🫁🌬️ Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
🛒 Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
🫁 A Deep Dive into the Science of a Lost Art
✍️ Journalist James Nestor’s Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art takes readers on a journey to rediscover the power of something we do 25,000 times a day: 😮💨 breathing. Nestor, ✍️ a science journalist who has written for publications like Scientific American, The Atlantic, and The New York Times, explores the profound impact that proper breathing has on our physical and mental health. 📖 The book is a blend of scientific exploration, personal experimentation, and historical investigation into how humanity lost the ability to breathe correctly.
👃 The Core Problem: Mouth Breathing
⚠️ The central premise of Breath is that modern humans have become chronic mouth-breathers, a shift that Nestor argues has led to a host of health problems. 🍟 This change, attributed in part to the increased consumption of processed foods, has resulted in smaller mouths and crowded teeth, which in turn affects our airways. 🤧 The consequences, according to Nestor, include a rise in ailments like snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and allergies.
👨🔬 To illustrate the detrimental effects of mouth breathing, Nestor and a fellow researcher participated in a 20-day experiment at Stanford University. 👄 For the first ten days, they exclusively breathed through their mouths, leading to a dramatic increase in 😴 snoring, the onset of sleep apnea, and a rise in 🩸 blood pressure. 👃 The following ten days were dedicated to nasal breathing, which reversed these negative effects.
🌬️ The Superiority of Nasal Breathing
👍 Nestor advocates for the importance of nasal breathing, highlighting its numerous benefits. 👃 The nose filters, warms, and moistens air, making it easier for the lungs to absorb oxygen. Nasal breathing also increases the production of nitric oxide, a molecule that plays a crucial role in circulation, mood, immunity, and even sexual function.
🔑 Key takeaways on breathing techniques include:
- 👃 Breathe through your nose: It’s more efficient and has numerous health benefits.
- 💨 Breathe less: Counterintuitively, taking slower, fewer breaths can increase oxygen absorption.
- 😮💨 Exhale fully: Proper exhalation is just as important as inhalation for lung capacity and health.
- ⏱️ The ideal breath: Nestor suggests an optimal breathing rate of about 5.5 breaths per minute, which translates to a 5.5-second inhale and a 5.5-second exhale.
🧘 Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science
📜 The book delves into ancient breathing practices like Pranayama from Hindu traditions, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation technique. 🧠 Nestor explores how these ancient practices align with modern scientific understanding of the autonomic nervous system. 💪 He explains that by consciously controlling our breath, we can influence bodily functions that are typically considered involuntary, such as heart rate and body temperature.
🧐 Breath is not without its critics. 📰 Some reviewers have pointed out that much of the information presented is not new and can be found through online searches. 🧪 Others have wished for more rigorous scientific evidence to back some of the claims. 👍 Despite this, the book has been praised for its engaging storytelling and for making a compelling case for the importance of an often-overlooked bodily function.
📚 Book Recommendations
🔬 Similar Scientific Explorations of the Body
- 📖 The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman: This book provides a broader evolutionary context for many of the health issues Nestor touches upon, exploring how our bodies are mismatched for the modern world.
- 📖 Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ by Giulia Enders: Much like Breath focuses on a single bodily function, this book offers a fascinating and accessible deep dive into the science of the digestive system and its profound impact on our overall health.
- 😴💭 Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker: This book is a comprehensive exploration of another fundamental pillar of health that is often neglected in modern society, much like proper breathing.
⚖️ Contrasting Perspectives and Wider Views
- 📖 The Oxygen Advantage: The Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques for a Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter You by Patrick McKeown: While also focused on breathing, this book offers a more performance-oriented approach, with specific techniques for athletes and those looking to optimize their physical capabilities.
- 📖 Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel Lieberman: This book provides a contrasting perspective on health by examining the evolutionary history of physical activity and challenging many modern myths about exercise.
- 🤕🎼🧠 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk: This book offers a different lens on how the body holds onto experiences, focusing on trauma and its physiological and psychological effects, where breathing techniques can be a powerful tool for healing.
🎨 Creatively Related Reads: Lost Arts and Fundamental Skills
- 📖 Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall: This book explores another “lost art” of human movement—natural running—and tells a captivating story of a remote tribe that has maintained this ability.
- 📵 How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell: In a world of constant distraction, this book makes a case for rediscovering the lost art of paying attention and being present in our physical surroundings.
- 📖 Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat: This book breaks down the fundamentals of cooking into four simple elements, empowering readers to become more intuitive and creative in the kitchen, much like Breath aims to do for our breathing.
- 📖 The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full Human Potential by Wim Hof: For those intrigued by the more extreme breathing techniques mentioned in Breath, this book offers a firsthand account and practical guide to the Wim Hof Method, which involves a combination of breathing exercises, cold exposure, and mindset training.
💬 Gemini Prompt (gemini-2.5-pro)
Write a markdown-formatted (start headings at level H2) book report, followed by a plethora of additional similar, contrasting, and creatively related book recommendations on Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. Never put book titles in quotes or italics. Be thorough in content discussed but concise and economical with your language. Structure the report with section headings and bulleted lists to avoid long blocks of text.