollution, pollens and more. Add in clothes that are way too tight, that even if you wanted to breathe in that proper biomechanical breath, you could not. You have a perfect storm for respiratory disaster, which. Which is why the vast majority of us are suffering from some sort of chronic respiratory issue.

So one of the first changes I made once I read Breath was I started taping my mouth and I have a deviated septum and who knows how that started. I used to be a bad cocaine addict, so I used to snort crystal meth. I used to. I mean, I did a lot of damage to myself in the membranes and stuff, but I. So I was always just breathing out of my mouth. And until I read your book, I thought waking up with a dry mouth was like a normal thing. And I would, you know, I would never go to sleep without a glass of water next to my bed because I'm constantly, you know, dry mouth. And you have helped so many people that, you know, have spent a fortune on sleep stuff just by literally teaching them how to breathe. And it's also made me aware of what a racket so much of the sleeping industry is the stuff that is sold. And so speak to that because you talk about our faces have changed and stuff. And it took me the first couple of weeks because I wasn't used to it. It was really hard. I mean, I was like, I don't know if this works. But now I little piece of tape, you know, it just has changed my energy level, everything. And people that have. That's what people have said that have read your book, that do what you suggest in the book. It's not just the breathing, it's how you. It's what you do. It's these sorts. So speak to that if you could.

So about 60 to 65% of the population breathes with an open mouth when we're sleeping. And I was certainly part of that population, just like you. I thought it was completely normal to. Who have to go to sleep with a huge glass of water every single night, wake up with a pasty mouth, wake up pretty tired. I didn't know the difference. And I learned early on, about three or four years ago at Stanford that a respiratory therapist there was prescribing tape for your mouth to wear at night. And it seemed completely insane to me. And so I looked it up online, saw if there was any research. There really wasn't. A lot of people were saying this was extremely dangerous, don't do it. I did it anyway. It completely transformed my sleep. I think it bolstered my health significantly. I record my sleep with various devices. It proved that. And this is the one thing in the book, I spent like two paragraphs talking about sleep tape. This is one thing I hear more about than anything else. People just want to talk about sleep tape because for so long, so many people were saying that this was extremely dangerous. It didn't work. There was no science. Forget about it. Enough people have done it and had the same exact reaction that you and I have had that the press is starting to change. There was a Wall Street Journal article, made it to the front page talking about sleep tape about six months ago. And the New York Times followed that about five months ago with an article about sleep tape that was really balanced. So that wasn't happening a few years ago. And I think it's only because so many people have had their sleep and their health trans formed by this thing that is free that for some reason none of us have ever heard about before.

Oh yeah, like sleep apnea machine, like all kinds of stuff. Now, there are certain sleep conditions where. So we're not giving medical advice here. The fact is, though, much advice out there is just shit. So it's good to know these things. Read his book, of course, and I got everyone a copy. So you must read it and apply it. So your book explores groundbreaking ideas and breathing science. What inspired you to delve into this specific area and how did you approach the research?

Yeah, so I was getting really sick over and over again with bronchitis, with mild pneumonia. I thought I was healthy otherwise. I was eating the right food. I was sleeping eight hours a night working out all the stuff you're supposed to be doing. But I kept having respiratory issues. I would go to my doctor and I'd be prescribed like a Z pack or whatever, which would work for a time, and then the problems would come back even worse. And this happened for years and years. And it wasn't until a doctor friend of mine mentioned that my breathing seemed off to her. And I had never thought about my breathing before, my whole life. So I went, took a breathwork class, blew my mind, adjusted my breathing. And this isn't proof of anything, just to be clear. And I don't really write about it in the book because I didn't want to make people think that what happened to Me was going to happen to them. I have not had one respiratory issue since then. There isn't a control version of me who didn't do breath work that we can compare it to. But my own personal experience, I haven't had any of those issues. And it kind of pissed me off that my doctor going back there year in and. And you're out starting to prescribe me bronchodilators, saying that this is just a fact of growing old to having your breathing get so bad, have respiratory, chronic respiratory issues. And I thought, you know, you could have mentioned in the three seconds that I'm there seeing you for the fifth time this year that maybe my breathing was off and maybe you should do something about it. So that interested me. I thought maybe if I was able to get this out to more people, other people would have the same reaction. But I didn't do anything with that idea for years and years and years. It just sort of brewed in the back of my head until I had enough scientific evidence to want to write a book about it. And that's what happened.

Yeah. Awesome. So what are some simple dietary changes entrepreneurs can adopt to improve their breathing and overall health?

Diet has gotten so complicated now. I don't know if I'm the best person to ask that, but, you know, there's. There's keto, there's paleo, there's vegan. From my understanding, I think most people need to find something that works for them. Specifically, I'm not sure that there's a blanket prescription for diet and there are enough studies you can do that you can actually see what foods you respond to. I think stripping out as much processed food as possible is the way to go. That's pretty well proven. And the rest of that is more or less open to interpretation. I know people that are on completely different sides of the spectrum. They all seem healthy, doing their own, their own program. And the thing that they all share in common is they don't eat crappy food. So start with that.

Yeah. Awesome. So share a bit about your journey from being a copywriter to now a pretty acclaimed authority. How did these diverse experiences shape your perspective in writing?

Yeah, at one time I had a real professional job, and that was a long time ago. I wrote copy, I wrote advertisements, I wrote for hotel ads and websites and that whole sort of thing. It was great, right? It was a good living. I live in San Francisco, which is really expensive, so it's important to have that. And I wrote articles on the side just because I was interested in different Very strange subjects. And doing that allowed me to pursue only the things I wanted to write about. And over several years of doing that at night and on weekends, spending all my free time writing stories for magazines, I eventually got enough interest from the magazine world to cut the cord. And that was maybe 15, 16 years ago. Don't ever do that, you guys. It's a terrible idea. It was very difficult for about four or five years. Extremely precarious way of making a living being a freelance writer.

Well, name the titles of your books, starting with your first one.

Oh. A title that was not chosen by me, by my editor, which we'll ignore. But the second one was. Was Deep. And this was about free diving. So right at the time that I was learning about all these wondrous things that breathing could do, I was sent on an assignment to write about people who could hold their breath for seven, eight, nine minutes at a time and dive to depths of 300ft, 350ft on a single breath of air. And I thought, we don't know anything about the potential of breathing. And so that book, and studying with those free divers and learning how to free dive myself, really opened the gates to looking at respiration in a different way.

Yeah. When would you have another book coming out?

I am under contract right now, but I have a couple of years to get it done, which is good.

Yeah. You know, because you. You are. I mean, like, when you. How many of you have read Breath. Okay. I mean, it is a fantastic book. You are such a good writer and you do a lot of. I mean, you really do your homework and you do a lot of research and. Yeah. So I'm glad there's people like you because many people here wouldn't have the patience to do the level of stuff that you put into your research. So, speaking of, you once conducted a personal experiment by blocking your nasal breathing. So it's pretty funny you write about it, but we've also talked about that before. So how did this experience change things for you? So kind of briefly describe that and share with what you found out.

Well, once I learned of all the damage that mouth breathing can cause, and this was five, six years ago, did you know that the way in which your face will be developing is determined in large part by the way in which you are breathing when you're younger. So when you see kids with this very retrognathic, backwards growing face that is likely significantly influenced by the way in which they were breathing, usually their mouth breathers. This is so common that researchers have a name for it. They call it adenoid face. So if you have kids, especially if those kids are young right now, I would highly suggest converting them to be nasal breathers. Kids don't care about being healthy, right? But they care about how they look. And so you can show them different pictures of what will happen to their faces if they don't shut their mouths. And that is spoken a lot at a lot of schools. And they do not care about nitric oxide or more oxygen or any of that. But you show them pictures of how it's going to affect how attractive they are later on in their life, and they really pay attention. So knowing all of that, knowing from dentists and the science goes back actually about 120 years, that the number one cause of cavities, according to many dentists, is, is not sugar. It is breathing through your mouth, which changes the ph in your mouth and makes it for a breeding ground for cavities, another periodontal disease. So knowing this, I thought it would be interesting to do a study in which we took 100 people and made them mouth breathers for 10 days and then converted them to nasal breathers and did data dumps the whole time, blood work, you name it across the board, pulmonary function tests. And I presented this to a researcher at Stanford, the head of rhinology research there. I said, we should do a big study like this needs to happen. You're at Stanford, you have the means to do this. And he didn't have the means to do it. There was no funding for studies like this. So he allowed me to do an experiment with two people that was the maximum amount. 10 days mouth breathing, then 10 days nasal breathing and comparing data sets across the board. And we knew it wasn't going to be fun. We didn't know it was going to be this miserable. And I was absolutely astounded to see the difference that happens to your body, particularly sleep quality snoring and sleep apnea. To think that there are so many millions of people out there who don't know why they're snoring, who don't know why they have sleep apnea, who are struggling to breathe every night and not realizing that some of that at least, is tied to the pathway through which you inhale and exhale.

So what was the most miserable part about it? Like day 10, what was going on?

The whole thing was awful. What you realize is that so much of your energy is lost, you constantly feel spent, and your ability to focus is significantly decreased as well. And there's science to show this, just breathing through your Mouth inhibits your ability to, to remember things, to make proper decisions, to control your emotions and your attitude. Just breathing through your mouth. And it's one thing to read those studies, it's another thing to experience this in full force all day long. And it may be sad because you think about the number of kids who have chronic obstruction, number of adults during allergy season who are just going through their days breathing in and out of their mouths because their noses are so plugged, they have headaches, they can't focus, they have sleep problems. No one's talking about anything tied to nasal breathing. So they do all this other stuff. None of that other stuff helps. And so much of it is tied to that basic biological need to breathe in and out of your nose.

Yeah, yeah. I had someone in recovery make a comment that, that had a different meaning to me when this person was talking about breathing, saying that a lot of recovery just happens between here and here. And I'm like, what do you mean? It's your breathing. And so if you watch someone that is depressed or stressed out or lonely, they usually have very short breath, they're very crunched over. There's usually a lot of physical pain attached to it. And so it's interesting. So, you know, I'll get in stressed moments and one of the first things that Cherie will say to me is like, just breathe. You know, she'll put her hand on my back and say, you know, breathe. This is a reminder because when you're in stress moments, you've. It's like shortened breathing. And. Yeah, so there is a lot of things that can be solved with what we're talking about here.

So on that, on that same note, so if panic and anxiety and stress are exacerbated by the short chest breathing, you can reverse those patterns by learning how to breathe the way that I just showed you. Slowly, deeply, in and out through the nose. And from the psychologists and psychiatrists that I've talked to, they have said that this is the number one most effective thing for anxiety, especially acute anxiety or panic. You're really stressed out. Some, you know, one of your co workers really made you angry, someone cut you off in traffic. Whatever it is, that's an opportunity to take control of your breathing. And this isn't new age wishy washy stuff. This has been scientifically documented for decades, over and over, that when your breathing changes, it's going to affect your ability to regulate your emotions, your ability to think and more. So a trick that they showed me was that when you feel this Stress come up. You can do that three compartment breath that I just showed you. You don't have to stand up to do that. You take these slow breaths, just sitting down into the belly, into the chest, into the neck, and you let it out. And you do that again in the belly, loose belly, chest, neck, and you let it out and you do that about three to five times. And when you come back to breathing, you can breathe in a very slow and nourishing pattern, about five to six seconds in, five to six seconds out. It's called coherent breathing. There are several studies showing how effective this is for lowering blood pressure, lowering heart rate, allowing more oxygen to get up into your brain and more. So three compartment breathing followed by that. Coherent breathing is a secret device that you can use anywhere. No one will even notice that you are doing it. I think you can really see the difference if you don't believe yourself. If you don't believe me, look at your own blood pressure, look at your heart rate variability, look at your stress levels after doing this. And this is a good thing to use throughout the day. You don't have to just wait until you're really stressed. You can prevent stress by adopting healthier breathing habits.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Awesome. Awesome. Is there any other best breathing techniques or anything that you think would be useful to mention? Because you write about quite a bit.

In the book, I think for anxiety, for very strong anxiety, a trick I Learned from Patrick McKeown, who's been studying this stuff for 25 years, is a lot of people would say in the past, get a paper bag and breathe in and out of a paper bag. That can work for anxiety. But sometimes people are having heart attacks and people have given them paper bags, then it's really bad news. So people don't say to do that anymore. What you should be doing is taking your hands, placing them over your face, and you breathe in to a count of about three, and you breathe out to a count of about three, keeping all your fingers very closed. In for three, out for three. Make that breath smaller. In for three, out for 3. Make it even smaller. In for three, out for three. One more time. The smallest breath. In for three. Out for three. You can place your hands on your side and when you go back to breathing, continue breathing these very, excuse me, very small, short breaths. You do that for about 10 to 20 seconds. And if you're still stressed out, you can place your hands back over your face. And that tends to work really well for panic and acute anxiety attacks.

You introduced me to Patrick, so thank you for that. Awesome, dude. He's been teaching this for years. He's written many books and stuff. He actually teaches courses on all kinds of stuff. Sleep, asthma. Do you have a course? Have you ever got into that space? And if not, why? Because, I mean, you're totally positioned for it.

I don't. I'm a journalist. I'm going to maintain my journalistic objectivity. I want to be able to look at this stuff and be very critical of it. I was very critical of Patrick and what he was saying until I really looked at the, the work that he was doing. Another guy who had severe asthma, anxiety, sleep apnea for years on a fistful of different drugs, none of which did anything for him. He discovered a Buteyko breathing method, which is basically a lot of the stuff you've been doing here. All of those things are gone. And he was on a completely different track in his life. He stopped what he was doing and said, I need to get this out to the world. So he is a master teacher. I can't recommend his courses enough and I'm able in my position to take things from him, take things from other people and try to synthesize it into something that works for me. And I always want to credit so much of what I've learned to the people who taught me it. And he's one of them.

Absolutely. And you're friends with Wim Hof. And so Wim is obviously. What I learned from Patrick though is most people are over breathers. So when you go into a yoga class and they're like, take a deep breath and that oftentimes is not very good advice, you know, so it's how they do it. So can you maybe. Because I think it's well intentioned, but a lot of people that become these supposed breath gurus, they really don't. However they were taught is however they were taught.

Sure. So there's two different things going on here. When you're breathing normally, most of us are breathing way too much. A lot of you may be thinking, well, I'm breathing more, more oxygen.

But.

But the opposite thing is happening. When you're over breathing, you're causing this Vasoconstriction, you need more carbon dioxide to open up those blood vessels to bring more oxygen throughout your body. So especially when you're working out, I can count on one hand the number of people I've seen jogging who are breathing in and out of their noses. The vast majority of people, the same thing at a gym, constantly breathing in and out of the mouth. This is doing you zero favors, okay? For your workout, for your recovery, for fat loss and more. So many of us can benefit from breathing less. When we breathe less, we're actually breathing more in line with our metabolic needs. So these tricks I just showed you, you can try those out when you're jogging. When you're walking should be inhaling through the nose and out through the nose. A trick that I use when I'm walking, that I learned from several respiratory therapists is inhale to four steps, exhale for six steps. Especially if you're stressed out, you're in an airport, you're jet lagged, you're gonna miss your flight. Inhale for four steps, exhale for six. This sends your body messages that you are safe, that you can relax. And this will help open up those blood vessels and allow you to control your emotions and also to get more oxygen throughout your body.

So anything else for athletic performance that would be beneficial because there's a lot of them is a heavy emphasis on them.

There's a lot of them. A lot of people give up on nasal breathing when they're working out because they say, there's no way I'm getting enough oxygen. If you wear a pulse oximeter, I think you're going to find otherwise. This takes a really long time, which is why the vast majority of people give up. They give up after a couple of days or even after a couple of weeks, but it can take weeks to months to convert to nasal breathing. If you question this, all you have to do is look at the top runners in the world. Look at Kimpoji running a two hour marathon. Look at how he's breathing. I do this in my presentations. He's breathing in and out through his nose at the very end of the marathon, shoulders down, extremely relaxed. If he can run at 13 miles per hour for two hours, breathing in and out of his nose, you can run around the block doing the same thing.

Awesome. How many of you have sleep problems? Anything else you recommend that we haven't discussed related to sleep?

Yeah. So CPAPs work? CPAPs are absolute lifesavers if you have very severe sleep apnea, but they aren't curing anything. And I've seen a few studies that have said they can actually make your sleep apnea worse. So what a few different companies are doing now is they're going to the root problem. What's the root problem? It's almost always tied to the size of your mouth. Okay. If your mouth is too small, you choke when you are breathing. It also has to do with the neck size. So if you are overweight, that impacts it, that constricts this, but also if there are too many muscles around here. A lot of weightlifters have sleep apnea. So when you're working out, you should also be thinking about your airway, the pathway through which you're getting most of your energy. And you can work out your thought throat and your tongue with these exercises called myofunctional exercises. They have been shown in a few studies to significantly reduce snoring and sleep apnea. These are exercises for your mouth, for your airway. As we grow older, all of these areas, just like every other part of our body, if we're not working them out, are going to grow flabby. Which is why sleep apnea is so much more pronounced in older populations. Because their airways grow flabby, you can make them fit just like any other part of your body by doing these exercises.

Yeah. So you discuss how human evolution has affected our breathing. What lessons that you haven't discussed already can entrepreneurs take from this historical perspective to improve their health and productivity today? Because you went into some very fascinating stuff, from, you know, scoliosis to all kinds of interesting things in the book. That's what I found super fascinating is all these things that you discovered.

I think the biggest message is this does not need to be complicated. We've made diet so complicated. Now, this amount of grams of carbs, this amount of grams of fat, this amount of grams of protein, I need this supplement with this supplement. But breathing doesn't have to be that way. If you ever need a guide, just look to animals, if you in the wild and look at how they're breathing. Look at a cheetah running at 60 miles per hour, breathing in and out through the nose, deep into the belly. Look at a healthy infant breathing. And that's your guide. So I know people don't need more things to think about, more things to worry about. I wouldn't put breathing in that department. You can adopt simple breathing practices and weave them into your day daily life so you don't even notice you're doing them after a while. And that's where the most significant benefits are going to be had. Breathwork's this big thing now. How many people have done breathwork, like vigorous breathwork stuff? Okay, good. This is where I kind of disagree with Patrick McEwen, by the way. He said there's no reason anyone should purposely be hyperventilating. I think he's wrong. I think breathwork is awesome. I think Wim Hof method is great. I think creas are fantastic. What these do is they allow you to take a focused time in your day to purposely stress yourself out. You may be saying, why do I want to stress myself out? You want to be doing that for this hormetic stress, this hormesis, where you can focus all the stress into a 20 or 30 minute session, get it all out, and you can start with a clean slate and. And you can be de stressed afterwards. So there are so many studies showing the benefits of doing these vigorous breathwork techniques. I don't care which one you do. You don't have to do them every day. But I found them really, really powerful. They've been around for thousands of years. And it's great to see that so many of these have become pretty popular nowadays with so many people.

Yeah, that's good. You know, one thing, after I had read your book, I did a test with hiking a mountain that is I get very winded. And I was very conscious about breathing through my nose while I was doing it. And it was infinitely easier. And I just realized how much in my life I have just spent so much energy because I just simply didn't even know how to breathe.

I never learned how well, so many problems people have with altitude sickness is caused by the pace and the depth at which you're breathing. People don't realize they keep breathing too much, thinking they're not getting enough oxygen. And what they're doing is creating a deficit of oxygen in their bodies, and it creates this vicious cycle. There are some programs in which you train yourself to breathe way less before you go to altitude, and you will have significantly fewer symptoms of altitude sickness just by training yourself.

Okay, so here's what I'd like to do at the time we have left. So you put out really great social content. You're constantly giving people tips and suggestions. I highly recommend everybody that if you're on Instagram, if you're wherever, just follow James. How do people. What do you reckon? What have we not discussed? What didn't I ask you? That would be useful for leaving the audience with here?

I think the basic prescription that anyone can do that is very simple, is make sure you're breathing properly, that biomechanical breath. Don't overdo it. I know you're all over doers, right? You don't have to always approach this as though you're kicking your breath's ass. Sometimes your breath can be very passive. Right. And nourishing. The healthiest people breathing are the ones you can't even tell they're breathing. Right. They're so quiet. Look at a monk breathing. So make sure it's biomechanical, make sure it's nasal. So at night, if you are a mouth breather, you can try the tape. It's not great for everybody. You can try a different kind of tape that goes around the mouth, which is a little easier. Those are good training wheels for that. But you have to be a nasal breather at night. I'm more convinced than ever you'll never really be healthy if you're a mouth breather at night. So biomechanical breaths, nasal breathing. I would suggest spending five minutes three times a day. That's a big ask. But you can be doing whatever else you're doing in your daily life to focus on those coherent breaths. I'll share an audio track with everybody for free, for everyone. You can have this audio track on your phone, you can have it on your computer, set an alarm on your calendar and this track comes on. And you can be answering emails or doing whatever and it allows you to focus on your breath. Inhale to rate of about five to six out to a rate of about five to six over and over for about five minutes. That has been shown to significantly decrease stress. So you can try that out and that's it. You start there and then you can build upon that foundation. So many people jump from being extremely dysfunctional breathers to want to go to the most intense three hour holotropic breathwork practice they've ever done. I would not do that because you're not going to get half of the benefits unless you first know how to breathe normally, you know how to breathe properly. I think that's even more. It's not as sexy, but it's way more important.

Yeah. I gotta ask you this because it just came to my mind. Eating, when you are eating and there's a lot of people here, most of their meals are with other people and they're talking the whole time and they're woofing down food. And we've got a bunch of driven entrepreneurs. Many type a quick, you know, and they tend to have a different sort of energy. Like, Tommy could probably eat a DeLorean. He could probably eat an entire DeLorean and chew it into fine metal pieces. But like Iron man or some shit. I don't know what I'm even talking about right now. But anyway, so when you, how do you, what do you suggest for breathing while eating? Do you have this change the way you chew or anything along these lines with what you've discovered?

Well, chew real food. There's a reason why our mouths have grown so small and why our teeth are crooked and our airways are small. It's because industrialized food is all soft. So start with that. And if you can't do that, do some of those myofunctional exercises. I have them for free on the site. You can look them up on YouTube.

What's the site?

Mr. James Nestor dot com. Some jerk took James Nestor. So I have to put a little Mr. In front of it.

Mr.James Nestor.com.

There'S that. And another reason why getting together with people is so exhilarating but also so exhausting is you're talking the whole time. And what happens when you're talking the whole time, you are breathing in and out of your mouth. So when you can, when it's time to take a pause, breathe in and out of your nose and extend the exhale and it'll make a big difference to your energy levels and your ability to keep going.

Other than breathing, is there any other practice or things that you do that you have found? Do you meditate? Do you. I mean, what are some of the things that you also do that has enhanced just your physicality?

Yeah, people think like, since I wrote this book, I'm just sitting around all day breathing, trying these different Start the morning with Kundalini. Then I'm going to work into a Kriya and a Pluto meth. I don't. I live a completely stressful life just like everyone else here. So the key is to incorporate these things into your daily life. I do do some practices is when I have time to do it again. A huge fan of breathwork. When I'm able to do it, I always feel better. I've never regretted that one time. And beyond that, I just try to follow what everyone else here is doing. Try to sleep right, try to eat proper food. And part of that is to make sure your breathing, first and foremost, in my opinion, is locked in. Then you can build upon that and work outward.

Okay, and what's one thing about you that you that most people would Never know about you. It could be anything. And I'm not trying to pry for, like, weird stuff that you've never shared before, but what's something that you have some sort of interest in or something that you. Some skill, talent, or whatever discovery that you find fascinating?

Oh, I don't know. I'm an introvert pretty much. Which is why this has been an interesting experience the last couple of years doing stuff like this, because I've never done it in my life and I can't wait to go back to writing books. I'm fascinated with that process, and I'm so happy that the things that I have been so passionately interested in, other people have found interest in it as well. And that really is the biggest benefit for doing what I do.

And how frequently are you putting out articles and different stuff that you write?

Never. No. And my social media is just really logged off. But. But I will be getting back to it, I promise you. I've been extremely busy traveling around, doing a bunch of other stuff with some new research. So next year, that is my new year's resolution, is to try to update my social media more than like once every three weeks. So we'll see what happens.

And I'll tell you, even if. Which most people never do, but if you go back and just click on almost anything, you put out, really good stuff. I mean, yeah. And my interview that I did with him, if you've not seen it, it's on. It's on YouTube and you can also watch it on the membership site at Genius Network. And yeah, it's good stuff. Anything else?

I think we're good. Everyone breathe well, everyone breathing through their noses. Okay.

And how many of you found this really valuable? Yeah.

Yeah.

It'S so good. And read his book and it will blow your mind. It is so damn good. And I am so, so appreciative of you coming out here and doing this, because this is so important and I know it changed my life and I greatly thank you for it. And I've recommended your book to so many people and I will keep doing it because you do awesome stuff and read his other books because they're just fascinating.

So thank you very much, everybody.

Thank you.

Really appreciate it.

Dave Zester. Awesome. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you.

Watch them.