Welcome to this week's update.
Most of what we're told about health.
Takes weeks.
And that is true in a lot of ways.
Eat better for a month,
You might see something.
Train for six weeks,
You'll feel a difference.
Sleep well for a fortnight and things start to shift.
Breathing isn't like that.
Change how you breathe and your nervous system responds in minutes.
Not weeks,
Not hours,
Minutes.
And there's a study I want to talk to you about today that shows it clearly.
In 2023,
A research team led by Joseph Watzow published a paper in the American Journal of Physiology.
They took a group of young,
Healthy adults and did something very simple.
They had them breathe through their nose,
Then through the mouth,
And they measured what happened.
Not over months,
Over minutes,
Two things changed.
Their diastolic blood pressure came down during nasal breathing.
That's the bottom number in the pressure where your arteries are between the heartbeats.
It reflects how relaxed or constricted your blood vessels are at rest.
And their heart rate variability shifted towards the parasympathetic side.
That's the rest and recover branch of the nervous system.
The opposite of fight or flight.
Same people,
Same room,
Same minutes.
The only variable was whether their mouth was open or closed.
Now why would something that simple make a measurable difference?
A few reasons.
The first is pace.
When you breathe through your nose you can't move air as fast.
The nasal passages are narrow and they create resistance.
That resistance slows you down whether you intend to or not.
Mouth breathing has no such limit.
The opening is much larger,
So the breath tends to be faster and shallower and higher in the chest.
And that pattern,
Fast and shallow and high,
Is the exact pattern your body uses under threat.
So even sitting still,
Even doing nothing,
Part of your system reads it as a signal to stay alert.
Second reason is where the breath goes.
Nasal breathing tends to recruit the diaphragm properly,
Low into the belly rather than high up into the chest.
And the diaphragm has a direct relationship with the vagus nerve,
Which is the main pathway of the parasympathetic nervous system.
It's the heart rate's break.
Breathe low and slow through the nose and you're stimulating it every cycle.
The third is nitric oxide.
Your sinuses produce it continuously and you carry it into your lungs on every nasal inhale.
It opens the airways and improves oxygen uptake.
Breathe through your mouth,
And you get none of it.
Here's the part I find most useful about that study.
The effect was measured over minutes,
Which means the reverse is also true.
If you spend your whole day breathing through your mouth,
You're spending your whole day giving your nervous system a low-level signal that something requires attention.
Not a crisis,
Just a hum,
A quiet,
Constant,
Never quite switching off.
And then you get to five o'clock and you feel wrung out.
And you put it down to the meetings or the workload or the commute.
Some of it may be that.
But some of it may be that your body never got the signal to stand down.
That's not a character flaw.
That's not poor resilience.
That's a breathing pattern,
And a breathing pattern can be changed in the moment.
So what does this look like in practice?
The first thing is simply noticing.
Right now,
As you listen,
Is your mouth open or closed?
Most people find it's open more than they expected.
I certainly did before I did all this training.
Reading,
Driving,
Concentrating,
Scrolling.
The draw drops and the mouth follows.
The second thing is closing it.
That's genuinely most of the work.
Lips together,
Teeth slightly apart,
Tongue resting on the roof of the mouth.
If your nose feels blocked,
That often improves within days of consistent nasal breathing.
The airways adapt,
But it's persistently obstructed.
That's worth having it looked at properly by a medical professional.
The third is slowing down.
Once the mouth is closed,
Let the breath be low and quiet.
You shouldn't really be able to hear yourself breathing.
If you want to go further,
Make the exhale longer than the inhale.
4 seconds in,
6 or 8 out.
That's where the vagal effect is strongest.
I want to come back to the thing that struck me about the research.
Minutes.
Not a six-week program.
Not a retreat.
Not something you need to believe in or commit to.
Close your mouth,
Slow the breath,
And your blood pressure and your heart rate variability begin responding almost immediately.
That's a rare thing in health.
Most interventions ask for patience before they give you anything.
This one gives you something on the first try,
Which also means you don't have to take my word for any of it.
Try it for three minutes and notice what happens.
I'm Ross Pollard,
Former paramedic,
24 years of service,
12 of those on helicopter retrieval.
I spent a long time around people whose nervous systems were under genuine pressure,
Including myself.
I've spent the years since learning why the breath does what it does.
The study I've been talking about is Watso and colleagues,
Published in the American Journal of Physiology in 2023,
If you'd like to look it up.
If you'd like to practice,
Have a look at my recordings here on Insight Timer.
And if this was useful,
Please leave a rating,
It means everything.
Take care of yourself and we'll speak next week.
