Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

These notes are old and were written while reading — they don’t necessarily reflect my current views.

The enlargement of our brains caused our noses to become disfigured. This is the reason why 90% of American adults don’t breath properly. Mouth-breathing is very harmful, inhibits sleep, lessens physical performance and leads to snorting as well as worse health.

The role of oxygen is mostly overestimated, while the role of carbon dioxide is underestimated.

Normally we inhale about 4 times as much oxygen as we need, therefore we should breathe less. Forcing oneself to breathe less is like high altitude training. It increases your capacity to absorb oxygen and therefore lets you stretch that bottleneck.

Furthermore, the modern diet doesn’t require us to chew that much. This leaves our jaws and facial muscles underdeveloped. This has a further adverse effect on breathing.