Over the past few years, I have accumulated over 500 pages of notes on over 100 scientific articles on breathing. I’ve recently been going back through them as part of a project I’m working on. In this post, I share some of the best "one-liners" I’ve come across. Enjoy!
1. Integrating Breathing Techniques Into Psychotherapy to Improve HRV: Which Approach Is Best?
Frontiers in Psychology (2021)
“For those interested in addressing physiological regulation in psychotherapy, the main implication of this study is that both 6 breath per minute breathing and soothing rhythm breathing increase HRV and therefore be beneficial to use in psychotherapy.”
2. Effect of nasal or oral breathing route on upper airway resistance during sleep
European Respiratory Journal (2003)
“In summary, upper airway resistance during sleep is significantly lower during nasal breathing than during oral breathing.
3. How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2018)
“Taken together, these results confirm that nasal stimulation represents the fundamental link between slow breathing techniques, brain and autonomic activities and psychological/behavioral outputs.”
4. Oxygen-induced impairment in arterial function is corrected by slow breathing in patients with type 1 diabetes
“Slow breathing could be a simple beneficial intervention in diabetes.”
5. Effect of diaphragmatic breathing on heart rate variability in ischemic heart disease with diabetes
Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia (2009)
“Our study supports the view that the intervention in the form of deep diaphragmatic breathing practice would improve the glycemic control and also decrease the cardiac autonomic impairment in IHD patients with diabetes mellitus.”
6. On aprosexia, being the inability to fix the attention and other allied troubles in the cerebral functions caused by nasal disorders
The British Medical Journal (1889)
“Shut your mouth and save your brain.’”
7. Nasal obstructions, sleep, and mental function
“While asleep, shut your mouth and save your brain.”
8. Breathing control center neurons that promote arousal in mice
“This respiratory corollary signal would thus serve to coordinate the animal’s state of arousal with the breathing pattern, leaving the animal calm and relaxed when breathing is slow and regular, but promoting (or maintaining) arousal when breathing is rapid or disturbed.”
9. Review: Can yoga breathing exercises improve glycemic response and insulin sensitivity?
Journal of Yoga & Physical Therapy (2017)
“Thus, decreases in respiratory rates can lead to a decrease in stress and sympathetic outflow, ultimately causing a lower rate of gluconeogenesis and glucose release into the blood stream.”
10. Spontaneous respiratory modulation improves cardiovascular control in essential hypertension
Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia (2007)
“Slow breathing is a straightforward method with no contraindications that offers a rather valid cost-benefit, improving autonomic balance and respiratory control and lowering blood pressure in patients with essential hypertension.”
11. Slow breathing improves arterial baroreflex sensitivity and decreases blood pressure in essential hypertension
“Therefore, one can expect that a modification in the respiratory control would affect also the control of the cardiovascular system. Because the breathing is also under voluntary control, it is theoretically possible to induce such changes by voluntary modification of breathing.”
12. Inclusion of a rest period in diaphragmatic breathing increases high frequency heart rate variability: Implications for behavioral therapy
“With breathing interventions being relatively rapid interventions to implement and also demonstrating a wide range of positive clinical outcomes, breathing interventions warrant closer consideration from healthcare professionals.”
13. Slow breathing reduces sympathoexcitation in COPD
European Respiration Journal (2008)
“In summary, patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease showed sympathetic excitation and depression of the baroreflex. Slow breathing counteracted these changes.”
14. Nasal respiration entrains human limbic oscillations and modulates cognitive function
The Journal of Neuroscience (2016)
“Our findings provide a unique framework for understanding the pivotal role of nasal breathing in coordinating neuronal oscillations to support stimulus processing and behavior.”
15. Nasal respiration entrains human limbic oscillations and modulates cognitive function
The Journal of Neuroscience (2016)
“We also found that the route of breathing was critical to these effects, such that cognitive performance significantly declined during oral breathing”
16. Nasal nitric oxide and regulation of human pulmonary blood flow in the upright position
Journal of Applied Physiology (2010)
“Therefore, upper airway NO could have emerged in bipedal mammals not only to improve gas exchange but also to provide some protection against infection.”
17. Effects of inhaled nitric oxide on regional blood flow are consistent with intravascular nitric oxide delivery
The Journal of Clinical Investigation (2001)
“The most fundamental and important observation of this study is that NO gas introduced to the lungs can be stabilized and transported in blood and peripherally modulate blood flow.”
18. The physiological effects of slow breathing in the healthy human
“Perhaps it is time to refine a breathing technique that optimizes ventilation, gas exchange and arterial oxygenation, maximizes vagal tone, maintains parasympathetic-sympathetic balance and optimizes the amount of cardiorespiratory reserve that could be called upon in times of intense physical or mental stress or activity.”
The Breathing 411
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