Hello everyone! In today’s article, we’ll be talking about some techniques to maintain nose breathing and what will you benefit from it!
Actually, there’s a lot of benefits in keeping your mouth shut, but I’m specifically talking about nose breathing when you are sleeping and exercising which I think you’re going to find quite interesting.

01_ Does Nose Breathing Restrict Oxygen?

Typically, when you think about nose breathing, you’re probably going to think “wow I’m restricting my airflow, so I’m not going to be able to breathe enough oxygen”, which is true because you’re actually restricting your airflow about 50 percent when you breathe through your nose versus the mouth.

But! there are some very interesting things that occur when you practice nose breathing. You would think you would not get enough air but actually you do get more oxygen delivered to your tissues than if you were to breathe through your mouth. How is that?

02_ Nose Breathing Benefits!

Well! There are several things! When you breathe through your nose, your nose the sinuses act as a humidifier, so they definitely help you to moisten the air as it goes into your lungs and protect the lungs because if you’re breathing cold dry air that can really irritate the lungs and actually increase the risk of inflammation in your lungs.

Additionally, your nose acts as a filter to filter out particles that can end up in your lung as well, and it also can act as an immune barrier to protect the lungs against pathogens because the pathogens can actually be effectively dealt with in the sinuses and not end up in the lungs.

03_ Nose breathing vs. mouth breathing!

The difference between the effectiveness of both, mouth and nose breathing, has to do with what’s called the “bohr effect”. The “bohr effect” is all about taking CO2 to be able to take that oxygen that is in your blood and push it into your cells now CO2 is not just a waste product it’s a very important gas to get oxygen deep into the cells so even if your blood is saturated with oxygen it doesn’t mean that that oxygen is going to passively get into your cells it has to be released with the help of CO2 and this is why someone in a panic attack that’s getting too much CO2 because they’re breathing they’re hyperventilating they’re going to get an altered ratio of too much oxygen and not enough CO2 and so they’re going to go into a panic attack because they’re literally starving from oxygen then when they balance out their CO2 and oxygen they can actually finally breathe better because they’re finally getting oxygen deep into the cells.

Now, this also parallels when people get oxygen therapy they can actually become toxic with oxygen because they’re literally starving their cells of oxygen when they get oxygen therapy because they have lesser amounts of CO2 to deliver it into the tissues despite having this hemoglobin the protein your blood being saturated with oxygen it’s just it’s not going anywhere that and so one of the side effects from oxygen therapy is dyspnea what is that difficulty breathing they might get chest pain coughing pulmonary edema that’s swelling in your lungs twitching in the hands which I’m going to explain in a little bit and also tinnitus ringing in the ear and sometimes when people get sinus surgery they develop a very serious terrible side effect which is called empty nose syndrome which their sinuses get all dry and crusting and they have a very difficult time breathing they’re constantly feeling out of breath, 77 of people with that symptom hyperventilate it’s just a terrible condition.

Now, why did I talk about that because I wanted to talk about the importance of sinus breathing and having all the structures intact because you need these turbinates in your sinuses you need the mucous membranes to be able to balance out oxygen with CO2 and like I think I mentioned before when you nose breathe you increase the amount of oxygen that is in your cells by about 20 percent now there’s another really interesting component part of this I want to talk about there’s a condition of low CO2 it’s called hypocapnia which you basically don’t have enough carbon dioxide and that is relevant because we’re talking about the importance of CO2 but there’s all these different triggers or causes to having this condition of a lowered amount of CO2 asthma COPD chronic obstructive pulmonary disease panic attacks anxiety lung infections of course anemia because you have this problem with oxygen because of iron.

But, also something called glycated hemoglobin now what is that! Well, if you ever had a diabetic test called an A1C they’re basically measuring the destruction of the hemoglobin from sugar because when you combine that protein with sugar it becomes glycated it’s no longer really usable and so people that have a higher level of A1C because they have more glycation and that protein have higher levels of CO2 this is why diabetics apparently have a hard time getting oxygen and breathing and healing like people that don’t have that disorder and don’t forget mouth breathers because apparently they can’t keep their mouth shut also have higher amounts of CO2.

So when you have a condition where you have lower amounts of CO2 that then causes your body to be more alkaline not acid alkaline and that’s called respiratory alkalosis you get cramping abdominal pain because your muscles can’t deliver oxygen because the person is too alkaline another symptom would be laryngeal spasm you’re going to be having irritation in the in the throat they’ll probably have a chronic cough bronchospasm like spasm in their lungs tingling in the lips in the extremities like your hands and your feet and tetany that little twitching that you get on your tissue that’s a lot of colossus now anytime you get alkalosis that can lead to a lowered amount of calcium in the blood that’s called hypocalcemia.

Let’s take a look at those symptoms which is interesting when you don’t have enough calcium in the blood you really irritate the nerves and the muscles they become over excited and so you have a lot of neurological things which is kind of similar to like peripheral neuropathy from a diabetic but this is coming from a low-level calcium in your blood also you may experience cramps okay just because you don’t have enough calcium in there tetany that twitching as well as abdominal pain and difficulty breathing okay so breathing problems can also occur with that so they kind of cross over to that alkaline problem as well.

There’s one more symptom that’s very interesting as well and that has to do with what calcium does to the clotting factors apparently calcium is involved in clotting and so when you don’t have enough calcium you can get bruising in these little purple dots or specks on your lower legs that can occur that can be hypocalcemia and on the flip side if you have way too much calcium okay that can lead to excessive amounts of clotting and so there’s even studies like postmenopausal women who take a lot of calcium developing strokes and even heart attacks because of the clotting effect.

So, it’s not just vitamin K1 that’s involved with clotting calcium is also involved and without calcium you can’t clot it all and you’ll get a little bleeding going on and that can show up as black and blue marks in certain places in your body now when you have hypocalcemia not enough calcium in the blood yes that can come from low levels of CO2 but it can also come from other things as well when your parathyroid gland is not working when you have a hypo erathyroid gland you can have problems with low calcium in the blood liver problems.

It could also come because you’re not consuming enough vitamin D it could come because you’re not consuming calcium in the diet you have no dairy it could also come from high iron it can also be created from not having enough magnesium because magnesium is also needed to help you absorb calcium out of all the glands in your body the parathyroid is the one that controls calcium and when people have surgery for example to the thyroid gland they remove thyroid gland a lot of times they damage the parathyroid and then they start having problems with that.

So, what does all this had to do with nose breathing nose breathing helps to increase the right amount of CO2 into your body to help then really release that oxygen deep into your cells which is going to help oxygenate your brain and your muscles especially when you exercise so when you sleep when you really need oxygen in fact those people who snore typically snore because they’re a mouth breather I mean try this experiment right now close your mouth breathe your nose and try to mimic snoring with your sinuses.

Now, you could probably do that if you have a stuffy nose but if you don’t have a stuffy nose it’s almost impossible to snore with your mouth closed and because you’re breathing through your nose it’s not just about oxygen in your blood it’s actually about oxygen that actually takes that one step further deep into the cells and if you have more oxygen in the cells you’re going to be less stressed.