Perfect Breathing

The Breathing 411 - The Best (and Second Best) Time to Start

 

Welcome to another edition of The Breathing 4.1.1. Below, you’ll find 4 thoughts, 1 quote, and 1 answer (like "Jeopardy") related to breathing. Let’s jump right in.

 
 
 
 

4 THOUGHTS

1. The Best Way to Invest in Your Health

Investing in your breathing is like putting your money in an S&P 500 index fund.

You’re investing a little bit into your body's many essential functions, including your respiration, autonomic nervous system, cardiovascular system, metabolism, and brain.

Suppose you picked only one of these areas to focus all of your attention on. If you got really lucky, it could make a massive difference in your life (like getting lucky with one stock). But with breathing, like with an index fund, you add a little to each bucket. Together, these gains add up to meaningful health benefits.

But unlike the stock market, there are no speculators, and there is no gambling. You just have to show up each day, add a little to your health fund, and enjoy the compounding over time.

2. A Never-Ending Cleanse?

"The waste that is collected by the blood and delivered to the lungs is expelled with the next inhale, but few people realize that 70 percent of the waste that our bodies generate is removed by the breath. Only 30 percent is removed via sweat and elimination."

- Al Lee and Don Campbell, Perfect Breathing

At first glance, that’s a pretty crazy statistic. But, it makes a lot of sense.

Those other ways of removing toxins (sweating, restroom breaks) only occur several times a day (or maybe not at all for sweating). We typically breathe 20,000+ times a day and upwards of 3000 gallons of air.

So, perhaps it is not surprising that our bodies use the breath to eliminate toxins. And maybe what’s more surprising is that optimizing breathing isn’t the first step of any "cleanse."

3. The Best (and Second Best) Time to Start a Breathing Practice

"Build before you have to.

- Build knowledge before you have to.
- Build strength before you have to.
- Build an emergency fund before you have to.

Let internal pressure drive you today, so you can handle external pressure tomorrow."

James Clear, 3-2-1 Newsletter (3 Sep 2020)

This excellent idea reminded me of the ancient Chinese proverb that begins: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. If you want a tree now, you need to have planted it 20 years ago. If you need strength now, you need to have been building it previously.

The Chinese proverb, however, ends like this: The second best time is now.

With COVID-19 shining light on the importance of a healthy respiratory system, we all realized how critical a breathing practice is. With that in mind, I’d like to play off of that idea:

The best time to start a breathing practice was 12 months ago.
The second best time is now.

4. How Breathing Impacts Urination during Sleep

"But if the body has inadequate time in deep sleep, as it does when it experiences chronic sleep apnea, vasopressin won’t be secreted normally. The kidneys will release water, which triggers the need to urinate and signals to our brains that we should consume more liquid. We get thirsty, and we need to pee more."

- James Nestor, Breath, pg. 30

When people switch to nose breathing at night, they commonly notice they need to get up to pee less. Here, James explains why.

Vasopressin "communicates with cells to store more water," he tells us. When you get inadequate deep sleep, this communication is disrupted.

Nose breathing at night, as we know, reduces obstructive sleep apnea, leading to deeper sleep. This helps explain why we wake up less when we switch to nose breathing at night.

(Thanks to 411 reader J. M. for inspiring this thought!)

 
 
 
 

1 QUOTE

“One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing—I was being breathed.”

– Byron Katie

 
 
 
 

1 ANSWER

Answer: The number of scents the human nose can smell.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy music.)

…

Question: What is 1 trillion?

In good breath,
Nick

P.S. Only once every 257 years

 
 

The Breathing 411 - The lung microbiome, David Blaine, and a perfect breath

 

Happy Monday! Welcome to another edition of The Breathing 4.1.1.

Below you’ll find 4 thoughts, 1 quote, and 1 answer (think "Jeopardy").

Thank you for reading!

 
 
 
 

4 THOUGHTS

1. On Practicing the Fundamentals

"If someone at Kobe’s level needs to commit hours to practicing the fundamentals, then so do all of us. Kobe taught me a pivotal lesson that morning. The basics are simple, but not easy."
- Alan Stein Jr., Raise Your Game

Imagine the best basketball player on the planet allows you to watch him practice. Then, he spends hours working on his fundamentals. Nothing fancy, no showboating, just the basics. That’s exactly what Alan Stein saw when he watched Kobe Bryant practice during his prime.

We talk about breathing here, not the highest level of basketball ever played. But the message is the same.

With all the fancy breathing techniques and new approaches, it’s easy to be looking for the "next thing" (—> guilty here <— ). But let’s not forget that it all comes down to the basics. They’re simple, but they’re not easy.

(This idea, like many, was inspired by knowledge from the Optimize Program.)

2. Oxygen Therapy Harms the Lung Microbiome

We’ve discussed how inhaled oxygen can lead to adverse effects in people with diabetes. Specifically, high levels of inhaled oxygen can reduce arterial function. But there might be other problems with oxygen therapy, especially when done over prolonged periods.

For example, your lungs have their own microbiome (pretty neat). And a recent study showed that inhaled oxygen harms this microbiome, leading to an increased risk of lung damage. This idea is especially relevant during COVID-19:

“Upon hospitalization, these patients are administered oxygen in an attempt to bring their levels back up to normal. However, a new study hints that this universal therapy may have unintended consequences via an unexpected source -- the microbiome.”
- ScienceDaily

Read the whole summary from ScienceDaily here:

Oxygen Therapy Harms Lung Microbiome in Mice

3. David Blaine on Breath Holds, CO2, and 45 Minutes Without Air

David Blaine was recently on the Joe Rogan Podcast. They began talking about breath-holds within 5 minutes (this link should take you right to it).

Here are two quotes I loved from it:

"The breath-holding thing is all about like, a CO2 build up in the bloodstream, and it’s about a tolerance level to it…"

And when Joe asks about the panicked feeling you get when holding your breath, David’s reply is:

“That’s not an O2 deprivation. That’s a trigger from a CO2 build-up, which is giving you an alert…"

All of you "breathing nerds" already knew this. But it is little tidbits like these that help the general population learn.

He goes on to talk a little about pre-breath-hold hyperventilation, blacking out, and how we can go 45 minutes without air.

In addition to the breath-hold stuff, it’s a fascinating interview.

4. Is there a Perfect Breath?

“What is the perfect breath? Far from being some noble yet unreachable goal that takes years of rigorous practice to master, a perfect breath is any breath you take for which you are completely and mindfully aware.” - Al Lee & Don Campbell

That definition is, well, perfect. But let’s not forget about James Nestor’s perfect breath, which has deeper roots in science and physiology:

"They discovered that the optimum amount of air we should take in at rest per minute is 5.5 liters. The optimum breathing rate is about 5.5 breaths per minute. That’s 5.5-second inhales and 5.5-second exhales. This is the perfect breath."

 
 
 
 

1 QUOTE

"Your quality of sleep is closely related to how you breathe, both when you sleep and when you are awake."

- Anders Olsson

 
 
 
 

1 ANSWER

Answer: The amount of time it takes blood to circulate around your entire body.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy music.)

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Question: What is one minute?*

(This fun fact came from James Nestor’s Breath.)

 
 

The Breathing 4.1.1. - The Best Breathing Class You Haven’t Heard Of

 

Hello, and Happy Monday! Welcome to another edition of The Breathing 4.1.1.

Thank you for reading this. Putting together the 411 emails each week is one of my favorite things to do, so I appreciate that you’re here reading it.

Now, on to the email. Below you’ll find 4 thoughts, 1 quote, and 1 answer (think "Jeopardy"). Enjoy!

 
 
 
 

4 THOUGHTS

1. Breath Practice versus Breath Training

Breath Practice: Time you spend every day performing breathing exercises that are comfortable and beneficial to you. Think of it as self-care. For me, this would include my 15 minutes of slow breathing first thing in the morning.

Breath Training: Time you spend deliberately pushing yourself to improve your breathing. For example, if you can comfortably box breathe with a 4-4-4-4 rate, you might spend some time at 5-5-5-5 rate as training.

Breath Training is always Breath Practice, but Breath Practice is not always Breath Training.

(This thought was inspired by pages 51-53 of Breathe to Perform.)

2. The Best Way to Make Your Breathing Practice Stick: Celebrate!

"Celebration will one day be ranked alongside mindfulness and gratitude as daily practices that contribute most to our overall happiness and well-being." BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits

Are you trying to make your breathing practice a habit? BJ Fogg, creator of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, says that if he taught you his "Tiny Habits" approach, the first thing he would do is help you celebrate better.

If you spend 1 minute focused on your breath, celebrate it. If you already have a solid practice, try adding some celebration to the end.

I started doing this and love it. After my slow breathing session, I reward myself with a small celebration. After my breath holds, the same thing.

Is it cheesy? Kind of. Is it rooted in science from the leader in habit development at Stanford? Yes. Will anyone know? Nope. Give it a shot.

(See the P.S. below for a great example of celebrating the small stuff.)

3. The Best Breathing Class You Probably Haven’t Heard Of

That celebration idea came from Brian Johnson’s Optimize program (I adapted it for breathing, but it can be used in any aspect of life). If you’ve been following my work for a while, you probably know that Brian Johnson is one of my favorite teachers on the planet. Actually, he is my absolute favorite.

He has an "Optimal Breathing 101" course that is phenomenal. He combines research from all of the best books on breathing into a succinct and practical course. It’s awesome.

He also recently reviewed Breath: The New Science of A Lost Art. Again, phenomenal.

4. Why Are You "Breathing"?

"Don’t mistake the finger pointing to the moon for the moon itself." - Buddhist Saying

Let us not forget that "breathing" is only the finger.

 
 
 
 

1 QUOTE

The first "tiny habit" to build:

“Replace the habit of taking short shallow breaths into the top of the lungs with the practice of taking a full deep breath. Nearly all of the benefits begin with this one simple change.”

- Al Lee, Don Campbell, Perfect Breathing

 
 
 
 

1 ANSWER

Answer: This is the world record for the longest case of the hiccups.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy music.)

…

Question: What is 68 years?*

In good breath,
Nick

P.S. How To Celebrate.

* I found this on dozens of websites. However, I could not find an official record anywhere on Guinness (I even tried some "dorking"). So, I can’t be sure it’s 100% legitimate. But, it’s a fascinating story nonetheless!