44. James Nestor: Author of Breath

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 44 of our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and to live better. In today's episode, I have the pleasure to interview the author James Nestor. James is both an author and a journalist. His recent book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, was released in 2020 and became an instant bestseller in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Sunday London Times. Breath will be translated into more than 30 languages in 2021. That is an incredible launch for a book. Our conversation today explores how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly over the past several hundred thousand years and is now suffering from a laundry list of problems such as snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, autoimmune disease, all because of breath. Nestor talks about his travels all around the world, which I'm jealous of, to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren't found in pulmonology labs as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites and secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our breath and biological basic function on its head. So without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with author James Nestor. Well, Mr. James Nestor, thank you so much for joining Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. For those in the audience who don't know who you are, can you introduce yourself to everybody?

Sure. My name is James Nestor. I'm calling in from San Francisco. I am a journalist and the author of the book, Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art, which came out about 3 or 4 months ago.

Well, it's an amazing book. As we were talking about before we jumped on here, I just finished up the audio version and I, I had quite a few people in my audience request to have you on the show. And so that was kind of trigger number one. And then I watched your Joe Rogan interview, which was trigger number 2. And I really have to say, I really enjoyed the book. I was conscious of a lot of this before, but you took it to a whole new level. And so I'm excited to dive into some of these subjects today and teach everybody about the new science of a lost art, which is breath.

Fantastic.

Your introduction to the book was really interesting to me. So could you tell everybody today about how did you get into this? You know, what was your experience prior to writing this book as a journalist? But then what led you into this world of breath and restorative breath?

Yeah, it was nothing really in particular. It was just a bunch of things kept coalescing and collecting until I had enough stories and enough research that I thought it might actually be worthy of some time and focused energy to spend researching something as seemingly innocuous or random as breathing, which is never something I set out to do when I started out being a journalist. But the story ended up being so much weirder. than I ever imagined. And so I was excited to sort of jump in and see where it could take me.

Well, talking about weirdness, uh, in the introduction you, you kick things off, you're like, and I kind of wake up in a pool of sweat after doing this breathing exercise. And that caught me off guard. I was like, wait a second, where is this story starting? So could you tell everybody about that first kind of experience that you had?

Sure. All true too. Very strange experience. This was a long time ago, maybe 10 years ago, 11 years ago, when I had Been suffering from a lot of respiratory problems, even though I was eating well, I was exercising all the time, I was sleeping well, I was getting sick constantly. And my doctor suggested I check out a breathing class where in San Francisco there are dozens and dozens of these things, all sometimes within the same single block. So I picked one at random and went to it, did a weekend course and went back for a check-in course and just sat in the corner of this old house, cross-legged in a cool room and breathed this very rhythmic pattern. Just nothing more than that. And I sweated so profusely that my t-shirt was wet. My hair was sopping wet. There were sweat blotches on my jeans. I mean, it was unlike anything I'd ever experienced, but as a science journalist, I didn't know what to do with that experience. So I just kind of filed it away. I wasn't going to write a memoir about breathing and no one could really describe what had happened to me or my body. And so I just forgot about it for a while.

Well, just like you, I am a chronic mouth breather, or just like you were, and just like I was, I've always been a chronic mouth breather. And I've been somebody who wakes up in the morning and I have a fantastic night of sleep. I ate really well the night before. I stopped eating a few hours before I went to bed. I did everything that I was supposed to do, but then you wake up with a sore throat and a dry mouth. And I always just thought that was kind of normal. You know, a normal person, I guess, doesn't really look into sleep apnea and obstruction of the passageways and things like that. But a lot of things started to click with me when I read the book. And I think you gave a statistic, you said something around 50% of people are mouth breathers. Is that true?

About 25 to 50%. Those numbers are a little murky, but it's a lot. And kids tend to mouth breathe more than adults, and females tend to mouth breathe more than males. It's a huge number and it looks as though that number is increasing year after year.

And you did this experiment where you actually blocked your nasal passages for 10 days. And so my question for you is, what are some of the differences between breathing through your nose and breathing through your mouth? After you describe some of the differences, what were some of the results of that experiment?

Yeah, I never intended to be a part of this book, to be a character in this book. And that was very clear in my book proposal. And nonfiction, you write a proposal that's about 50 to 60 pages and you line out exactly where you're going to go, who you're going to talk to, and all that. And I realized once I started really getting deep into the subject that this book was going to take me into places I'd never imagined and was actually going to require me to do things I never ever wanted to do. So I had been talking with the chief of rhinology research, Dr. Jayakar Nayak, at Stanford for months. And he was telling me all the wondrous benefits of nasal breathing because when we breathe through the nose, we are humidifying air, we're moistening air, we're pressurizing it, we're conditioning it so that by the time it enters our lungs, we can absorb that oxygen more easily. So we get about 20% more oxygen breathing through the nose than equivalent breaths through the mouth. And yet such a huge section of the population is habitually mouth breathing, much to their detriment. And I was certainly part of that population. So we know that people are doing this. We just didn't know how soon the damage associated with mouth breathing came on. And by that, I mean respiratory issues, snoring, cognitive dysfunction, on and on and on, all of which is quite well known. Did it happen after a few years? Did it happen after a few decades? Nobody knew. So we decided to test it. And this was not intended to be like a Super Size Me stunt where I was just doing something wacky. Hey, look at me.

It's—

we were just lulling ourselves into a position that they already knew, that so much of the population already knew. The difference was we were collecting data and looking at the difference in your body, in your brain, everything else when you breathe through the mouth versus when you breathe through the nose.

Can you give a couple, you know, I guess a couple of story bites or soundbites from that experience? Were there any moments, and I did listen to you detail this in the book, but were there any moments where you just thought to yourself, oh, I cannot wait to get these plugs out of my nose. Things are much worse than I initially thought they were going to be.

Well, we knew it wasn't going to be fun, right? But it's not a lot of fun for people who have chronic sinusitis or who have chronically inflamed turbinates. who can't breathe through their nose anyway. So I just thought, you know, so many people are living with this anyway, I can deal with it for 10 days. But even after a few hours, it was horrendous. And not only did it feel bad, is that our numbers started showing just how injurious this was to our bodies. So my blood pressure was just through the roof. That first night I went to bed, went to sleep, and I snored for the first time in memory. I snored for an hour and a half. And that snoring kept getting worse and worse with every day. The other subject in the study, Anders Olsen, his snoring was even worse. We also started choking on ourselves every night, suffering from sleep apnea. So this was such bad news and it came on not after a few years or decades or even weeks, but within a few hours of breathing through our mouths.

A big part of my community is interested in, I guess you would call the traditional word biohacking. And I think a big part of biohacking is sleep. And so what were some of those? You mentioned the snoring and you actually choking on yourself, the sleep apnea. How important is nasal breathing for the quality of your sleep?

It's so important for everything, not only sleep, but for athletic performance, for rest, for relaxation, all of the above. But sleep is where you can notice it most patently. Because when you're snoring or when you're suffering from sleep apnea, you are inhibiting the free flow of oxygen into your body. You are stressing yourself out. You're spiking your cortisol, you're spiking your blood sugar. I mean, it goes on and on, which is why snoring is so— snoring and sleep apnea are so closely linked to weird stuff like type 2 diabetes. You're like, how could type 2 diabetes be related to sleep apnea? But it absolutely is. You're stressing yourself out for a third of your life. Your body is eventually going to break down. So we know that this is— this has been known for decades and decades. But what I didn't see too much of or didn't know too much of was that the pathway through which we breathe air plays a role in that. So that by just breathing through your mouth, you are going to increase your chances of snoring. Your snoring can get worse. Same thing with sleep apnea, that by simply breathing through your nose, you can help alleviate some of those symptoms of snoring and sleep apnea, which once I got into the science, I found was, was very clear. But I'd never been told this. I'm old. Like, why hadn't I been told this over the last few decades of mouth breathing? I wasn't snoring, but I was breathing through my mouth all the time. I wish I would have been. Maybe things would have worked out better for me.

Yeah, well, I hope my parents aren't watching this, but I grew up in a family where snoring was normal. Everybody was always snoring. And I don't think we're ever taught, not at least in the traditional education system that we get brought up through in the US, that snoring is a bad thing or that it's something, you know, it's kind of an alarm like, hey, we should be paying attention to this. And I've purchased a few different sleep trackers. I wear an Oura Ring, but I've also done a Fitbit and a few other different bedside sleep trackers. I know I don't have great quality sleep. So what are some of the things that people can do to get more air in through the nose and to pay more attention to that?

Well, snoring is considered normal only because so many people are doing it. In some ways, obesity is considered normal now because so many people are obese in the US. That doesn't mean this stuff is good for us. And so we know it's pretty well known that, and at least I think the general public acknowledges that sleep apnea, this is bad news. It's so injurious to the body. But snoring is kind of laughed about. You go on YouTube, you see little babies snoring. This is so damaging to the body as well. And the science has been there for decades and decades, but still we just toss it off as some cutesy thing. So what I learned at Stanford from Anne Kearney, she's the doctor of speech-language pathology there, is she recommended putting a little piece of tape on your mouth when you sleep, which sounded completely insane to me. Then I heard it from Dr. Mark Burhenne, who's been prescribing this to his patients for decades. And so once you hear where this stuff is coming from, and once you hear the stories about how people have really transformed their sleep and transformed aspects of their health by healthy nasal breathing at night, then you get a little more curious. And I certainly got curious. So the sleep tape thing, you can go on YouTube and see a bunch of garbage, or you can just do this. I don't use a fat strip across my mouth. There's other brands of sleep tape which you can buy, which I hear work great. Somnifix is a good one. There's some other brands. But what I've found is you only need really a roll of— this is 3M micropore tape. You can buy this at any drugstore, get it on Amazon, get it at your local retailer, whatever you want. You take about a piece about the size of a postage stamp, maybe a little smaller, and you put it on your lips. That's sleep tape, everyone. That's the technology I'm talking about. I can still talk. I can still breathe. I can still cough. When I want to take it off, I use my tongue, comes right off. So the point isn't to block all the air from your mouth. No, it's just to train your mouth shut at night so that you naturally breathe through your nose. And this stuff, I have seen such a huge transformation in my own health just by using this. And I've received hundreds and hundreds of emails from people who no longer snore, no longer have sleep apnea, just by using a little piece of tape. I'm not going to say this is going to work for everybody. I'm saying that this is free and I don't see any downside to at least trying it.

So I've tried it and I've had pretty good experiences so far. Years ago, I actually went on Amazon and I bought a full chin strap to wear at night because I did recognize the problem after I had read a book about sleep a couple of years ago, and it didn't work out. I would always wake up and it was on the floor and I didn't even remember taking it off. So I eventually stopped. And then I wore a pillow on my back for a while, like a sleep pillow that kept me on my side so that I wasn't leaning back and choking on my own tongue. And now I've been using the tape for a few weeks now, ever since I watched the Joe Rogan interview and you mentioned that. And I did the same thing. I went out and I bought some cheap surgical tape. It's essentially free. And it works much better. I can wear it through the night most nights. I'm still training my jaw closed after years of abuse, but it's a really good tip. So I'm happy that you brought that up. I was working for that one. Yeah.

And it's, to me, what's so surprising is people writing who have had snoring for, or sleep apnea, mild to moderate sleep apnea for decades, and they had never been told anything about this. It's like you have sleep apnea, here's your CPAP. CPAPs are Lifesavers. They're so valuable, but a little piece of tape can do so much as well. And again, why not try it? See what it does for you. There's, there's no downside.

Especially when you're younger. I mean, I'm in my mid-20s and I actually had a consultation over Zoom with my primary care doctor and I said, hey, I know that I have sleep moderate to— well, I'm not sure what it is yet because it hasn't been diagnosed, but I have some sleeping issues. I find myself waking up a lot. Other people tell me I snore. They've heard me kind of choke on myself, and I'd like to do a sleep study. And my primary essentially told me, hey, it's kind of difficult to get that cleared with insurance when you're that young. So maybe try something else, or if it doesn't get any better, we could do an at-home test. So I've been trying everything.

Well, this is a classic example of some real blind spots in our medical system. What he was, or she was basically saying is, wait till you're really sick and then we can take care of you. I don't think you should get to this point. So this isn't my opinion, to be clear. This is the opinion of Dr. Steven Park, who I've talked to numerous times, who is, I would consider him the expert in sleep apnea and what you can do about it. So the way that things are set up with sleep apnea, you have to suffer from what, 5 apnea events per hour to have it, and those are each— you have to choke on yourself for 10 seconds at a time. But if you choke on yourself 50 times for 9 seconds, you don't have sleep apnea. This is what I heard from Dr. Park.

That's crazy.

Which, you think the damage from choking on yourself 50 times, you know, for 9 seconds, isn't going to be just as bad or worse than the other way? So, you know, this is how our system is set up, but luckily With knowledge, we have power, and we can take control of our own health just as you're doing. But don't just let that go. That's one thing I would like to make very clear. Snoring is serious. Sleep apnea is serious. You got to take control of it. You got to clear those airways.

Since I've made the conscious, deliberate decision to improve my sleep and to sort of increase my nasal breathing while I'm asleep, I've definitely felt an increase in energy and everything has gotten better. I don't have any blood markers. Or I didn't take any data before versus after, but I can feel it. You know when you feel better.

Yeah. And this is what's so great about breathing is it's so easy to measure. So it's one measurement is how you feel. That's important. Another one is what all of the instruments say. So with pulse oximetry, heart rate variability, I mean, there's so many different measurements that you can just do at home and you can watch yourself improve. So this is not a placebo effect. You are measuring a transformation happening in your body when it is balanced, when it is getting the right amount of oxygen at the right time. And that's what breathing healthy does.

Absolutely. Well, let's transition over to sort of the history of how we got to the point that we're at today. So you say in the book that a few thousand years ago, our mouths were bigger and our brains were smaller, and we've kind of moved in the opposite direction. Our brains have gotten bigger, but our mouths and our airways have gotten smaller. So Without getting into too, too much detail, what does the abbreviated history of that look like?

So millions of years ago, yeah, our brains were much smaller and our faces were going through some morphological changes. But the human body is always changing, just like any life form. It's constantly evolving. It's constantly, in some cases, progressing and in some cases developing characteristics that are not beneficial. And that's one thing a lot of people don't get is evolution does not mean progress. It doesn't mean survival of the fittest. It means change. So the whole thing with our brains growing larger, this was not a detriment to our faces. Our ancestors were just fine with their slightly smaller faces that were getting slightly smaller over hundreds of thousands of years. We adapted just fine. And it looks like from the skeletal record, we were breathing just fine. The problem happened around 300, 400 years ago when our faces started shrinking so rapidly that we weren't able to adapt properly. And that is one of the main reasons so many of us suffer from breathing problems is our mouths have gotten so small, our airways have gotten so small that we choke on ourselves, that we have resistance every time we take a breath in or out. And if you do that 20,000 times a day, it is eventually just going to wear your body out.

Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes one credit good for any premium selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand, scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up, but I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, Or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now, back to today's episode. Well, I know that, you know, I think there's a test, or you mentioned it in the book at one point, that if your tongue overlaps your teeth at all, then you probably have a jaw that's too small for your tongue, and that's going to increase the chances that you're going to choke on yourself while you're breathing and get in the way of your passageways. And so I have that. Now you say that you wore a Homeoblock, a mouth expander. What does that do?

So it's so interesting, modern humans. What we're doing now is developing technologies to bring us back the way we were before technology screwed us up. So, you know, as long as America is open for business, I guess that's all that really counts. So what these devices do is they're returning our palates and they're returning our airways to the way that they were supposed to have been before we started noshing on industrial soft food for so long and completely screwed up our faces. So the main culprit behind having a small mouth and having a flatter face and all the airway problems that come with that is because we have not been chewing. And without that chewing stress, we don't model the proper bones. Our upper palates don't drop down flat. We don't develop this musculature. So that's why our teeth are crooked, because our mouths are too small. With a wider mouth, Teeth are going to grow in naturally straight. Look at the animal kingdom, they all have straight teeth. Look at modern humans, we're all messed up. So one way that orthodontists and dentists are trying to fix this is by expanding the upper palate to the way it was supposed to have been. And I use a device called a Homeoblock. There are tons of these devices out that I wore every night. It's been a long time since I had like retainer and was in braces. I'm old and I was not totally like looking forward to wearing this every night, but for the sake of art, I did it for the sake of the science. So I went to my upper palate and just gently spread apart my palate. That seems super gnarly until you take a thumb. If you have a clean thumb, you can feel your upper palate and there is a suture. There's a crack that goes right in the middle of that palate. That can be pulled apart at virtually any age. So our bodies are designed to do this. So just by wearing this thing for a year, I showed a transformative effect to my airways. So much wider, toned airways. Breathing is so much easier for me. And anyone can really do this. Like I said, the HomeoBlock's great. Dr. Ted Belfour, amazing guy. He's been doing amazing work. There are various means to do this.

And you actually grew more bone in your face. I thought that was very interesting. I've never heard of that before. So what, what was the deal there? How does that work?

Yeah, I started growing these 2 horns right here, but I had them surgically removed. Now what happens when, when you have chewing stress is you elicit more stem cells to be released and stem cells will go to where they are most needed. So you're constantly signaling a stem cell release. When you're chewing, and that's what this device did, it simulated chewing stress. So when that happens, you're able to model new bone in your face. And I modeled about 5 pennies worth of bone in my face. And what was really trippy about this is after the first like 6 weeks of wearing this thing, people were like, whoa, dude, whoa, whoa, whoa, you look totally different. Whoa. And, uh, and That's one thing which was interesting, but it's another thing taking a CAT scan a year after I started and seeing these changes occur in my face, in my bone structure, and in my airways. So it just shows you how massively you can transform our bodies, how with the right inputs you can really change them for good. No matter how messed up you are, you can move forward. And this is very true for younger people like you and for, for infants and for kids. But there is hope for old people like me that you can still get a lot of these benefits. You can change your body all for the better.

So for a listener who's interested and says, oh wow, I didn't know I could expand my palate, where, where should they go? Who do you recommend that they try to speak with?

There's a bunch of different organizations. The AAMS is a really good one. AAPMD is a Yeah. You can check those out. Advanced Facialdonics, little tongue twister right there. They have a few products that really work well. If you're on the East Coast, Mariana Evans is a specialist in this. If you're on the West Coast in California, Dr. William Hang has been doing this for like 30, 40 years. He is a master at this stuff. If you have kids who need this done, Dr. Kevin Boyd. All of these people have done so much research in this, and this is actually how the first orthodontics were. They were about expanding the mouth, not contracting it, not removing teeth, not using headgear. And so it's interesting that we started off once again on the right path. Things got muddled, and now we're returning.

Yeah, it's so funny how common it is for people of this generation to have their wisdom teeth removed. And that wasn't always the case. And I had no idea. I mean, I think I've had all 4 of mine removed. They were impacted or something. What is the word there that people use?

Yeah, they're impacted. I had the same thing. It's become— this is like snoring, right? So it's become so normal. It's like, hey, when are you going to get your wisdom teeth out? When are you going to get braces? When are you going to get extractions? When are you going to get headgear? This is not normal, people. You know, 500 years ago, we weren't getting our wisdom teeth extracted and we were just fine. You can look at skulls and they have all their teeth and they're perfectly straight. And then look at a modern skull. Look at my skull. It's completely messed up. So it just, you know, it makes you ask a bunch of questions. How else are we messed up and how else can we fix ourselves?

I'm sure we will be looking back a few hundred or a few thousand years from now and laugh at the things that we're doing in modern-day medicine, that's for sure.

Yeah, and this isn't to point fingers. I am a huge fan of Western medicine. So my father-in-law is a pulmonologist, been a pulmonologist for 40 years. My brother-in-law works at an ER. These people are saving lives and they're doing incredible things. I likely would not be alive today without Western medicine. So Western medicine is so valuable, but Western medicine has its blind spots as well. When you're looking at very low-grade chronic diseases, we don't do a very good job about those until they get really bad. And then we can do something about it. Just like your snoring, you feel pretty good right now. In 20 years, if you're still snoring and have sleep apnea, your body's going to be messed up. And that's, that's just the reality.

Yeah.

So I think that more messaging into the benefits of prevention and how to keep yourself healthy is really the right way forward. And that's exactly how Eastern medicines have been built upon, that premise. It wasn't— you don't see the doctor in Eastern medicine when you're sick. You see them when you're healthy so you can stay healthy. And everything is flipped on its head out here.

Yeah, it's a big difference. My girlfriend works in holistic health in kind of that traditional Eastern medicine, and I definitely understand the differences. And there are a lot of benefits to Western medicine, but that Eastern idea of seeing See the doctor when you're healthy. It's prevention. It's not, you know, in reaction to whatever's happening. It's a big difference. Let's transition briefly over to exhaling. So when I saw breath and when I started the book, I'm like, okay, it's all about getting more air into the body, but I didn't know that there's actually an art to exhaling and that we need to be paying attention to that too. So could you talk about that for a minute?

Sure. And I just want to mention one more thing with the Eastern/Western versus Western medicine. The best thing I heard was from Brian McKenzie, who's a trainer of elite athletes. He said that Eastern medicine is really great if you want to live. Western medicine is really great if you don't want to die. If you think about it that way, that just succinctly summarized what's going on here.

Real quick, before we go to exhale, have you read the book Lifespan by David Sinclair?

No.

So he talks about that difference between people who don't want to die versus people who want to live. That's a big theme in his book. The subtitle of Lifespan is escaping me, but he's a Harvard doctor and their lab focuses on age. And so he's coming on the podcast, I think, in January. But I'm really getting into that subject right now because it's about prolonging longevity, not delaying death. And those are 2 very different conversations. So I just figured I would ask just in case you had read it before.

Yeah, and to me that makes perfect sense. I don't want to be in a bed for, for 10 years intubated just getting by, you know. I'd prefer 5 years of vigorous living, but you know, different strokes for different folks, whatever. As long as that is made, uh, patently clear to people that there are options, you're not destined to die sick and in bed for For 5 years, 10 years, if you make right decisions, if you take in the right inputs to your body and allow yourself to heal yourself, you can really share in great health for a long, long time. So exhales, you want to talk about exhales?

Let's talk about exhales because that is an area of the book. I don't think I've ever paid it— now I have meditated. I've done a lot of meditation, so I guess that's the only area or time that I've ever thought about my exhale, but I can imagine most people listening have never even been present during an exhale. Or realize that they're doing it before.

So right now you can take your hand and you can place it on your heart and you can breathe in to a count of about 5. And if you can do this comfortably, breathe out to a count of about 8. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and out 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Keep doing that. You're going to notice when you inhale, your heart rate is going to speed up and you'll notice when you exhale, your heart rate is going to slow down. That's because exhaling is associated with a parasympathetic response. This is the rest and relaxation response of our nervous system. So we can tap into this nervous system function by just exhaling. So the longer you exhale, the more relaxed you're going to be. So if at any time you feel stressed out, Just lengthen your exhales. Inhale to a count of about 3, exhale to 6, whatever you're comfortable with. You can go longer if you'd like. So, so much of pranayama and different breathing techniques are variations on that theme, either breathing in more, which activates you, or breathing out more, which relaxes you. So another side of breathing, that's, that's sort of the neurological side of it. But another side of it, the biochemical side, is a lot of us tend to breathe in air, just pack air breaths on top of one another, more and more air in, more and more air in, over and over and over. But it's much more efficient to take that air in and to truly exhale. And when we're doing that, we're engaging our diaphragms more. And the more our diaphragms, Lift up and sink down, the better off we're going to be. That means we can take fewer breaths and get more oxygen with less effort, and that's exactly what your body wants. Another advantage of these deeper diaphragmatic breaths is the diaphragm, which is this muscle that sits underneath the lungs, will sink down and help massage all the organs there, and it helps them leach out more lymph fluid. The This is something I didn't know when I was talking with the doctor about this just a couple of weeks ago. So your diaphragm works like a pump to help your body get rid of toxins and other gunk. But if you're just breathing in your chest just the whole time, you're not taking those benefits. You're not allowing your body to do what it naturally wants to do.

Yeah. Wow. I didn't know that either. I didn't realize that it acted like a pump. That's really interesting. I'll be visualizing that kind of as I'm doing some of these breathing exercises. And then the other kind of misconception that I think most people have about breath is that it's all about oxygen, but people forget about the CO2. And so when I heard you talk about that for the first time, I didn't realize that CO2 plays just as important or maybe even more of an important role in breath and human body function than oxygen.

It's really a yin and yang relationship. So you can't have one without the other in our bodies. And a lot of people are just completely focused on O2. They're just looking at their O2 sats the whole time. But no matter how much oxygen you have in your bloodstream, you have to have a balance of CO2 for that oxygen to go where it's supposed to go, to go into all of those hungry cells, your muscles, tissues, other areas of your body. So by having more CO2, you were able to offload more oxygen more easily. And so many of us are deficient in CO2, which means we can still get oxygen, we just have to work harder to get it. And again, you don't want your body to work harder 24 hours a day. You want it to work harder when you're working out, but the way to work out most effectively is to breathe within Your metabolic needs. And that for the vast majority of us, that means breathing less because when we breathe less, we get more oxygen. This is so counterintuitive. It took me so long to get my head around this, but we've known this for 110, 120 years. It's all very clear. And yet so few people are really paying attention to it.

Yeah. I remember on, on your interview with Joe, how he mentioned those oxygen bars. That, that were trendy for a little while and about how they're just almost useless, I think, in most scenarios unless you're up in a high altitude. But I remember I've, I've walked past a couple of them before and I've thought, wow, that would be so cool to try it out. And that's kind of the misconception. They make them flashy, they smell good, you know, the lights look cool, the music sounds fun, but they're useless, right?

I'm not saying oxygen bars are useless. I'm just saying the oxygen you're inhaling In these oxygen bars, if you're healthy, is doing nothing. So to be clear, you need oxygen if you've got serious COVID symptoms, if you have emphysema, if you're at altitude. For sure you need oxygen. If you're a healthy person with healthy blood sats of 97, 96, having this oxygen— you are literally breathing it in to push it back out. It is a complete waste. Naturally, when we're breathing room air right now, we use a quarter of the oxygen that we take in, and then we just breathe the rest out, which is why if we breathe more slowly, we breathe through our nose, pressurize that air, we give our lungs more time to extract more oxygen so we can actually breathe much more efficiently. We're not constantly working our bodies to just waste, to bring something in and to push it back out.

So you're telling everybody, including the football players watching, that If you're at sea level playing a football game and you run over and put that oxygen mask on, it's probably not doing anything for you.

I got some bad news for you guys. It's a good look. So maybe, maybe keep doing it, but, uh, it's really not doing anything. Uh, there's several references in the book, um, from doctors who really know this stuff, who have said this exact thing. Again, I'm a journalist, right? I have no opinion on whether oxygen is going to work or not. Sea level, but I spent a long time talking to these experts and it's very clear. This is different from hyperbaric oxygen treatment, by the way, therapy, where they put you in a pressurized huge canister with oxygen. That works amazingly well because you're under pressure, but a healthy body at sea level, not going to do too much.

So in the book you detail the perfect breath. I think that's what everybody is here to listen to. I'll tell everybody at the beginning of the episode, by the way, At the end of the episode, you'll learn the perfect breath. What is the perfect breath?

Well, it depends on what you're doing. The perfect breath can be at rest, can be very slow, 5 to 6 seconds in, 5 to 6 seconds out. The perfect breath exercising is going to have to be a lot more of that because ultimately the perfect breath is breathing exactly in line with your metabolic needs. So we can't always breathe within that very close, uh, need But we can come close enough to it. And so I've found at rest, a good exercise to slow down your breath, to breathe less, to get more oxygen— we know all of this is true— is to try to breathe in 5 to 6 seconds. In the book, I say 5.5 seconds, but I've gotten so many emails from people saying, what if I'm half a second off? That I'm just rounding this out now. Everyone relax. 5 to 6 is fine.

Yeah.

Even 4, 4 to 7 is fine. And then, and then about 5 to 6 out. If you want to get relaxed, extend that exhale just as we had talked about. If you want more energy, extend that inhale. So this seems so simple that people are going to say, oh, that's not going to work, dude. That's too easy. Look at the science. Look at the psychiatrist using this. Look at what happens to your blood oxygen levels. Look at what happens to oxygenation in the brain to your heart rate variability just by breathing this way, just by breathing slow and easy and deeply.

How many times per day do you focus on your breath and do breathwork? Is it once every couple days, or do you spend time every single day in this practice?

Yeah, everyone thinks that when you write a book about breathing, you're just like the I am a full master. Not true. I'm a journalist, and I spent time with the masters, with the breathing therapists, with the researchers. I spent years with these people, and I gathered a lot of their hacks. But that doesn't mean that I'm spending all my days here focusing on my breathing. I will say I've become acutely aware of when I'm breathing improperly. If I'm breathing inadequately, I'm very aware of it when I'm working out, I'm surfing, I'm running, whatever. Very aware of it at night, which is why I always wear a little sleep tape. So I'm breathing through my nose. So I've still got a long way of way to go. You know, I'm on this journey just like everyone else and I'm learning more every day, which is wonderful. So just having a few of these little tools in your back pocket, To me is a wonderful thing. They're free. You can use them anytime. You're breathing all the time. So why not focus that breath and make them the best breaths you can breathe for your body and for your brain?

Have you ever read any Ryan Holiday books?

No, I have not.

So he writes about an old school of thought called Stoic philosophy, and he's just a writer. He writes about Stoic philosophy, but a lot of people tell him in his social media comments like, you're not a Stoic philosopher, stop trying to do this. And so I can imagine somebody catches you at a movie theater or something and says, like tweets out, I just saw James Nestor breathing through his mouth. What a hypocrite.

To me, it's, uh, for one, like all I'm doing is spending every moment of my life in my house anyway. So no one sees me and walking my dog once a day. You know, that's about it. But it's not about, um, you know, just being completely authoritative about, oh, you took half a breath through your mouth, dude. You got to breathe through— I'm breathing through my mouth right now. We've been talking. I've been taking some breaths through my mouth as a habit. I'm talking about habits. When we're laughing, we're breathing through our— totally fine. Some pranayama practices have you inhale and exhale through your mouth. Totally fine. Wim Hof does that as well, but for the other 23.5 hours of the day, he's breathing through his nose and he's breathing very slowly. So this doesn't have to be 2 completely binary things. I'm talking about establishing good habits so that most of the time you'll be within those habits and you can celebrate all the benefits from it. So don't stress out. That stress that you're having is going to be so much more injurious than the few mouth breaths you just took. It's about relaxing and knowing that your body will find its natural rhythm if you train it to do so.

Certainly understood. And Wim Hof, now that you brought him up, he's a really cool guy. I've read a lot about Wim and I've watched some of his videos and some of the people that I've had on the show have done his camps and stuff out in Poland. So he's an interesting guy. Have you had the opportunity to speak with him yet?

Wim is amazing. He's done more for breathing awareness than anyone I know of. in the past 20, 30 years. I've interviewed him before. I put on my journalist hat and had him on an interview. We've done some group events. We're hopefully going to be doing more. Do I believe absolutely everything Wim has to say about breathing? I do not. Does that make his core message any less important or impactful? No, it does not. It's okay for, for people to have their different views, different philosophies, and still circle around the same general benefit. He's coming into this stuff from a completely different side than I am. That's completely fine. I can learn from him, he can learn from me, and that's what it's gonna take to move this thing forward.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's at the end of the day awareness and then moving it forward with accurate science and real data. That's probably all that really matters. Before we jump off, I see the bookshelves behind you. You're a journalist, I think you're probably a reader. What are some of your favorite books? Are there any books that you generally recommend to people?

I wish I was more of a reader. When you're researching a book on breathing for 3, 4 years, 5 years almost, all you're doing is reading academic papers and books on breathing, which are really frickin boring, people, trust me on this. So, and you know, in my time of being on this book tour and talking to people, I just have not had too much time to read. Having Having said that, been lucky enough to read Bonnie Sue's new book, Why We Swim, which I absolutely love. It's about the human connection to the water and her own experiences swimming. I'm a big water guy. That's where I get my exercise. I love it. And when I'm not able to get out there, I can just dive into her book. That pun was totally intended right there. Wim's new book is great too. It gives his backstory of how he started with this stuff. also has actionable items. But one essay I keep going back to year in, year out is Self-Reliance by Emerson. It's available for free. It's a short read. And whenever I'm feeling down or I need a little pick-me-up or I need a little more context of what I'm doing in my professional life and personal life, I refer to that essay.

Well, I'll, I'll add the essay to the show notes down below so everybody can check it out and I'll have to read it as well. And James, we'll wrap up. For those in the audience that want to learn a little bit more about you or your book or your work or they want to get connected, where should they go? What should they do?

My website, mrjamesnester.com. There's an MR before that James Nester. There's an O before that R. If that's not confusing enough, you can just look up my name. It should be coming up. I have included all the references for the book there for free. I have several interviews with researchers from Harvard, from all over the planet, talking about breathing, the science of breathing, how to do it better. And there's also many other resources there for people to pick away at. I'm also trying to get better at this thing called social media. You might've heard about it. I hadn't really heard about it until somewhat recently because I'm old, but I'm trying to get my Instagram account up and running. I am only going to be including things about breathing and science and research. So no, no puppy pictures, you can go elsewhere for that. So I'm on Facebook too, but it feels like Facebook's dying a very quiet death right now. So I'm focusing a little more on Instagram. It is.

Yeah. Well, it's refreshing, the journalist who, who isn't on social media all the time. And so we get better quality books when you're not always on social media, when you're in those academic boring reads. But once again, thank you so much for coming on the show. I know everybody's going to have a lot of questions for me, and I'll make sure everybody knows where to find you.

Thanks a lot for having me.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers, Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives. By reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.