investing in your health

Investing, Sleep, and the Most Important Rest in a Day

 

Greetings,

Here are four thoughts, one quote, and one answer (like "Jeopardy!") to consider this week. Enjoy!

 
 
 
 

4 THOUGHTS

As I have been making my way through Patrick McKeown’s latest book, The Breathing Cure, I’ve been reminded of just how powerful all this breathing stuff is. Patrick has sections on breathing for diabetes, epilepsy, hypertension, and more.

Of course, despite the catchy title, breathing does not "cure" any of these ailments. Still, it’s quite remarkable to see all the conditions it can help with.

Upon reflection, this makes a lot of sense if we remember that breathing is like an index fund for health. It invests a small amount into a wide range of the body’s functions, such as lung and heart health, autonomic balance, and sleep.

Over time, these tiny improvements combine and compound into overall better health. And as Patrick’s new book shows, these benefits can be helpful in many different conditions.

The key, however, is to find a breathing practice that is right for you, get started, and be consistent. Here’s to safely investing in your health today.

P.S. Unlike most financial investments, however, you also get an immediate return on investment with breathing. For example, just two minutes of slow breathing can improve autonomic balance and enhance decision-making.

2. Mouth Tape is Passive Income for Your Health

Wealthy people grow their wealth in their sleep.

Healthy people grow their health in their sleep.

Taping your mouth at night is like passive income for your health. It requires only a small upfront investment: putting the tape on before you go to sleep. All of the benefits—like deeper sleep, improved mental clarity, and reductions in sleep apnea—come without any additional effort.

Thus, we might be wise to take the advice of a 1983 paper published in the journal Sleep: "While asleep, shut your mouth and save your brain."

3. Slower Breathing Facilities Eudaimonia via Your Vagus Nerve

"This accumulating body of evidence suggests that slow-paced breathing is a cost-free and readily available way to facilitate eudaimonia by lowering blood pressure, improving psychophysiological well-being, and increasing happiness."

- Christopher Bergland—Slower Breathing Facilitates Eudaimonia…

As you will learn in this article, Eudaimonia is "the condition of human flourishing or living well." So, when a headline implies that slow breathing might help us achieve this, I’m all in. This quick read lived up to its promise. Enjoy!

4. Breathing Tranquility

"Tranquility. It’s the feeling we have when we truly TRUST ourselves. When we know we’re headed in the right direction and we’re able to quit comparing ourselves to everyone else and stop second guessing ourselves every 5 seconds."

- Brian Johnson

Although slow breathing induces a sense of tranquility, that’s not what this made me think of. It made me think of the tranquility that can come when you find the right breathing practice for you.

We’re all different, and there’s no "perfect" method for everyone. Tranquility comes when you find the one that’s right for you and you know you’re headed in the right direction, whether it’s the latest popular technique or not.

My breathing tranquility? Seven seconds in, eleven seconds out. Repeat.

 
 
 
 

1 QUOTE

"Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths."

– Etty Hillesum

 
 
 
 

1 ANSWER

Answer: By consuming oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen and giving off carbon dioxide and water, these two processes are fundamentally alike.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What are combustion and human respiration?

In good breath,
Nick

P.S. Follow me for more financial advice

 
 

Smiling and the Warren Buffets of Breathing

 

Greetings,

Here are 4 thoughts, 1 quote, and 1 answer to consider this week. Enjoy!

 
 
 
 

4 THOUGHTS

1. Breathing is the Only True Compounding Health Benefit

"Growth is driven by compounding, which always takes time."

- Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

Many investors are better than Warren Buffet. But did you know he bought his first stock when he was 11 years old? It’s not as exciting to talk about, but a large portion of his success is simply due to how long he’s been investing.

This is because compounding always takes time. And, just as importantly, it always takes consistency. If Buffet jumped in and out of stocks or randomly took time off, he might not have achieved his success. It took time and consistency.

These factors are also why breathing is the only real compounding health benefit. Most of us won’t stick to one health routine as long as Buffet has stuck with investing. It’s natural to try new workouts, start a new diet, and on and on.

But we’ll always be breathing. If we invest in simple changes like nose breathing 24/7, the benefits will compound (literally) for the rest of our life. Time becomes our friend. Since we will always be breathing, we will always be compounding.

2. Nasal Breathing, Smiling, and The Power of Compounding

"All these methods trained children to breathe through their noses, all day, every day. It was a habit they would carry with them the rest of their lives."

- James Nestor, Breath

In Breath, James Nestor describes tribal people with perfectly straight teeth, free of chronic illnesses, and who rarely got sick. Their secret? Nasal breathing.

This was not just any nasal breathing, though. It was a lifetime of nasal breathing. Nestor tells us that mothers would stand over their sleeping babies and close their mouths if needed. They even resisted smiling (!?!) with their mouths open.

This was compounding at its best. Nose breathing was in their genes, and it was passed down from generation to generation for millennia. The result, as Nestor recounts, was seemingly "superhuman physical characteristics" and perfect health. These tribal people were the Warren Buffets of nose breathing.

3. Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises and Your Vagus Nerve

"When it comes to effective vagal maneuvers, any type of deep, slow diaphragmatic breathing…is going to stimulate your vagus nerve, activate your parasympathetic nervous system, and improve your HRV."

- Psychology Today
Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises and Your Vagus Nerve

I basically highlighted this entire article : ) But what I appreciated most was the author sharing how he uses diaphragmatic breathing in a practical and straightforward way.

Enjoy stimulating your vagus nerve more today!

4. Become A Breathing Genius

"A genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone else around him is losing his mind." – Napoleon

If you want to be a breathing genius, breathe averagely—nasal, slow, low—in stressful situations. Or David Bidler says, we don’t need more complicated breathing techniques; we need to apply simple ones to harder challenges. 

Give it a shot today when you inevitably find yourself in a stressful situation.

 
 
 
 

1 QUOTE

"Those of us who practice breathing exercises today may well pass on more disease resistant genes to our descendants tomorrow."

- Michael J. Stephen MD, Breath Taking

 
 
 
 

1 ANSWER

Answer: This fish can breathe through its gills in water and through its skin and mouth lining on land.

…

(Cue the Jeopardy! music.)

…

Question: What is a mudskipper?

 
 

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.)

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Question: What is 1 trillion?

In good breath,
Nick

P.S. Only once every 257 years