This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #641 - Breathing Expert James Nestor

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, it's Theo Vaughn here, and I got a question.

00:00:04.000 When it comes to soda, are you really picking a zero sugar cola that you actually prefer,

00:00:10.160 or are you just settling for what you've always had?

00:00:14.140 That's the question.

00:00:15.580 And I'll say this, when it comes to taste, I find that nothing beats Pepsi Zero Sugar. 0.84

00:00:20.740 But you don't just have to take my word for it, that would be ridiculous.

00:00:25.480 Pepsi has been doing blind taste tests for years.

00:00:30.180 No labels, no brand names, just taste.

00:00:34.420 And last year, they brought back the Pepsi Challenge, and the results were clear.

00:00:39.600 66% of people agreed and said that Pepsi Zero Sugar tastes better than Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

00:00:47.300 In fact, Pepsi Zero Sugar won in every market they tested.

00:00:50.640 So if you're grabbing a zero sugar soda, go with the one people keep choosing

00:00:54.500 when taste is the only thing that matters.

00:00:57.040 Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today.

00:00:59.220 Let your taste decide.

00:01:01.020 Just a reminder, guys, you can now watch video versions of our episodes on Spotify as well.

00:01:08.140 Today's guest is a best-selling author and scientific journalist.

00:01:12.000 He's known for his expertise on breathing and breath work.

00:01:16.060 He just published a new edition of his book, Breath, The New Science of a Lost Art.

00:01:22.060 But I'm going to learn a lot, and so are you.

00:01:25.840 Today's guest is Mr. James Nestor.

00:01:29.940 Shine on me, and I will find a song I've been singing.

00:01:38.160 I'm going to sing it.

00:01:45.860 James Nestor.

00:01:47.000 Good to see you today, brother.

00:01:49.560 Thanks for having me.

00:01:50.480 You bet.

00:01:51.600 You have a new, a revised edition of your New York Times bestseller, Breath, The New Science

00:01:57.580 of a Lost Art.

00:01:58.780 That's it.

00:01:59.640 And you believe that how we breathe can change every aspect of our lives.

00:02:03.020 I don't believe this.

00:02:04.720 I know this.

00:02:05.740 And not every aspect, but many aspects.

00:02:08.180 Many aspects that people would not suspect.

00:02:10.780 So it can change our athletic performance, vastly improve it.

00:02:16.680 It can allow us to sleep better.

00:02:18.280 It can allow us to think better, have better sex, if you're into that kind of thing.

00:02:22.880 A whole bunch of other measurable improvements to our lives, and nobody's really thinking about it.

00:02:29.980 Yeah, I guess it's something that we just don't think about very often.

00:02:32.920 You know, it's odd because it's happening all the time, but it's not on the front of our brains.

00:02:38.820 We don't think about it because we've evolved not to think about it, which is great.

00:02:42.400 I mean, if we had to think about every single breath we were taking all the time, how awful

00:02:46.160 that would be.

00:02:47.540 But it works in the background.

00:02:49.140 And the problem is we develop really bad habits, and those habits start working on the background.

00:02:54.340 And we don't notice that those negative breathing habits are affecting how often we get headaches,

00:02:59.880 how tired we are, the amount of cavities that we're getting, on and on and on.

00:03:04.780 And so people just don't think about it because they don't need to.

00:03:09.040 But if they would start to and start taking conscious control of this, we know it has vast

00:03:13.640 improvements.

00:03:14.420 Is that why you call it a lost art?

00:03:16.660 It's a lost art, yeah, because ancient cultures, you look back in ancient Hindu cultures, ancient 0.99

00:03:21.440 Chinese cultures, even ancient Native American cultures, they all celebrated breathing as a

00:03:27.460 medicine.

00:03:28.400 This was something they really focused on.

00:03:30.500 It was as essential as the food you were eating or the amount of exercise you were

00:03:35.540 getting.

00:03:36.020 Yeah, because it really is a diet for your lungs.

00:03:37.820 It's a diet.

00:03:38.400 We get most of our energy from air, not from food and not from drink, from air.

00:03:44.240 I can prove this.

00:03:45.180 If you hold your breath for six minutes, you're going to go unconscious, right?

00:03:48.920 Your body's going to start to shut down.

00:03:50.460 But you can go without food for how long?

00:03:53.880 40 days or something?

00:03:55.020 You can go without water for maybe a week and a half or so.

00:03:58.540 But if you go without breathing for a few minutes, you're gone.

00:04:03.560 Well, yeah, you don't even think about that, how crucial it is, how crucial of a supplement

00:04:07.260 it is to every moment of our lives.

00:04:09.360 I know you have so many amazing practices that you've taught people, and I want to learn

00:04:12.440 some of those.

00:04:13.180 Take me a little bit through the history of breathing.

00:04:15.520 What were some of the first cultures that really focused on breath work?

00:04:19.960 So around 2,500 years ago, ancient Hindus were doing this.

00:04:24.140 They believed that if you breathed in a certain way, then you could get more prana, more life

00:04:30.180 force into your body.

00:04:31.600 So they developed all of these crazy ways to breathe that we still do today in some

00:04:35.760 classes.

00:04:36.480 The ancient Chinese, at the same time, their practice of qigong can be translated to breath

00:04:42.380 work.

00:04:42.860 That's what it means, or energy work.

00:04:44.680 And so these qigong exercises were built on taking all the energy that's outside of us, 1.00

00:04:51.460 deep within us, right?

00:04:53.240 And concentrating it and using that energy to better our health.

00:04:57.380 So these things have been around for thousands and thousands of years, and probably well before

00:05:01.620 that.

00:05:02.020 But that's the first written document, right?

00:05:05.160 That established how to breathe in certain ways to have certain benefits.

00:05:09.140 Then it seems like it should be something that should be taught in our schools then, that

00:05:11.880 should be just as basic as learning in a spell or to read.

00:05:15.380 It's like, because that's like your lungs reading the universe.

00:05:19.080 It's like your body reading the universe moment to moment.

00:05:21.660 Yeah, there's a lot of things that should be taught at our schools, right?

00:05:24.360 Nutrition, exercise, like staying away from electronic devices at night.

00:05:29.820 So, but I would put, we talk a lot about that, right?

00:05:32.720 At least this is in the public consciousness right now, right?

00:05:35.840 So we're having these discussions.

00:05:37.420 Nobody's talking about breathing.

00:05:38.320 And even though kids, you can look at a kid about, there's a 50% chance they are breathing

00:05:44.420 through their mouth.

00:05:45.360 There's around a 90% chance they are breathing dysfunctionally.

00:05:49.880 And so if you're breathing this way, it's going to affect your ability to focus.

00:05:54.320 It's going to affect your oral health.

00:05:57.440 We've also found if you're breathing dysfunctionally at night, you have something called sleep disorder

00:06:02.400 breathing.

00:06:02.820 It affects how tall you're going to grow and it affects your facial structure, all of

00:06:08.380 these things.

00:06:09.520 And I don't hear anybody talking about this. 0.94

00:06:12.020 I thought that there would, you know, I was so idiotic when this first, when this book 0.96

00:06:16.820 first came out, I was talking about medical schools. 0.97

00:06:19.180 I was blasting this message all around.

00:06:21.100 I was like, oh, I'm really going to make some change here. 0.98

00:06:23.080 It was completely ignorant. 0.89

00:06:25.360 Nothing's changed. 0.84

00:06:26.240 So people have to take this information and do it for themselves because I don't trust,

00:06:31.720 you know, governments to really get this information out the way it should be distributed and accepted

00:06:37.780 and understood.

00:06:39.120 Yeah.

00:06:39.480 Well, they just finished remodeling the food pyramid, you know?

00:06:42.540 So I think it's like, you know, it takes a while for them to change shape, apparently.

00:06:46.500 You said oral hygiene.

00:06:48.380 That's, and you mentioned cavities earlier.

00:06:50.400 Take me through, take me through that.

00:06:51.720 Yeah, so I was reading, a lot of my job is spending time in these really creepy medical

00:06:56.520 libraries, right?

00:06:57.560 And looking through old literature to see what we were saying way back when, to see if

00:07:02.560 it's right today.

00:07:03.820 And so many different dentists and different people in medicine, 100 years ago, 120 years

00:07:09.500 ago, were saying the number one cause of cavities wasn't sugar, it wasn't carbohydrates, it was

00:07:14.700 mouth breathing.

00:07:15.780 Wow.

00:07:16.240 And I said, huh, I guess those guys were just old. 1.00

00:07:19.180 They were stupid, right? 0.99

00:07:20.220 But now, the majority of dentists I talked to who study the airway say the number one 1.00

00:07:24.880 cause of cavities is mouth breathing.

00:07:27.100 If you look at 50% of kids are mouth breathing, that's a high range, but around half of kids

00:07:33.540 are mouth breathing, especially at night.

00:07:35.520 Most kids are mouth breathing at night.

00:07:37.980 To think that this could be the number one cause of their cavities, this is information I would

00:07:42.820 think parents would want to know about.

00:07:44.680 Yeah, it would be on billboards, you would think.

00:07:45.860 I mean, that's huge.

00:07:46.500 And the money that they would save them by taking care of their kids' breathing practices.

00:07:49.300 What's causing kids to mouth breathe that much?

00:07:51.600 So we're born as perfect breathers, right?

00:07:54.800 A healthy baby.

00:07:55.620 Look at a healthy baby.

00:07:56.940 It's a beautiful thing.

00:07:58.460 Every breath, their stomach's moving out.

00:08:01.820 They exhale.

00:08:02.840 The stomach comes in again.

00:08:04.440 They're breathing in and out of their nose because healthy babies learn how to do this

00:08:08.400 because they're breastfeeding so often. 1.00

00:08:10.120 If you're going to be feeding and breathing, that's the only way to do it, right?

00:08:14.540 Right.

00:08:14.760 You have something in your mouth, you have to breathe through your nose.

00:08:16.020 Breathing, breathing in and out of your nose.

00:08:18.060 So we lose this at around the age of five to six when we start going to school and start

00:08:23.240 sitting up and spend 90% of our time indoors.

00:08:26.660 That environment is not conducive to breathing.

00:08:29.640 It's against our evolution.

00:08:31.160 It's against what we have become adapted to be doing.

00:08:34.480 So one of the first thing that happens is our breathing starts going into the mouth because

00:08:42.480 we tend to have allergies, right?

00:08:45.020 Usually happens when a kid gets sick and they get congested.

00:08:48.560 So we have a mouth.

00:08:49.360 It's cool.

00:08:49.940 You can breathe out of your mouth whenever you want.

00:08:52.600 But that becomes the default.

00:08:54.700 This is mouth breathing is supposed to be an emergency pathway, not the default.

00:08:58.520 And then the kid just remains a mouth breather on and on and on throughout their youth.

00:09:02.880 I was one of these kids.

00:09:05.180 And they've found that if you mouth breathe for long enough, it changes your facial shape

00:09:10.360 and it doesn't allow your mouth to grow as wide as it should.

00:09:15.080 And then I guess if like cranially or the shape of our mouths aren't growing fully, then

00:09:19.300 it would affect the way that our teeth are.

00:09:20.980 Yeah.

00:09:21.400 So if your mouth is open all the time, right, you have this upper palate here that tends to

00:09:27.720 grow up.

00:09:28.880 I'm a great example, which is like completely malocclusion, which is why I had teeth 0.97

00:09:34.420 pulled and braces and headgear and all that crap.

00:09:37.840 So when the mouth is too small, teeth have nowhere to grow. 0.95

00:09:41.620 So they grow in crooked.

00:09:42.920 That's why we have crooked teeth.

00:09:44.400 Wow.

00:09:44.600 People say, oh, it's a tooth problem.

00:09:46.620 It's a mouth problem.

00:09:47.840 And if you have a mouth that's too small for your teeth, what's going to happen to the

00:09:51.500 airway?

00:09:51.900 It's harder to breathe.

00:09:52.920 Meanwhile, that upper palate of your mouth keeps growing up and it takes away real estate

00:09:58.860 from your sinus passages, which makes it harder to breathe through your nose.

00:10:02.940 So all these things happen at once.

00:10:04.720 This is not some crazy hypothesis or whatever.

00:10:07.900 This is documented research.

00:10:10.080 This is data.

00:10:10.840 And if you don't believe me, go look at an ancient skull from a thousand years ago,

00:10:14.640 2000 years ago, 10,000 years ago.

00:10:16.720 They all have perfectly straight teeth.

00:10:18.840 All of our ancestors had straight teeth.

00:10:20.840 That's a great point.

00:10:21.700 You never see one of those like archaeological digs and they dig everybody up and they're

00:10:24.940 all wearing braces.

00:10:26.060 You have braces, crooked teeth, mouth breathers.

00:10:28.940 And the big headgear.

00:10:30.180 Like, yeah, you would be, it'd be, look at this guy right here.

00:10:32.700 This is just random skull.

00:10:33.760 First one we pulled up.

00:10:35.040 Beautiful grill.

00:10:36.620 Yeah, beautiful.

00:10:37.320 And check out his, I mean, not only are his teeth straight, but look at the jaw size.

00:10:42.460 So this is an enormous airway that this guy has.

00:10:46.380 Big Macs only in there.

00:10:47.660 It would be, it would be hard for, for him to suffer from snoring and sleep apnea, even

00:10:54.520 some forms of sleep apnea, unless he was morbidly obese, which he wasn't because our

00:10:59.780 ancestors weren't morbidly obese.

00:11:02.220 And so what would, what could a parent do, right?

00:11:04.340 A parent that's their kid is getting to that five, six year old age.

00:11:07.180 What could they do in order to keep their child breathing through their nose or to help

00:11:10.840 encourage that?

00:11:11.760 The smartest thing to do is to look at your child sleeping.

00:11:15.440 And it doesn't matter if this kid is three months old or a year, year and a half, two,

00:11:20.220 three, whatever.

00:11:21.040 If you can hear them breathing, there is a big problem.

00:11:25.220 That means the child is struggling to breathe.

00:11:28.800 And if a baby is sleeping 12 hours a night, right?

00:11:32.020 That's how, how a good baby, that's how often they're sleeping and how much they're sleeping.

00:11:36.680 If they're struggling during that time, it is going to have downstream effects on their

00:11:42.360 brain development, on their physical development, on so many other aspects of their health.

00:11:47.600 And we know this, this is, these are facts.

00:11:50.560 So first of all, listen, if you can hear the breathing, huge red flag.

00:11:55.140 Another thing you can do is you can creep up to the bed or the cradle or whatever and see

00:12:00.940 if they are breathing in and out through the mouth.

00:12:04.840 That's a problem and you have to figure it out.

00:12:07.540 So I can't offer a blanket prescription because every kid is different, but I would highly

00:12:12.740 suggest parents go see a pediatric dentist with experience in airway health.

00:12:18.620 They can assess the kid's issue and they can fix it.

00:12:21.960 And what I've found is if you fix it early enough and allow that mouth to grow the size

00:12:27.700 it's supposed to be growing, guess what happens?

00:12:30.560 No braces, teeth growing straight, no other breathing problems, nasal breather, better

00:12:36.260 facial profile, the musculature and the skeletal develop properly and you have a healthier kid.

00:12:42.320 So if you front load some of that work early, you don't have to worry about any of that stuff

00:12:46.920 that I had to go through and so many other people had to go through later on.

00:12:50.540 Yeah.

00:12:50.720 Some people have to get the real, you know, they'll get the big braces.

00:12:53.940 They'll get, I had a dude, they had like braces that were hooked even to his suspenders.

00:12:57.940 It seemed like it was like this kid is, they're pulling him up and down.

00:13:02.460 You think about what those things do too.

00:13:05.640 And this is something I never thought about it before because I always thought like science

00:13:09.080 research, it's always moving forward.

00:13:10.420 We're getting better and better and better.

00:13:11.940 But what they used to do for kids a hundred years ago, 120 years ago is with a kid with 0.85

00:13:17.500 a mouth that was so small that the teeth were growing and crooked and they had airway problems.

00:13:22.360 What would you do?

00:13:23.240 You would expand the mouth, right?

00:13:25.300 Bigger mouth, teeth growing straight.

00:13:27.520 You can breathe better.

00:13:29.040 But when I was growing up around the 1940s, they industrialized dentistry.

00:13:34.100 And what they did was the same treatment for everybody.

00:13:37.280 Bring you in there.

00:13:38.620 We're going to start pulling teeth and then we're going to take those remaining teeth and

00:13:43.500 we're going to crane them.

00:13:44.740 It's like foot binding, like that old Chinese practice of foot binding, right?

00:13:48.660 We're going to crane them in.

00:13:50.400 So as the rest of the head and face is growing, the mouth gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

00:13:57.080 That's a great point.

00:13:57.580 If you have braces on a young, youngish child, it's holding their teeth in one space while

00:14:02.640 the rest of their face is growing.

00:14:04.060 It's exactly what's happened.

00:14:05.380 And that's why you have so many people with these retronathic profile.

00:14:09.200 I'm a perfect example of this.

00:14:10.800 Baby mouths.

00:14:11.340 My brother never had braces, right?

00:14:14.300 And he has a completely different profile than me.

00:14:16.720 He has a completely different mouth than I do.

00:14:19.320 Oh, he can probably get through a salad in six minutes.

00:14:21.180 He can chomp away.

00:14:22.800 Me, I'm taking a long time, 30, 40 minutes, pissing off everyone around me.

00:14:26.880 But that's just how it is.

00:14:28.420 So you can't go back in time.

00:14:31.140 I can't do anything about this now.

00:14:33.120 But what you can do is educate people now so their kids don't have to go through the

00:14:37.660 braces and headgear tied to your suspenders or your pants or whatever.

00:14:42.660 You don't have to do that.

00:14:44.060 Like, this is a choice.

00:14:45.400 Yeah, this kid was very dangerous.

00:14:46.980 I remember if he sneezed, he would moon everybody.

00:14:50.020 Like, what's wrong with our species that that's what we've come to?

00:14:54.840 And if you look at 200 years ago, no one was getting that.

00:14:58.600 If you look at indigenous cultures right now, people say, oh, this is just human evolution.

00:15:02.940 Our mouths are growing smaller.

00:15:04.400 Look at the Hazda, right, in Africa, who have never had anything industrialized. 1.00

00:15:09.360 They eat a lot of meat.

00:15:11.380 They drink cow's blood.

00:15:13.000 This is their main thing.

00:15:14.180 Their teeth are perfect.

00:15:15.520 And their facial profile is perfect.

00:15:17.480 And their mouths are wide.

00:15:19.340 Bring that up.

00:15:19.860 When did we start to put braces in the children's mouths? 0.58

00:15:23.440 It's pretty fascinating.

00:15:24.460 Thank you so much for coming today.

00:15:25.480 Because you never think about this stuff.

00:15:27.460 But once you're saying that to me, that now you have a growing human and you have their teeth that are confined, it almost seems baffling that you would do that.

00:15:38.060 It almost seems, I mean, it's so restrictive.

00:15:40.380 And also the nervous conditions it must create inside of your body, the stress it must put on your gums, and then the rest of your face, your brain is right there.

00:15:47.080 And you think of, at any time to get this procedure, like the worst time to do it is when you're a teenager. 0.95

00:15:52.820 You're so screwed up already as a teenager.

00:15:55.040 Then you have to go to school like that guy, you know, with all this headgear. 0.99

00:15:59.940 So I don't know why they did it.

00:16:01.880 I mean, I think it was economical.

00:16:03.760 Because you can just bring kids in, you do the same thing over and over and over and over.

00:16:08.060 You also have to think about, like, I have my wisdom teeth removed.

00:16:11.420 I don't know if this was just something, you never question it.

00:16:14.180 It was just something they did.

00:16:17.040 Why?

00:16:18.460 No other species has to have wisdom teeth.

00:16:21.040 None of our ancestors, if that were true, that our ancestors were getting impacted molars and dying of infections or whatever, we wouldn't be here today.

00:16:29.000 Yeah.

00:16:30.700 The practice of using braces to straighten teeth began in the early 19th century.

00:16:33.620 French dentist Christophe Delabarre invented the first modern braces in 1819, a flat metal strip tied to teeth with thread to gradually align them.

00:16:43.040 The term braces emerged in the early 1900s, coinciding with improvements like Edward Engel's brackets and wires.

00:16:50.180 Wow.

00:16:52.000 Oh, that's fascinating.

00:16:53.400 You see that all of these inventions came about at the exact time that industrialized food came into cultures.

00:17:03.020 And this is why our mouths are so small, because we stopped chewing.

00:17:07.000 And so right at the time, you always talk about, at least back in the day, people would talk about, like, British people and their teeth, right?

00:17:14.860 This was some terrible joke people used to make.

00:17:17.880 Oh, yeah, we still make it.

00:17:18.880 You still make it.

00:17:20.120 The kids today are still doing this.

00:17:22.540 But it turns out that England was one of the first countries to adopt an industrialized diet.

00:17:27.540 So their teeth went to hell.

00:17:29.660 Right off the bat, 50% of a population, 5-0% will have crooked teeth after adopting an industrialized diet in a single generation.

00:17:39.800 Unbelievable.

00:17:40.220 People say that evolution, oh, it takes 100,000 years.

00:17:44.000 Like, it takes a million years for things to change.

00:17:45.920 It happens in one generation.

00:17:48.500 Well, if you even look at some of these primordial humans, like you're talking about, or primordial might not be the word, but if you're looking at some of these early human skulls, yeah, you can easily see the difference.

00:17:57.540 And that's fascinating about the group in Africa.

00:17:59.300 Yeah.

00:17:59.620 It's like they're running around complaining about cavities.

00:18:03.300 No, they're not complaining about heart disease.

00:18:05.520 They're not complaining about diabetes.

00:18:06.820 Like, none of these things exist.

00:18:07.940 So all of the modern diseases, not all of them, most of them, because there are some genetic diseases, most of the diseases we're contending with today are diseases of civilization.

00:18:18.400 These are diseases that have been brought upon us by industrialization.

00:18:22.120 And again, this isn't some crazy conspiracy theory.

00:18:24.900 This is standard knowledge.

00:18:26.560 And if you talk to somebody who studies these things in evolution and in biosciences, then this is what they say.

00:18:34.440 And I'm a journalist.

00:18:35.160 I had no idea about any of this.

00:18:36.940 I'm a journalist.

00:18:37.520 I went out and talked to people, and that's how I learned this.

00:18:40.180 And if people have a problem with what I'm saying, go back to the source.

00:18:43.300 These people are at Harvard.

00:18:44.480 They're at Stanford.

00:18:45.360 They're at Yale.

00:18:46.120 Well, what you're saying makes perfect sense to me.

00:18:47.720 It doesn't sound like it's like, you know, you're like you're trying to convince me of some astronomical idea.

00:18:51.720 I mean, once you sound it out and you put it in front of me, it gets clear as day for me.

00:18:57.000 In different interviews, I've seen you speak a lot about different breathwork exercises.

00:19:01.040 What is a simple breathwork exercise that I could start with that would help me overall?

00:19:08.060 It will bore you to tears if I tell you what it is.

00:19:10.900 And that's the problem with so much of this stuff is it's so simple that anyone can do it at any time.

00:19:16.860 People are like, hey, I want the secret, man.

00:19:19.200 I want the medicinal stuff that you discovered in a cave in the Himalayas.

00:19:23.840 I wish it were that easy.

00:19:25.700 So I can give you a very simple one that's probably been the most study out of any of these.

00:19:30.820 Most of us tend to breathe too much.

00:19:32.940 We tend to breathe up into our chest.

00:19:34.760 We tend to breathe through our mouths.

00:19:36.960 And when we breathe this way, we send stress signals to our brain.

00:19:43.640 And so we stay in this state of sympathetic stress all day long.

00:19:48.260 So that increases your risk of diabetes, all of these other heinous problems, autoimmune issues.

00:19:54.580 It's inflammation you're causing yourself for sure.

00:19:56.740 Constant inflammation, right?

00:19:58.760 Constant, constant stress.

00:20:01.500 So what you have to do is go back to the way that you were supposed to be breathing,

00:20:06.640 to the way that nature intended you to breathe.

00:20:09.880 And so a very simple practice that a lot of people start off with is you can place the palm of your hand

00:20:15.940 just below your belly button, right?

00:20:18.700 And you're going to breathe in through your nose.

00:20:21.700 And you want to feel your belly expand.

00:20:25.280 And as you breathe out, you want to feel it come back in.

00:20:29.200 Breathe out through my nose?

00:20:30.760 I'm sorry, through your nose, in and out through your nose.

00:20:33.120 So as you breathe back out, you should feel the belly contract.

00:20:37.920 So you can actually do this.

00:20:39.220 Around 90% of people can't.

00:20:40.860 They aren't comfortable enough with their guts to do this.

00:20:44.020 So if you do that at around five seconds in, five seconds out, through the nose.

00:20:49.800 Okay, you want to take me through it?

00:20:51.040 I can.

00:20:51.760 Yeah.

00:20:52.140 If you don't mind, James, thank you.

00:20:52.700 Yeah, yeah, just keep your hand there and make sure when you're inhaling that that hand is coming out a little bit.

00:20:59.040 So you're just going to start in a couple seconds.

00:21:02.680 You're exhaling now.

00:21:03.860 And out two, three, four, five.

00:21:19.260 And in two, three, four, five.

00:21:25.260 And out two, three, four, five.

00:21:31.620 And you just keep with that rhythm.

00:21:34.560 What you're doing is you are sending your brain and body signals that you are relaxed, that you are safe.

00:21:43.540 When your body gets these signals, it can help restore itself and recover itself so much more quickly.

00:21:51.680 If you have high blood pressure, there's a good chance your blood pressure is going to go down.

00:21:55.700 The stress hormones are going to decrease.

00:21:58.280 This is the way we're supposed to naturally be.

00:22:01.520 Wow.

00:22:01.740 In that state, we're not supposed to be hunched over with our shoulders tense.

00:22:07.320 Sometimes, you know, when you're in a stressful situation, when you're about to fight someone, when you have to defend yourself, stress is an amazing thing.

00:22:14.560 But most of the time, our bodies are built, they need time to recover and to heal all the damage that we inflict on them.

00:22:22.060 And this is called coherent breathing because it puts these different systems of your body into the state of coherence.

00:22:29.460 Wow.

00:22:29.660 And that's really how I feel right now.

00:22:33.000 I almost feel like I got a little high.

00:22:35.020 Yeah.

00:22:35.400 You just wait.

00:22:36.480 There's some other stuff we can do that will definitely get you high.

00:22:39.160 Yeah.

00:22:39.800 Crack open a 12-pack of that magic air, baby.

00:22:42.660 You know, that's what I need.

00:22:43.900 You're getting proper blood flow to your brain.

00:22:46.720 So they've found that you'll make better decisions.

00:22:49.540 You can regulate your emotions so much more efficiently.

00:22:53.320 It's great for heart health, blood pressure.

00:22:56.280 And again, this isn't like some woo-woo thing.

00:22:58.280 You don't need to go out and buy a pill.

00:23:00.080 You don't need to subscribe to anything.

00:23:02.820 This is something that is available to everybody.

00:23:05.700 So people who think these breathing practices are, oh, I don't like yoga.

00:23:10.160 You know, I don't like jewelry or turquoise or whatever.

00:23:12.960 This is a biological function that you can do wherever.

00:23:16.600 If you're driving right now, you can try to breathe at around five seconds in, five seconds

00:23:23.040 out, and you can feel what happens.

00:23:25.880 I feel calmer right now.

00:23:27.260 And I even smiled a second ago.

00:23:28.560 It just came into my face.

00:23:29.840 I saw that.

00:23:30.140 You know, you did?

00:23:31.260 That's cool.

00:23:32.020 Yeah.

00:23:32.080 For one second.

00:23:32.960 Yeah.

00:23:33.280 But hey, for me, that's a lot.

00:23:35.240 That's a lot of a day where I'm just naturally feeling good.

00:23:38.040 And I'll tell you this, even momentarily after, and even it started to make me want to just

00:23:44.140 keep doing it as opposed to like, am I breathing in my nose?

00:23:48.200 Am I breathing in my mouth?

00:23:49.020 Just not consciously.

00:23:49.980 It started to like, I almost want to do it again and again, because it feels good.

00:23:57.580 Well, here's the trick with these things.

00:23:59.180 Like we don't need another box to check every day.

00:24:01.720 You know, we got to, oh, did I get my protein?

00:24:03.640 Did I sleep by eight hours?

00:24:05.080 Did I walk 20 minutes?

00:24:06.960 All of that.

00:24:07.580 What you want to do is to practice these techniques enough, right?

00:24:13.040 That this becomes your new default.

00:24:15.900 This becomes your unconscious breathing.

00:24:19.220 That can take a couple of months to do.

00:24:21.960 They found some researchers here were helping 9-11 victims, you know, 20 years ago.

00:24:27.620 When was it?

00:24:28.160 20, 24 years ago.

00:24:29.740 And they had this terrible condition called ground glass lungs because they inhaled all of

00:24:35.360 these pollutants, right?

00:24:36.960 When the towers went down and nothing worked for them.

00:24:40.420 Pharmaceutical drugs didn't work.

00:24:41.940 Nothing worked except this practice was more effective than anything else because it allowed

00:24:47.960 air to circulate properly in the lungs and allowed them to expel all the crap in their lungs.

00:24:54.620 So not only mentally are you sharper, are you calmer, is your nervous system downregulated

00:25:00.780 to a healthy spot, but also physically it can help your lungs be healthier.

00:25:07.160 Can you bring that up, Nick?

00:25:09.280 Wow, this is so interesting.

00:25:10.920 Ground glass lungs refers to a radiological finding on CT scans showing hazy opacities.

00:25:19.920 Is that the right way to say that?

00:25:21.520 Opacities.

00:25:22.120 Opacities, thank you.

00:25:23.340 In the lungs, often linked to inflammation or fibrosis from inhaling toxic dust at ground

00:25:27.620 zero after the 9-11 attacks, the massive collapse of the World Trade Center has released a plume

00:25:32.820 of pulverized concrete, asbestos, glass fibers, heavy metals, and jet fuel combustion byproducts

00:25:39.120 that coated lower Manhattan.

00:25:41.120 Responders and nearby residents who breathe the dust develop persistent lung damage, including

00:25:44.840 ground glass opacities.

00:25:47.900 Wow.

00:25:48.740 The dust contained over 2,500 contaminants, 50% construction debris, 40% glass fibers,

00:25:55.380 9% cellulose and asbestos, silica, lead, mercury.

00:26:01.340 Oh, my God.

00:26:02.900 The witch's brew was highly alkaline and caustic, equivalent to Drano in pH.

00:26:11.580 Wow.

00:26:12.840 So the guy who started doing this, Richard Brown, is right down the street from us here.

00:26:16.860 He's at Columbia, and he's the one that was dealing with all these people from 9-11 who

00:26:23.060 had PTSD, ground glass lungs, and he published this too, you know, of how effective it was.

00:26:30.480 So that when COVID came around, this was the go-to, breathing this way for so many people.

00:26:36.120 I've had COVID like three times, four times, right?

00:26:39.740 And this did more for me than anything.

00:26:42.460 That's subjective.

00:26:43.460 There wasn't a control version of me.

00:26:45.500 But this is something I've heard from hundreds and hundreds of people, is if you don't lay 0.98

00:26:49.680 on your back, you get COVID, you're coughing, right? 1.00

00:26:52.480 You feel like crap.

00:26:53.580 If you lay on your stomach and breathe at this rate, around five to six seconds in, five 1.00

00:26:59.140 to six seconds out, right?

00:27:00.900 It can really help.

00:27:02.300 And it's free and available for everyone.

00:27:04.240 So why wouldn't you do it? 0.64

00:27:05.620 There's no negative side effects to feeling better and getting more crap out of your lungs.

00:27:09.840 There's still something, though.

00:27:10.800 And even when you say, like, it's so funny, some of the most simplest things.

00:27:13.520 We want something.

00:27:14.620 It's like, we want to, well, I need to buy this or nah, but I'll go get that.

00:27:18.160 Or I'll do a five-hour energy.

00:27:19.480 Like, we always want something else.

00:27:21.400 Isn't that kind of interesting that that's how we operate?

00:27:23.860 I think it's, a lot of people are apprehensive by things that are free and easy, right?

00:27:28.200 You think about what's happened to nutrition, which is insane.

00:27:31.520 If you look at our ancestors or the people that are actually living to be 110 years old,

00:27:36.280 they don't know what a calorie is.

00:27:38.080 They're not dividing fats and proteins. 0.89

00:27:40.720 They're not taking supplements, right?

00:27:43.340 But they're eating in line with what the seasons provide for them in their backyards.

00:27:50.180 So I think that breathing's the same.

00:27:51.960 There's so many people that are trying to overcomplicate this thing by saying,

00:27:55.520 you need to breathe these five different techniques in the morning,

00:27:58.700 then do the same thing at night, and then you need to subscribe to my service

00:28:03.380 where I'm going to dole out other techniques.

00:28:05.600 Yeah, I'm going to mail you a jar of my breath or something.

00:28:08.120 Yeah, people do.

00:28:10.340 So I think by keeping it simple and going back to it,

00:28:15.820 we got so sick because we moved away from nature.

00:28:19.360 And the way to get healthy is to move back into that state

00:28:22.960 in which our bodies understand the world and understand the inputs.

00:28:27.860 We're not used to this world.

00:28:30.160 We haven't been around it long enough to truly adapt.

00:28:34.180 And it's changed so fast, too.

00:28:35.480 I think that's part of it.

00:28:36.120 It's changing so fast.

00:28:37.180 Yeah, and I think you're right, the people who are leading a lot of our influences,

00:28:42.320 it's very industrialized, which I think has had a lot of negative effects.

00:28:46.800 But I think we are at kind of like a renaissance right now

00:28:48.920 where people are really focusing on this type of thing.

00:28:51.360 So I'm so grateful that we're having this conversation right now.

00:28:55.640 It's February, everyone, and that's when the truth shows up.

00:29:00.880 January had the vibes.

00:29:02.860 February has got the receipts.

00:29:05.020 This is usually when the gym gets quiet, the planner goes blank,

00:29:09.940 and that big goal you had starts feeling kind of heavy.

00:29:14.160 Starting a business can feel like that, too.

00:29:16.560 You realize that the idea part was fun, but now there's real stuff.

00:29:21.460 Decisions, set up, logistics, panic time.

00:29:25.740 That's where Shopify helps.

00:29:28.100 It breaks the big scary thing into smaller doable steps.

00:29:31.380 If you're starting out and feeling overwhelmed, that's normal.

00:29:36.880 Shopify was built for people figuring it out as they go,

00:29:40.720 not just giant companies with teams of lawyers.

00:29:44.880 Shopify also lets you sell directly on social TikTok, IG, YouTube, Facebook.

00:29:49.920 You don't have to be an expert on every platform.

00:29:52.160 They make it pretty much click, click, done.

00:29:54.660 Don't be the person who says, yeah, this is the year I'm going to start something and then never does.

00:30:01.860 Be the person who actually starts.

00:30:04.740 Go to Shopify.com slash Theo and put some motion behind it, twin.

00:30:10.600 That's right.

00:30:11.440 Shopify.com slash T-H-E-O.

00:30:14.440 Best of luck.

00:30:15.440 This episode is brought to you by Sonic.

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00:31:19.780 Was there anything else on that World Trade glass?

00:31:22.440 That's unbelievable to me.

00:31:23.940 And can you write down the name of that author too, Zach?

00:31:27.080 Inhaling the dust led to WTC lung injury with firefighters losing up to 12 years of lung function.

00:31:33.460 70% of workers showed respiratory decline by 2004.

00:31:37.400 A Mount Sinai analysis found asbestos fibers in carbon nanotubes in responders' lungs.

00:31:43.760 Wow, that's fascinating.

00:31:45.300 What would be like a more difficult breathing exercise?

00:31:48.740 If we had an hour, I could get you extremely high with something.

00:31:52.200 But we don't.

00:31:52.920 So we're going to have to do some quick stuff here.

00:31:54.860 Okay.

00:31:55.080 If you are driving, if you are near water, do not do this.

00:32:00.080 Okay?

00:32:00.460 Use common sense.

00:32:01.780 I just want to make that super clear.

00:32:03.680 Yeah, I want to say that too.

00:32:04.740 Do not do it.

00:32:05.360 Okay.

00:32:05.700 Do not do it.

00:32:06.640 This is just for demonstration purpose only, right?

00:32:09.520 You're sitting in a chair.

00:32:10.700 We're here.

00:32:11.240 It's cool.

00:32:11.680 You can try this.

00:32:12.680 This is a pranayama technique.

00:32:14.320 Okay.

00:32:14.540 That when I am really jet-lagged, which is most of my waking hours, I've noticed, when

00:32:19.860 I need energy, when I need instant clarity, you can do this.

00:32:24.360 It's a little weird.

00:32:25.120 You wouldn't want to do it in public.

00:32:27.140 But here we are, and I think you want to get a little weird, so why not?

00:32:31.220 Let's do it.

00:32:32.160 Okay.

00:32:32.460 Let's do it.

00:32:32.860 So the concept here is we are going to be breathing an inhale through the nose.

00:32:39.240 Then you're going to be holding without exhaling.

00:32:41.380 Then you're going to be breathing in again.

00:32:42.780 Okay.

00:32:42.960 Then you're going to be holding.

00:32:43.660 Then you're going to be breathing in.

00:32:44.920 You see where this is going.

00:32:46.080 You're going to keep doing that until you reach the very top of your breath, until you

00:32:50.640 cannot fit any more air in your lungs.

00:32:53.260 Okay.

00:32:53.940 Then you're going to squeeze as hard as you can. 0.92

00:32:56.620 You're going to squeeze your fists, squeeze your toes, squeeze your butt, squeeze your stomach, 0.51

00:33:02.280 squeeze everything, and try to bring it inward towards the center of your abdomen. 0.74

00:33:08.540 Okay.

00:33:08.840 Just focus on bringing that, and then we're going to do it again.

00:33:12.080 We're going to do this a few times.

00:33:13.740 Okay.

00:33:14.080 Okay.

00:33:14.400 The whole thing will probably take a minute.

00:33:16.760 Okay.

00:33:17.200 But we'll see what happens.

00:33:18.660 So just relax.

00:33:19.520 Relax your shoulders.

00:33:21.880 Take an easy breath in and an easy breath out.

00:33:24.920 We're going to take one more easy breath in, easy breath in and easy breath out.

00:33:33.740 And now we're going to go.

00:33:35.080 We're going to breathe up, breathe, hold, breathe, hold, breathe, hold, breathe, hold.

00:33:44.460 More, more, more, more, more, more all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, squeeze

00:33:47.640 everything.

00:33:48.160 Hold your breath.

00:33:48.700 Squeeze everything.

00:33:49.640 Squeeze everything.

00:33:50.520 Keep squeezing.

00:33:52.460 Squeeze harder.

00:33:53.680 Let's go.

00:33:54.680 Keep squeezing.

00:33:55.860 Keep squeezing.

00:33:56.720 Let it go.

00:33:58.280 Breathe in.

00:34:00.360 Hold, breathe in, hold, breathe in.

00:34:03.420 Hold, breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, breathe in.

00:34:05.800 All the way up.

00:34:06.520 Squeeze everything.

00:34:07.440 Squeeze everything.

00:34:08.500 Squeeze everything.

00:34:09.260 Keep holding your breath.

00:34:10.100 We're going to do it longer now. Keep squeezing. Keep holding. Keep squeezing. Keep going. Keep

00:34:16.420 going. Lift everything towards your stomach and let it out. We're going to do one more. Okay,

00:34:21.740 ready? Breathe in, hold, breathe in, hold, breathe in, breathe in, breathe in, breathe in,

00:34:28.260 breathe in all the way up and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, hold your breath,

00:34:32.220 hold your breath, hold your breath, hold your breath, squeeze everything towards your stomach.

00:34:36.080 Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. You got five more seconds. Five, four, three, two,

00:34:43.760 one. Let it go.

00:34:59.960 I can feel my heart racing.

00:35:06.080 How do you feel different?

00:35:13.560 I feel pretty chill overall.

00:35:20.240 Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't take a breathalyzer right now, probably. I definitely feel a little bit buzzed up.

00:35:27.740 So what you did right there, this is a very short version.

00:35:33.620 It's better to have a longer amount of time. We can go through the whole process. It doesn't make

00:35:39.260 for very good podcasts or radio, so we're not going to sit and listen to you, be silent for 20 minutes

00:35:45.360 breathing. But the point of this is you're purposely stressing your body out. You're taking control of

00:35:52.500 your nervous system and you're cranking it up to 11 and you're compounding all of that stress. Then

00:35:58.660 you're releasing it. So you're letting your body know and your brain know that you're in control

00:36:04.120 of that stress. You turn it on, you turn it off. You turn it on, you turn it off. What most of us do

00:36:12.920 throughout the day is we have this chronic low-grade stress. It's always there. It's buzzing around.

00:36:19.280 We never let it go, right? So we never blow it out, but we never truly relax. And this is one of the

00:36:26.460 main reasons so many of us are so sick. Again, this is not some crazy hypothesis.

00:36:33.140 Well, stress is inflammation.

00:36:34.560 It's chronic inflammation. Chronic stress is one of the leading causes of so many issues. So if you spend

00:36:41.500 a few minutes a day, you don't have to do the weird stuff, right? There's other things you can do

00:36:45.880 in public. No one realizes you're doing this. It's your own private little secret

00:36:50.420 that you can do. And just to have that pressure release throughout the day. A lot of people use

00:36:57.760 yoga or exercise or weightlifting. All of those things are awesome. They work great,

00:37:02.220 but it's not always available to you. Your breathing is always available to you.

00:37:06.380 Amen.

00:37:06.780 You can do that anytime.

00:37:08.220 Yeah. I mean, even just you reminding me to breathe in and out through my nose, that simple reminder

00:37:13.740 it just feels good. It just feels better. It's just like, yeah, no one's reminding me of that

00:37:21.440 probably ever in my life. You know, it just doesn't happen. I have to pee really fast.

00:37:25.960 Yeah.

00:37:26.040 And then I'm going to tell you about the experience that I had some breathwork first.

00:37:29.200 That also happens with some of these breathwork devices. I should have warned him.

00:37:35.420 Yeah. I just feel happier. I just feel a little bit happier even just going through this.

00:37:38.900 So yeah, thanks for the reminders. It's funny. I almost want to keep doing it. It's almost like

00:37:45.460 having a sip of coffee. It's like, I want to keep doing it because it feels good. I took a

00:37:50.720 breathwork session one time with actually a comedian, this girl, Blair Sochi, who's very funny. And she

00:37:58.340 also on the side does breathwork exercises with people. And she took me through this experience one

00:38:04.020 time. I was laying down. I can't remember exactly what it was. I feel like it was some of what we

00:38:08.720 just did, but it was for about maybe 30 minutes. And at the end, I like just tears were, I mean,

00:38:16.680 I had like one of the biggest, like just kind of emotional releases that I've had, um, outside of

00:38:23.020 an experience with drugs, like an ayahuasca or something like that, or mushrooms. Um, it was

00:38:27.980 super profound. Um, there's a lot of videos out there of people having, uh, profound experiences

00:38:34.380 after breathwork videos of people were just really breaking down after breathwork. Have

00:38:38.460 you, I'm sure you've seen a lot of this. I've seen a lot of it online, but I've also seen a lot

00:38:42.880 of it in, in person. And the question from a, from a journalist standpoint that I have is how much of

00:38:50.400 this is the breathwork and how much of it is these people trying to show off that they're really having

00:38:56.500 a bigger breakdown than the person next to them. Oh, and it's so funny because people get competitive.

00:39:02.660 You get in those spaces or you see a video and then you feel like you have to go replicate that.

00:39:07.720 That's fast. I agree with that. This is one that, uh, Oh, Zach just pulled one. Yeah. You want to play

00:39:12.920 this one? Here's one that, uh, Oh, that one seems, what video is this? Oh, keep going. Oh, that's it.

00:39:29.020 That's all you need. Okay. Do you really want to see what comes next after that? No, no, no,

00:39:35.200 I'm not allowed. We have blockers on this computer. So, uh, yeah, I can't be watching stuff like that.

00:39:39.820 Um, what are some of the experiences that you've seen with people that are experiencing serious

00:39:43.720 breathwork? Sorry. I thought that was going to be better than that. Well, I have a, that was pretty

00:39:47.280 good. If people see that, like pretty, pretty good. Yeah. I just couldn't tell if that was super real

00:39:51.160 or not. I couldn't tell what was actually going on. Maybe you would just put that in my head too,

00:39:54.940 because that does happen a lot. Um, but my own experience from my own, it was like, yeah, it was

00:40:00.280 just tears flowing out of me. Just such a release, just such a release. And I could, it felt like it came

00:40:05.680 out of the fabric of my existence. That's what was really fascinating. What have you seen

00:40:09.720 regarding like trauma release, uh, and breath work? Well, we all have these repressed emotions,

00:40:14.620 you know, especially dudes, like we, we got to hold it back the whole time. And once you loosen up

00:40:19.700 enough, once, once your body, you know, but, but that's, what's allowed us to survive. You,

00:40:26.880 you have to be able to kick in that mode. Otherwise you can't run from a tiger, you know,

00:40:32.080 or fight off a warring tribe. So that's part of our evolution. We're not meant to stay in it

00:40:36.960 all day long though. We're meant to, when we're chilling out, meant to be truly relaxed and we

00:40:43.100 don't. So sometimes in these breath work sessions, just like in ayahuasca or other, um, you know,

00:40:49.100 drug sessions, or, or when you're hallucinating for some other reason, you tend to loosen up,

00:40:54.380 right? And all the stuff comes out. So I've seen a whole bunch of, whole bunch of stuff.

00:40:59.660 Has it blown your mind almost sometimes?

00:41:01.360 Well, my, the critical part of me is, is what's the physiology behind this? What's

00:41:05.980 actually happening? And so-

00:41:07.920 That's a great question. Yeah. When you're doing the breathing exercise and then the

00:41:10.160 trauma release occurs, what, what is happening?

00:41:12.220 So I can, I can tell you what, what we know. We know that when you over-breathe a lot of these,

00:41:17.420 my hunch is that breath work you did. It's probably pretty intense.

00:41:20.820 Yeah.

00:41:21.060 Right. Okay.

00:41:21.760 Yeah. It was fast. It was like a lot of in out, in out, in out, in out.

00:41:24.840 So when we're over-breathing like that, we're actually inhibiting blood flow to the brain.

00:41:29.320 And if we over-breathe long enough, we can inhibit around 40% of the blood flow to the brain.

00:41:35.320 So the brain in some ways thinks it's dying.

00:41:38.420 Ah, so it's a DMT release of some sort?

00:41:40.500 People say that it's never been measured. I tried to measure that for, for this book. And I was told

00:41:45.520 by the researchers, they could not measure it because it's so, so minute.

00:41:48.860 That kind of makes sense.

00:41:49.760 When people say, oh, this is my DMT breathing, that's not based on, it's good marketing, but it's

00:41:54.700 not based on any measurements. So, so this is a way of like tricking your

00:41:59.300 brain that, that something very wrong is going on. And if you stay there for long enough,

00:42:04.500 it starts to short circuit in some ways that can be beneficial. You start thinking differently,

00:42:09.880 right? You start hallucinating. I don't know if you were hallucinating, but that's, that's

00:42:13.480 very common. And all of these safeguards that you have built up, especially around your nervous

00:42:18.680 system and emotion tend to release in certain ways. So, so we know it absolutely affects your

00:42:25.460 physiology. I had the one, uh, bit of research, actually, there were many in the book that did

00:42:31.740 not make it in is I went to a lab at university of California, San Francisco and breathed for,

00:42:37.860 for an hour, just crazy hyperventilation as they had a catheter out and we're recording my,

00:42:43.360 my blood pH. And they had to stop it because according to their measurements, my blood was so

00:42:50.220 alkaline, which means I was blowing off so much CO2 that I should have been in an emergency room. 0.99

00:42:55.880 Damn. This guy is just like, this is the weirdest thing. You should not be doing this. This is 0.99

00:43:00.740 unhealthy. And yet I felt great, right? Because our bodies are meant, meant to be flexible. So we know

00:43:06.920 something physiological is happening on the other end, you know, are people, people claim that they're

00:43:13.020 able to revert to their, their caveman cells or revert to different animals. I think that some of that

00:43:18.560 is where it gets a little showy. I was in one like two hour long session where you just hyperventilating

00:43:24.040 for two hours and you know, some woman. Yeah. Prove it if you're an animal, get out there and 1.00

00:43:28.020 eat some birds. No, this guy was doing it. Like he, he went, he was, he was, I shouldn't laugh. He was

00:43:35.940 having his, he was having his own release. Respect that. That's a beautiful thing. But some, you know,

00:43:41.480 woman turned into a baby. And I think this other guy was like, well, I'm going to, I'm going to turn into

00:43:45.440 the wolf. And, and he was, he was prowling the room and snorting at people and they had to tackle

00:43:53.060 him, hold him down. Really? So I wanted to think in my, you know, I was watching this. Probably a

00:43:59.200 South Carolina fan. I mean, I don't know that information. This isn't California. Anything

00:44:04.860 goes. So, you know, it's, it's like, yeah, if some guy is bree, if I'm in a breath workplace and

00:44:11.500 some guys over there huffing and puffing, and then he's like, I'm going to blow your house down or

00:44:15.960 whatever, if he starts getting weird like that, like three little pig in me or whatever, dude, 0.72

00:44:19.820 I'm calling the cops, bro. Just because we're in a breath work seminar doesn't mean you can be

00:44:24.840 wolfing around and pissing in the corner or whatever. No. And, and what was interesting to me,

00:44:30.460 I said, well, what if this is real? What if this guy's really then full respect? Like he's,

00:44:35.920 he's reached a pinnacle. I will never reach the same time. This was after like five minutes,

00:44:41.480 where there's not a lot going on. So part of me was, was thinking, yeah, he's just a Raiders

00:44:47.080 fan. Probably. Yeah. He probably a little, little showiness, you know, I don't know what's better

00:44:52.980 than a wolf. Like, I don't know who was going to come after him to, to try to one up his, his wolfdom.

00:44:58.620 He picked a good animal. I do remember though. My, also my extremities got very tight. Yeah. What is

00:45:03.960 that? I do, when I did the breath and I had that release, I remember, yeah, just, and I felt so great

00:45:08.520 after because it was just such a release. It felt like almost the sediment, like say, if you looked

00:45:14.100 through archeologically, like through the ground and you saw like this sedimentary rock stuff that

00:45:18.200 was really packed down in there, that's what it felt like. There was like fissures in that inside

00:45:22.240 of me. And I, but I do remember my muscles and everything got extremely tight after, after a lot

00:45:27.320 of the breathing. That's a hundred percent real, right? That's not psychosomatic. What, what happens

00:45:32.300 is a lot of people in breath work, at least I was, I was told that they told me like, cause I kept

00:45:38.540 feeling this, my hands like turn into claws. You're like, what the hell is going on? And, and so they

00:45:45.300 kept saying like, you're reverting back to your primitive self. I was like, okay, but you know,

00:45:51.900 what, what's actually happening measurably to, to our bodies. And what I found is this is a,

00:45:57.940 a phenomenon that is called tetany. And what happens when you over breathe this, this amount,

00:46:05.840 you start to lose calcium. Okay. Calcium gets bound to albumum. And once that happens, you need

00:46:13.240 calcium for proper nerve and muscle function. So we don't have enough calcium in order to function

00:46:20.220 properly. And so things start to shut down. So at these really intense sessions, you can't open your

00:46:26.640 fit as hard as you try. You can't, they turn into these claws, which is really creepy. If you don't

00:46:32.380 know that this is happening, it's like you're in some cult situation where everyone's reverting to

00:46:38.040 some, you know, lower level of, of hell and, and developing these claws. But this is a phenomenon

00:46:43.940 that is measurable. It's called. It's called tetany. And the same thing happens to, to your toes.

00:46:49.540 Tetany? T-E-T-A-N-Y. 1.00

00:46:53.560 That's just interesting. I never even heard of that, but I've had that thing happen to me a

00:46:58.020 couple of times in breathing. Tetany is a medical condition involving sustained involuntary muscle

00:47:03.000 contractions or spasms due to hyper excitability of nerves or muscles. It often stems from electrolyte

00:47:09.540 imbalances like low calcium, low magnesium, or alkalosis. Huh.

00:47:13.300 To do this on, on occasion is fine, right? But if you are constantly over breathing, which is a

00:47:19.760 problem that so many people suffer from, they wonder why their fingers are constantly numb or

00:47:25.840 cold, why their toes are cold, right? Why they are like this. They're causing this permanent imbalance

00:47:33.060 of these electrolytes in their bodies. And the body can compensate because it's going to keep you

00:47:39.800 alive, but that doesn't mean it's going to keep you healthy. Ah, I just don't remember that. This

00:47:44.180 is, that's such a visceral thing. So I just remember that once you did that with your hands,

00:47:48.520 it brought me to so many memories. Um, how do some of your breath work ideas compared to like a guy

00:47:53.560 like Wim Hof, like take me, cause he's a very popular figure in the breathing space. Right. Um,

00:47:58.100 and he just is such a captivating figure too. And the fact that he's in the cold and he's battling

00:48:02.220 something that, you know, we all want to battle something. So we all feel invigorated by,

00:48:05.900 uh, his journey and, um, uh, yeah. How did some of your practices compare to some of,

00:48:10.640 uh, Wim Hof's practices? Well, most of what I studied and researched and write about is this

00:48:16.660 normal breathing. It's so unsexy, right? Just breathe normal. I want to be a super breather.

00:48:21.980 But what you realize is the vast majority of people are breathing dysfunctionally. And so what I'm trying

00:48:26.900 to bring awareness to and to have people do first before they go and do crazy breath work stuff

00:48:32.520 is to learn normal breathing. Cause you're never going to be able to get a ton out of breath work

00:48:38.360 practices unless your foundation is solid. It's like, you want to run a marathon. Would you just

00:48:43.760 stand up and run a marathon or would you try to train a little bit and get a proper foundation and

00:48:48.660 get the right biomechanics? So that's what most of the book is about, um, is because so many people

00:48:53.880 are breathing dysfunctionally that they have all of these underlying issues that are tied to it and

00:48:58.360 they don't realize it. Why are they getting migraines all the time? Why is their blood

00:49:02.580 pressure so high? Why are they getting all these cavities? Why does their kid have symptoms of

00:49:07.520 ADHD? All of this stuff is tied to your breathing. So once you get that solid foundation, you become a

00:49:14.300 nasal breather. You're able to do what you were doing. You're able to become comfortable enough with

00:49:19.680 your own waist that you can relax your gut as you take a breath in. And as you exhale, it comes back,

00:49:26.780 right? You can breathe these slow, low, deep breaths. You are not mouth breathing at night.

00:49:32.720 You are not snoring. After all those boxes are checked, then let's bring it on. Let's go up that

00:49:38.280 next rung of potential. This is what yoga was designed to do. It was never intended for sick 0.98

00:49:43.800 people. It was intended for people that were normal, that were healthy to bump you up that next rung of

00:49:49.720 the ladder. And so that's what Wim does, right? Wim's an amazing dude. I can't imagine a better

00:49:54.780 spokesperson for breathwork. I mean, if there was ever a cult leader, he should start as,

00:49:59.760 it kind of is a cult almost. Yeah. There's definitely something about him that's super

00:50:03.740 exciting. I think he's done more to bring breathwork to more people on the planet than

00:50:10.280 anyone else. Yeah, you need that advertising.

00:50:12.840 You need, and you need someone that is that inspired and genuine, not someone that's trying

00:50:19.820 to always sell you stuff. Like Wim wants to help people. Wim wants to see what the limits of the

00:50:25.740 human body are. Wim, when you meet him, he's real. And so many other people in breathwork have hopped on

00:50:33.440 the train to try to, you haven't met him? No. Okay. No, the guy is magnetic. Is he really?

00:50:41.140 Absolutely. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, it's, you can feel it through the, through the screen,

00:50:44.900 you know, you feel it when you watch him and you need an advertising piece for things like that.

00:50:48.820 Like you need something like a shiny figure that's out there so that people can also then come and

00:50:53.560 absorb your information. I mean, look at this, dude, because dude, you know how many thick white 0.99

00:50:57.540 dudes are just hiding in their freezers in the garage right now, all because of Wim Hof, you know,

00:51:02.500 and forgetting to close the lid and the meat's going bad. But people were not doing this until,

00:51:08.000 so we knew all about these benefits, but the people training you how to breathe properly

00:51:13.100 was a respiratory therapist, you know, in a hospital. And a lot of dudes don't gravitate

00:51:19.160 towards that. You know, Wim is hiking up Everest barefoot with his shirt off and hanging out in

00:51:26.160 ice for an hour at a time. People are like, that guy's cool. I want to be like him. Yes. It's exciting.

00:51:31.960 And he's also the, the other side of this is not only is he able to bring people from a state where

00:51:39.020 they're normal to become better than normal is some research is going on right now about people

00:51:45.960 with autoimmune diseases with that, that ice combined with breath work can help lower all of

00:51:53.400 those stress hormones and help people who are caught in these vicious cycles of chronic inflammation.

00:51:59.760 And some people with multiple sclerosis, you know, people with eczema and more. And this is something

00:52:05.040 that's, that's free. You got to buy a freezer, right? Put, put some ice in it. But beyond that,

00:52:10.680 it's, it's a pretty, pretty low amount of cash you need to spend up front in order to do these

00:52:16.140 things. If you can't afford an ice bath, take a cold shower, right? A lot of the same benefits.

00:52:21.620 Who are some other known figures or who are some known figures throughout history

00:52:25.580 that it's documented that they've practiced breath work and it was a big part of their lives. Do you

00:52:30.220 have it? Do you know any? There's so many. And if you look at ancient literature, there were all

00:52:35.620 these, these Swamis, there were all these Buddhist monks, there were all these Rinpoches that were 0.99

00:52:42.040 supposedly doing things that were impossible according to our understanding of biology and medicine right

00:52:48.960 now until you bring them into a lab. And so in the seventies, they started doing this. One guy was

00:52:55.020 Swami Rama. This guy grew up in the mountains of the Himalayas. Swami Rama, bring him up. Sorry, 0.96

00:53:00.740 I interrupted you. No, that's cool. The mountains of the Himalayas go on. Yeah. Yeah. Since he was four

00:53:04.600 years old, he was trained to be a monk and they brought him into this place called the Manager

00:53:10.360 Clinic and a Navy physicist tested to see what he could do. Things that are supposed to be impossible.

00:53:17.620 And he was able to flutter his heart rate on command at 300 beats per minute on command. And then

00:53:24.880 what's our regular heart rate? If you're healthy, 50, 50 beats per minute. Mine's probably 70,

00:53:31.660 67, 300 beats. It's supposed to be impossible. He's a damn Valentine's Day at that point. So he was

00:53:37.280 able to change the temperature on the palm of his hand, 11 degrees from one side to the other. One side

00:53:44.040 was all flush and red and the other was like gray and purple. And in another test, and this was

00:53:51.180 reported in the New York Times, he was able to enter states of deep sleep while still being conscious

00:53:58.160 and repeating everything that happened in the room around him. All of this is supposed to be

00:54:02.880 impossible. He proved it. And it also establishes credence to all these other stories of these

00:54:09.860 ancient monks doing this stuff. Wow. And he said the foundation of all of this was breathing.

00:54:15.500 You have to start with that. Then you have to learn to meditate and then you can do all this other

00:54:19.140 stuff. But it starts with that. Yeah. How would you even be able to do something like that?

00:54:25.100 You focus on your breath. You meditate. And I can tell you, I've seen people do things that are much

00:54:32.040 crazier than that. Like? I've seen people do a lot of things that I don't feel at liberty to

00:54:39.020 discuss because people are going to think I'm insane until I get these guys into a lab and that's what

00:54:44.780 I'm working on right now. But that looks like child's play compared to the things that I've seen

00:54:50.640 people do. When you focus on your breathing, when you use your natural body to do these things that

00:54:56.440 we've been doing for thousands of years that in the last couple hundred years we've completely

00:55:00.640 forgotten about. Wow. You got to come back then. You'll have to come back after that for sure.

00:55:09.300 This episode. It's the family and friends event at Shopper's Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all

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00:58:15.700 Like are there any presidents that focus on breath work? Even look that up, Nick.

00:58:20.380 I bet Carter would be the only one that would have been cool enough to do that because he was in all

00:58:26.740 He was into health. He put some solar panels up on the White House in an organic garden, you know.

00:58:32.920 Did he? I doubt he would ever admit to it, you know.

00:58:38.960 Jimmy Carter put solar panels up on the White House? Yeah, that's, I believe, you can fact check that one.

00:58:44.300 That's pretty dope. And then Reagan took him down, so.

00:58:48.780 That's so hilarious. It'd be great to see a history of just all the ridiculous things that

00:58:53.220 have been put up each time and then taken down. Yeah, and taken down again.

00:58:55.960 Yes, President Jimmy Carter installed 32 solar thermal panels on the roof of the White House

00:59:00.020 West Wing on June 20th, 1979. They operated until 1996 when the Reagan administration removed

00:59:06.020 them during roof repairs and stored them in a Virginia warehouse. The painters later went to

00:59:11.080 Unity College in Maine for cafeteria use and influenced later White House solar efforts under Bush.

00:59:16.440 Wow, that's pretty cool. It'd be a nice thing to just be able to buy it even at an auction, one of those.

00:59:20.980 Yeah, I've heard there's a lot of, there's like a lot of celebrities that are fans of yours.

00:59:27.360 Devin Booker, who else was I reading? Pink, the musician, Sydney Sweeney, who's probably got a set

00:59:35.080 of lungs on her, I bet. What is that like? Have you had celebrities reach out to you? Has there been

00:59:40.500 like an interesting occurrence where one of them wanted you to come up like a private session sort of

00:59:44.400 thing? Yeah, that's happened a few times. And they've been just so disappointed because they

00:59:50.500 want like the secret thing. They're like, oh, I bet you got into some weird stuff. I'm famous.

00:59:57.460 You need to tell me the secret. And I tell them what the secret is, just what I told you. And they're

01:00:03.260 like, oh, that's it? Yeah. So it's about doing the work, right? It's one thing to tell people these

01:00:11.220 things. You can't just like read it once, do it once and move on, right? It's like a diet. You think

01:00:18.860 you're going to eat one little salad throughout the day and then be eating French fries for the rest of

01:00:24.880 the day and thinking, oh, I ate my salad. I'm good to go. We're breathing all the time, right? And so

01:00:31.980 you should be breathing in a way that is conducive to your body and your health.

01:00:39.820 That helps you. Well, it makes sense. Yeah. And so it's the most unsexy thing to talk about is

01:00:46.740 normal breathing. But I'm here to tell you, if you really want to help yourself become a normal

01:00:51.880 breather, you can do some of that breath work. But I promise you, once you become a normal breather,

01:00:57.520 then you do that breath work, it will take you places you've never dreamed about.

01:01:02.440 Let's go, huh? A little long, Narnia, homie. I'm ready. I'm ready for that. There's this kind

01:01:09.760 of phenomenon where it's like sometimes when I finally sit and take a breath, it feels like I

01:01:12.580 haven't breathed or breathed or whatever for months sometimes, you know, or for weeks, you know,

01:01:18.660 you know, you know, that feeling where you're like, like, oh, I finally got a breath. And

01:01:22.760 it's something you're like, what, um, what's happened in our lives that's made it so that

01:01:27.800 we've gotten so far away from our breathing?

01:01:29.880 Well, I think you can force yourself into pausing and resetting your, your breathing and you can

01:01:37.660 force yourself through yawning or sighing. So when you are not aware of your breath and when

01:01:47.160 you are just caught in these negative unconscious habits, it gets so bad that your body needs a

01:01:53.800 reset. So what does it do? It's an unintentional sigh. It forces you to be like, override the

01:02:03.460 system. Let's start, let's start over. Do a little better this time. It's like, you know, trying out

01:02:08.640 for a, for acting, you know, trying out for a play or whatever. It's like, okay. Or doing a different

01:02:14.600 take in, in a, in a recording. It's like, you know, your lungs are reminding you, Hey brother,

01:02:19.600 we're down here. But you can take advantage of that. It doesn't always have to be unintentional.

01:02:24.720 You can make it an intentional sigh. So you can set an alarm, just a little bell to go off on your

01:02:31.020 phone three times a day, five times a day, 10 times a day. That bell goes off and it's just a

01:02:36.340 moment. You don't have to stop what you're doing to be like, I'm going to check in on my breathing.

01:02:40.360 It takes a second to just go, I'm going to do an intentional sigh. So when that bell goes off,

01:02:49.040 follow me with this one. It's easier than that last thing we just did. I promise you bell goes off

01:02:54.980 to stop what you're doing. Take an inhale, hold, take an inhale, hold, take an inhale. Let it out

01:03:02.740 calmly now. Let it out calmly. Do it again. Take an inhale softly, hold, take an inhale softer, hold,

01:03:11.420 take an inhale softer. Let it out softly, softly. I don't want to hear you letting it out on this one.

01:03:17.940 Now take an inhale, hold, take an inhale, inhale, silent exhale.

01:03:33.620 Right on, right on. You've just reset your respiratory patterns, right? And I think you can...

01:03:40.740 We're back.

01:03:41.620 You have a... I mean, how long did that take? 15 seconds?

01:03:44.740 15 seconds.

01:03:45.320 You can do this on a flight. You can do it on the train. You can do it in your car.

01:03:48.840 And it allows you to start again. So what I've found is a lot of people have asked, they said,

01:03:54.160 where do I start? Set those alarms. Do 10 of them a day. Check in on this. And if you do enough of

01:04:01.480 these, if you go back to breathing, after you've reset it, go back to breathing, that five seconds in,

01:04:06.380 five seconds out. Don't exaggerate it. Real soft. I shouldn't be able to watch you breathing,

01:04:10.880 right? It's really subtle, really soft. This will become your default. And if this becomes

01:04:16.480 your default, I am telling you, it changes a lot of things.

01:04:20.280 You're going to start cooking.

01:04:21.280 You're going to start... You could start hooking. You could start sleeping.

01:04:25.560 No, cooking. I mean, you're going to cook. You're going to be rolling.

01:04:28.880 I thought you said hooking.

01:04:29.800 Oh, no.

01:04:30.320 That this could get you out on the street. So children, he said cooking. Cooking.

01:04:37.300 And figurative and literal language. You could go to the kitchen, make something healthy.

01:04:41.880 Yeah. Or just get your cooking in your body. You're making something healthy in your own life.

01:04:45.740 But do not do that and go out hooking.

01:04:47.580 No, do not go out hooking. Take me through some other ailments that breath work can help us with,

01:04:52.800 that focusing on our breathing can help eliminate or solve, or can help fight.

01:05:00.900 And then, yeah, how about ADHD? Take me down some of that journey,

01:05:04.940 because I've heard you talk about it a lot. Yeah. So this is something I learned after

01:05:09.040 the book was published years ago. And I kept hearing this from people in the airway space,

01:05:15.860 from different doctors and different dentists. They said, no one's paying attention to this.

01:05:19.660 I didn't discover it. I spent five years researching and writing the book. I didn't

01:05:23.620 discover. I thought I covered everything. I didn't. So I was able to revise the hardcover

01:05:28.860 for the paperback, which is out. And I include this version.

01:05:33.140 So this is in the new revision. Yeah, it's in the new revision. And it's something I try to talk

01:05:37.580 about. Every single talk I do, I want to talk about this, because it's so important. And nobody's

01:05:41.660 talking about it. And I'm so tired of getting these letters from parents. I do these talks,

01:05:47.060 right? And there's this line of parents afterwards. And they're yelling at me. And they're crying

01:05:52.840 because their kid isn't getting any help. They're like, you need to help me. I'm a freaking

01:05:57.020 journalist. I'm not a doctor. But they're not getting the help from their doctor. So this is what I've 0.97

01:06:02.200 learned. I'm a filter. I don't do this research. But I talked to the leading experts in the field.

01:06:07.300 I spent a lot of time doing this. They have told me this, that ADHD is diagnosed as a neurological

01:06:13.360 problem, right? It's a problem with the brain. And it's treated as a problem of the brain,

01:06:20.440 right? So we can give kids uppers to wake them up in the day, Ritalin, whatever. It absolutely works.

01:06:26.840 You can give them downers at night to go to sleep, right? And 10% of the population in the

01:06:32.860 U.S. has ADHD. And around 60% are on these pharmaceutical drugs. And these drugs absolutely

01:06:38.440 work. But what these guys are saying, and the story that's starting to come out is for so many

01:06:44.340 kids with ADHD, it's not a neurological problem that has caused this. It's a breathing problem at

01:06:52.080 night. It is a plumbing problem, not an electrical problem. They said that the vast majority of kids

01:06:59.600 with ADHD suffer from something called sleep disordered breathing. What this is, is when

01:07:05.520 you're sleeping, you're choking on yourself, you're snoring, struggling the entire time. You don't enter

01:07:14.380 those stages of deep restorative sleep. This affects human growth hormone. So again, it affects how you're

01:07:20.680 going to grow. It also affects your brain development, your ability to think clearly the

01:07:26.480 next day. So these kids wake up exhausted. Everything around them drives them crazy, right? I mean, think of

01:07:34.080 how you are when you're jet lagged after a flight that's 12 hours long, right? You're anxious, like bright

01:07:41.100 lights bother you. They have told me that for so many kids, this is the core issue. We've been diagnosing

01:07:49.280 it and we've been treating it wrong, which is why these kids necessarily aren't getting better. They're

01:07:55.060 on these drugs forever. So the number one thing you should do, especially for young kids, is to check

01:08:03.000 their breathing at night. And if they're snoring or have sleep apnea, that could very well significantly

01:08:10.940 be contributing to their symptoms of ADHD. And I can say anecdotally, I can say this because I cannot tell you

01:08:19.120 how many letters parents have sent me. They are so pissed off now because their little Johnny for five years

01:08:26.760 was on 20 different drugs, right? Nothing was working. He's 12 years old, still wetting his bed. They taught the

01:08:35.400 kid how to breathe in and out through the nose. They got rid of the snoring, the sleep apnea, and the

01:08:41.000 vast majority of little Johnny's problems go away within two weeks. Sometimes within a single night,

01:08:47.480 I just got a letter, within a single night, this kid who was wetting his bed from day one, couldn't

01:08:54.620 stop it, is now not wetting his bed. And so a lot of this is caused by that chronic stress

01:09:00.900 at night. And another reason why people wake up and pee three times throughout the night is we

01:09:07.460 aren't releasing the proper sleep hormones that shut that down, right? And so there's another thing.

01:09:12.900 I just heard today, we just got a letter today that some old grandma was like, I have to wake up and 0.72

01:09:18.040 pee twice. And she's like, since I learned how to breathe through my nose and no longer snore,

01:09:23.020 she's like, I don't have to do that anymore. And you could say, oh, these are anecdotes. These are

01:09:27.120 stories, but we know the mechanism. That's one piss Ethel. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Who wants to do 0.99

01:09:32.740 that? Wake up at 2, 3 a.m. It's awful. Especially with that age. If you trip on something, you're

01:09:37.060 done. You know, a trip to the bathroom in the dark at 74? Yeah. What are we, you're fucking Lewis and

01:09:44.500 Clark. I mean, at any age, it sucks. Yeah. We can acknowledge that. But yeah, if you're older and 1.00

01:09:51.220 you're fragile and your bones are brittle, it's really bad news. You're doing Bear Grylls out there.

01:09:55.620 It's bad news. You're trying to figure it out. So, so when you sleep, what about snoring? What

01:10:02.140 about snoring? So what is snoring? What is snoring? And is that because you see a lot of people that

01:10:07.680 get like sleep apnea mass, you know, like a lot of thick, rich white dudes, like laying in bed at 0.73

01:10:12.660 night, trying to just really hide from their wives, probably from intimacy, but also just pretending

01:10:17.760 they're Bain or whatever in their fancy houses or whatever. But what's really going on with snoring?

01:10:22.540 What's really going on with sleep apnea? So snoring has been so normalized, right? That

01:10:27.020 around 50% of the population does it on occasion and something like 20 or 30% might, might do

01:10:32.880 it chronically. Depends on how you measure that, but it's not normal, right? There is no part

01:10:38.880 of that that is normal because if you are struggling during sleep, during the time that we're supposed

01:10:45.480 to be lights out, shut down, the body needs to repair everything in order for you to function

01:10:51.460 properly and not get chronically sick the next day, the next week, the next few years, right? We have

01:10:57.860 to have restorative sleep. And this is a known thing, right? Everyone's talking about sleep now.

01:11:02.760 Yeah, for sure. If you're snoring, you're not allowing that to happen. So in the back of the

01:11:08.440 throat, those soft tissues, right? Most snoring, not all of it, is through the mouth. Some people

01:11:18.160 snore through their noses. What I have learned from a lot of people that have helped people who have

01:11:27.880 chronic snoring issues is there are a lot of things you can do at home to fix this. There's

01:11:32.300 surgeries, which was absolutely work. Sometimes with sleep apnea, it's the tongue, other issues. But

01:11:38.260 the first thing is chronic congestion because what we know is during allergy season, snoring and sleep

01:11:45.040 apnea go through the roof. That's not an accident. That's because your nose gets clogged, right?

01:11:50.840 And you're breathing through the mouth. Another thing is during the day, we are breathing so heavily,

01:11:57.300 like over-breathing all day long that we carry that over to night. So what these people

01:12:02.240 do, there's a bunch of different things. You can put a little tape on your mouth. You can sleep on

01:12:05.360 your side. But one of the main things they do is to train you to breathe very lightly during the day.

01:12:10.880 Just that breathing that we were doing. For instance, if I were to ask you to breathe heavily

01:12:16.380 through your mouth right now and make a snoring sound, how hard is that?

01:12:21.780 Okay, you can do this without a very, very rich snoring sound. There it is. Now breathe very slowly in

01:12:29.420 and out through the nose and try to make that same sound very slowly with your mouth closed and try

01:12:36.180 to make that sound. A lot of people say this is a mechanical thing. You're over-breathing.

01:12:42.380 I can't do it. I can't do it.

01:12:42.980 There's too much air flowing in. And so you make that snoring sound. Sleep apnea is a different thing.

01:12:50.860 That's when you choke on yourself. It can be from your tongue. Most of the time, the tongue is falling

01:12:55.560 back or there's constriction. If you're morbidly obese, very obese, you can get this lateral

01:13:00.440 compression against the throat, right? And there's some things that happen in the nose. People are

01:13:06.280 given CPAPs as a cure for it. It cures nothing. CPAPs can actually make your sleep apnea worse over

01:13:12.580 time. And around 50% of people given CPAPs within a few months aren't going to use them anyway. But

01:13:18.400 they're too embarrassed to give them back to their doctor.

01:13:20.200 So to be clear, if you have sleep apnea, these things are an amazing band-aid to get you over

01:13:26.500 that hump. You can't be choking at night, but it's not fixing the core issue. The core issue for so

01:13:31.720 many people is that mouth that is too small for your face. It's an airway that is not properly

01:13:36.820 developed. The back of our airways is covered in this flesh, right? That flesh needs to be firm,

01:13:42.940 right? We exercise everything else in our bodies, right? Our muscles, our biceps, our legs,

01:13:48.680 but we're not exercising our airway. So you can do this with exercises, with myofunctional therapy,

01:13:55.320 very stupid name for an amazing therapy that allows people to stiffen those tissues, to allow you to

01:14:03.500 take that easy breath without any constriction so that you don't snore. 0.99

01:14:08.620 I guess I don't, I mean, I've been told I snore, but I think it's just sometimes it's just kind of

01:14:12.640 occasional. But I certainly understand how like just starting to breathe through your nose and just

01:14:18.400 have like a pattern that your body can rely on would make everything less stressful, you know?

01:14:25.760 What about mouth tape? You hear about mouth tape a lot. Is that just...

01:14:29.840 So we do know around 60 to 65% of us sleep with an open mouth. We do know if you're breathing through

01:14:37.180 an open mouth at night, it makes you more susceptible to snoring and milder sleep apnea. We know this,

01:14:44.360 okay? We know that if you convert to nasal breathing, we know anecdotally at least,

01:14:51.680 that a lot of people claim that they're snoring a lot less, that they're sleeping a lot better.

01:14:58.960 I did a very small experiment at Stanford in which we compared mouth breathing over 10 days to

01:15:05.880 nasal breathing at night. When I was mouth breathing, I don't snore. When I was mouth breathing,

01:15:11.420 I snored throughout the night. I also had sleep apnea. The moment I went to use a little sleep

01:15:17.640 tape to breathe through my nose, it all went away. I've heard this hundreds and hundreds of times

01:15:22.380 because of those mechanics. When air is coming in slower, when it's coming in pressurized,

01:15:27.660 it's a lot harder to make that... It doesn't work for everyone. And so you see these advertisers

01:15:33.340 on Instagram or whatever saying, everybody needs mouth tape. If you're part of the 40% that sleeps 0.91

01:15:38.420 with a closed mouth, you don't need mouth tape. For other people, it's something you might want to

01:15:43.680 explore. I'm not here to push this on anyone. I can say it's absolutely changed my sleep. I track

01:15:49.980 my sleep. I have proof that it works. I can also say that thousands of other people have found the

01:15:55.380 same thing. Is it hard to use? I've never used it. Very, very easy to use. And I'm so addicted to it.

01:16:01.240 But this is how neurotic I've become that I have a hard time sleeping without it, which is why I

01:16:07.280 travel with it when I'm camping. I bring my little piece of tape. I brought a little piece of tape

01:16:12.060 today. I had a feeling you were going to ask me about this. Yeah. In the morning, I had my little

01:16:17.580 roll of tape by me. And I said, I know I'm going to forget this. So I'm going to put it on the back

01:16:21.280 of my watch. So the mouth tape thing, there's all these different brands that weren't around until a

01:16:28.920 couple of years ago. And they're all saying, mine's the best. You can only use this, blah, blah, blah.

01:16:33.900 Don't listen to any of that, right? So any micro-pore tape, surgical tape, this is the

01:16:39.820 technology I'm going to show you. This is how sophisticated this technology is. This is micro-pore

01:16:44.560 tape you can buy at any drugstore. What I do for my mouth tape, I'm done. I can talk to you.

01:16:53.500 I can cough, right? If I had a straw, I could take a sip of water. It doesn't look so hot. But what

01:17:00.980 this is doing is it is reminding me throughout the night to breathe through my nose. The point is not

01:17:08.660 to do a hostage situation. I have found, and a lot of other people have found, it's just a reminder.

01:17:14.880 And if you snore, and there's a way you can test this, I'll tell you about it. If you get acclimated to

01:17:21.220 wearing this in the day, this is so important, is wear it for 10 minutes, answering email, doing

01:17:25.720 the dishes, sitting around watching TV, increase that time throughout a couple of weeks, and then

01:17:30.940 move on to trying it at night. It's just a reminder. This little piece of tape, we have

01:17:36.140 stories about including asthma, autoimmune issues. Again, this is not, these were not studied in an

01:17:43.040 official randomized clinical trial. But it's still important that now with all these wearables, people

01:17:48.700 can track everything. They have their own data, and they see what works. But this is it. And it's

01:17:54.580 free and it's available for everybody. Wow, that simple. And so that's just been some basically

01:17:58.560 3M medical tape? It's, I use, I'm not, I don't get paid by any of these brands to say any of this

01:18:05.440 stuff. The stuff that I found is pretty good is the 3M micropore sensitive skin tape. But you can use

01:18:13.280 any other kind of surgical tape. Surgical tape is made to be put on skin and off of skin. What you

01:18:19.000 don't want to use is stuff that has a really thick adhesive, because you don't want chapped lips. And

01:18:25.360 also important, when you take it off, use your tongue. Do not do this. If you rip it off after a

01:18:31.300 couple of days, your lips are going to be chapped, you're never going to want to do it. If you use your

01:18:34.460 tongue to take it off, no hand, use your tongue, then you're not going to have a problem. I've used this

01:18:39.800 stuff for consistently for like seven years. And I cannot tell you what a difference this made for

01:18:45.320 my sleep. I didn't think I was a mouth breather at night until I tested it, until I saw the

01:18:50.400 difference. Just as you saw, you're like, oh, I'm just going to take a few breaths for 15 seconds.

01:18:55.180 You're like, wow, I feel so much better. Try to do this at night. If you're a mouth breather and

01:18:59.360 you're going to wake up the next morning and be like, oh my God, I have so much more energy. I have so

01:19:04.480 much more clarity. I want to try that. Yeah. Cause I've heard about it. And I guess it also just

01:19:08.500 trains you to breathe through your nose more. Trains you to breathe through your nose. And

01:19:12.020 that's especially important at night. And then in the morning, you're already habituated to

01:19:17.300 breathing through your nose. Yeah. Does that roll over to the daytime where your brain,

01:19:21.280 you just start getting used to it? Is that, is it really good practice for breathing through your

01:19:24.200 nose? I was a mouth breather my whole life when I was surfing, when I was doing exercising,

01:19:29.800 doing martial arts, whatever I was breathing through my mouth. Nobody told me to do otherwise,

01:19:33.980 right? Once I converted, even started doing it during exercise, I had so much more energy.

01:19:40.960 My recovery time was cut in half by just doing this. So I started at the nighttime, right? And

01:19:48.300 then it was so much easier to do in the daytime because your nose gets used to it. It's like,

01:19:53.120 oh, I can't be congested now, right? This is the primary way in which you're breathing.

01:19:56.880 And for a lot of people, things clear up pretty soon. For some people have structural issues,

01:20:03.100 deviated septum, problems with their turbinates, whatever. You need surgery. You need, you need

01:20:08.580 other more deeper interventions. But for a lot of people, it's just a habit you need to create.

01:20:13.800 Yeah. Having some new habits for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, this is so good to have a nice,

01:20:20.940 just like a, just a reminder. And especially right now in my life, because one of the big things for me

01:20:26.360 is just, I just, yeah, I just feel overwhelmed. Yeah. You just feel overwhelmed a lot. What about

01:20:34.280 nasal strips? People use those a lot. I use those sometimes. They're great. Helps me. They're amazing.

01:20:39.440 Right now, if you take your fingers, right, and go like this, is that easier for you to breathe this

01:20:44.700 way? So nice. Then you are a good candidate for nasal strips, right? So many people have issues with

01:20:51.060 their nostrils. Nostrils aren't big enough or they flutter when you take an inhale in. This is called the

01:20:55.740 Coddles Maneuver. Some guy had to name it after himself, of course. But nasal strips will open up 0.99

01:21:01.520 your nostrils to the way they were supposed to have been, right? Around 30% more airflow. And this

01:21:08.100 is why they're marketed to people who suffer from snoring. There's a brand called Mute. I've tried

01:21:12.880 them. I don't, again, I don't get any money from any of this. I thought they were okay. They go in

01:21:17.380 your nose. I didn't like that feeling. Yeah. It's like this corkscrew thing that goes in your nose,

01:21:21.940 but they're called Mute because they mute you at night from snoring because they allow all that

01:21:28.140 airflow up through your nose. Oh, and so our nose are supposed to have more intake because we're

01:21:32.780 supposed to breathe through it more. We're not supposed to be this congested. No other animal

01:21:39.100 is this congested. Do you see a bear out there that's just like, oh, I have seasonal allergies and

01:21:42.920 asthma. I can't get up today. Oh yeah. If you saw a bear who's just out there mouth breathing all

01:21:47.080 the time, he's like, look at this freaking, look at this bastard over here. Yeah. And I wonder if 0.99

01:21:52.620 we breathe in, if we start breathing more in through our noses or if we breathe in through

01:21:56.140 our noses, do we take more or less breaths in a day that if we do in our mouths? We take far fewer

01:22:01.000 and that's good because we're taking fewer, but we're taking deeper breaths. Most of us are over

01:22:06.700 breathing, which is a really bad habit because you offload this gas called carbon dioxide,

01:22:11.820 right? Which causes this vasoconstriction, which causes blood flow problems. So by taking fewer,

01:22:18.720 richer, deeper breaths, we're able to get more oxygen, more energy for less effort. And that's

01:22:25.280 exactly what we want. And our noses are also our first line of defense. So you've got nose hair,

01:22:32.060 right? Most people do. And there's also all of these other pathways that air has to follow through

01:22:38.460 as it makes it into our lungs. Those are there for a reason. They help filter out bacteria,

01:22:44.580 viruses, pollutants, dust, and everything else. So when we're breathing through the mouth,

01:22:49.620 all the crap in the air is going directly to my lungs, which causes inflammation and which causes 0.65

01:22:57.700 congestion, right? It causes other issues. I've heard you talk about how there's more CO2 in a lot 0.94

01:23:04.860 of the air we breathe. Like we get stuck in places like planes, office buildings, even schools,

01:23:08.720 and we're stuck breathing kind of recycled air, I guess.

01:23:13.020 Yeah. This is something I didn't really pay attention to when I was doing the first edition

01:23:17.620 of the book, which is something I learned a lot about during that time and wanted to put in a bunch

01:23:22.600 of new pages about the science that I discovered. So I heard this about three, four years ago,

01:23:27.800 that in indoor environments, carbon dioxide levels are through the roof. We always hear about

01:23:33.700 outdoor environments. CO2 is going up every year, which is true. It's like 422 parts per million

01:23:38.300 outside. Everyone's talking about the outside. No one's talking about the inside. And the reason

01:23:43.480 why they measure CO2 inside is if we're all sitting here, right, and the CO2 levels keep going up in

01:23:50.680 here, that's not from a coal plant or exhaust from a car. It's from our exhalations. So when you're

01:23:57.360 measuring CO2, you're measuring how many other people's exhalations are in the room. So

01:24:03.560 at a CO2 level of around 2,000 parts per million, which is found in a lot of schools and offices,

01:24:11.660 about one in every 40 breaths or so is someone else's exhalation.

01:24:18.200 No.

01:24:18.700 Right? Yeah.

01:24:19.600 Oh, nasty.

01:24:20.160 And if you get up, if you get up to like 4,000, 5,000, it's one in every 10 breaths is someone else's

01:24:27.200 exhalation. So I started cruising around. I travel a lot like, like you do. I'm always on airplanes

01:24:33.480 and hotels and all that stuff. And I always feel like crap in these hotels. If you've noticed 0.98

01:24:39.960 new hotels, they've glued up all the windows. Back in the day, you're too young to know this,

01:24:45.560 but back in the day, you used to be able to open a window. Maybe not all the way.

01:24:48.640 You used to be able to take your own life?

01:24:49.820 Yeah. Well, I think back in the old day, in the 50s, you want to take your own life? There it is.

01:24:55.260 That's your problem, not our problem. Lawyers got involved.

01:24:59.140 That ruined everything.

01:25:00.480 At least you could open it this much, right? Now you don't have that choice. So I would wake up in

01:25:06.260 these hotels and having not had anything to drink the night before, I would feel totally hung over.

01:25:11.780 Or my head would hurt. It's like, I wonder how much of this has to do with the air quality,

01:25:16.400 how much CO2 is in the environment. Because if we're in an environment with high levels of CO2,

01:25:21.540 anything north of 1,500 parts per million, we have increased chance of having headaches,

01:25:26.780 lethargy. It can cause a bunch of other issues like hypertension, which is high blood pressure,

01:25:34.280 kidney calcification, if you're in it for long enough, which are kidney stones,

01:25:38.300 like really rank stuff. This has been measured around the world. It's not controversial.

01:25:43.220 So I've been traveling with this thing, this little monitor, and it tells me how much the CO2 is.

01:25:50.580 I just want to see it. Really? So is it a breathalyzer?

01:25:55.500 No, no. It's just, it's recording the amount of CO2 in this room right now.

01:26:00.800 Okay.

01:26:01.060 And I kid you not, this is some of the best quality air that I've seen. Usually this shows

01:26:07.940 like 2,000 parts per million, which has been shown 1,500 parts per million in one Harvard study showed

01:26:13.680 that a 50, 5-0 percent decrease in test scores at 1,500 parts per million because your body is

01:26:20.820 struggling. It's placing you in that state of stress. Most airlines I've recorded are around.

01:26:26.960 We must have had it in my class then.

01:26:28.220 So one study I read from Harvard said that 1,500 parts per million, that's about three,

01:26:35.280 three, four times higher than what the air is in the outside, right? The amount of concentration

01:26:41.180 of carbon dioxide can create a 50% decrease in some cognitive tests. So test scores. If you think

01:26:51.900 about what we're doing to kids, we're placing them in a classroom for eight hours at a time.

01:26:57.060 With air quality of 2,500 parts per million. So well north of that 1,500 parts per million.

01:27:03.760 And that could change place to place for sure.

01:27:05.560 It changes all the time in areas that have nice climate, right? You have these things called

01:27:11.000 windows. You can just open, you have a door, you have opened up, but a lot of new schools

01:27:15.240 right now, just like new hotels, new offices, you cannot open the windows. And what I've found

01:27:20.880 is these offices and hotels do this to save money because it costs a lot of money to either heat

01:27:26.660 up air or cool it down. So instead they just recycle the same stale air, everyone's exhalations

01:27:33.580 from room to room to room. And I can prove this now because I cruise around with one of these things

01:27:39.380 and I've got a small army of 20 other people collecting data. And we're going to put all this

01:27:43.860 data available for free that people can start seeing what the air quality is in these hotels

01:27:48.960 and airplanes. That's fascinating. Yeah. And when you think about where we spend most of our lives,

01:27:53.180 especially since we're more indoor creatures, a lot of us are these days, gosh, we're just in our

01:27:57.920 own little air tomb kind of. Yeah. I mean, 90% of our time we spend indoors. And if that time spent

01:28:05.140 indoors is not with fresh air, right? Your body is always going to be playing catch up. I don't want

01:28:12.440 to get too neurotic here. Some people get crazy, but this is, it's a biological thing. And we know

01:28:20.620 that our ancestors always had access to fresh air and it's also measurable. We can see what happens

01:28:26.000 to the brain. We can see what happens to the body. We're in an old hotel right now, an old classic,

01:28:31.080 right? There's windows you can open here. What a difference that makes to get fresh air.

01:28:35.780 When you think about an open window and just the energy that it does to a room too, it's so nice.

01:28:40.140 It's not only the psychosomatic effect, it's a chemical effect on your blood pH, right? To be

01:28:47.640 able to have fresh air. And I think that this is something that is easily fixable. Like there's

01:28:53.760 some airlines that have great air. There's others that consistently have terrible air. There's some

01:28:57.900 hotels that have great air. There's others. So, you know, it's a fixable problem. It's not-

01:29:01.920 Have you noticed an airline that does or one that stands out to you?

01:29:04.420 Yes. Yes. All that will be released when it's time because I want to get confirmation from other

01:29:11.480 people.

01:29:11.920 Well, dang, I don't want to die between now and then because I'm-

01:29:13.960 We'll have a little talk off camera. I'll tell you what to fly and what not to fly.

01:29:18.880 What about this? I've always had this thought. If you have a lot of plants in your home,

01:29:22.280 does that make it better for you in a room? Like is it like the cycle between plants and humans

01:29:27.920 and your lungs and air, is it that quick enough?

01:29:31.280 Absolutely. So fill your room with plants. Snake plants are great. Not only do they create more

01:29:36.720 oxygen really efficiently, but they can remove pollutants as well. And who doesn't want to be

01:29:42.680 in a room with a bunch of plants? It's such a cool look.

01:29:45.720 Yeah.

01:29:46.080 Right from the get-go, but it's so beneficial. And also to have that energy, you know, there's

01:29:51.180 the ineffable thing. It's like you're around a bunch of living things. It's a good feeling.

01:29:55.360 Bring up a snake plant. I want to see one. I think my old assistant just sent me a snake

01:29:59.040 plant that came in the mail the other day. I just put some more. Yup. She sure did. I

01:30:04.300 got this tall box and it had a plant in it, but yeah, it was a snake plant.

01:30:08.340 So those are like those leaves. It's amazing. Those are like big air filters, right? Because

01:30:13.220 that's what leaves are. They suck in CO2 and they give off oxygen. That's what forests do.

01:30:19.980 It's like nature's lungs kind of.

01:30:21.200 It's nature's lungs. And it was this perfect balance.

01:30:25.180 Look at that lady. She got a big one, huh? 1.00

01:30:26.880 That's a black one. 1.00

01:30:29.840 Yeah. Her air is fresh. I mean, and look at how fresh her pants are. 1.00

01:30:34.040 Smiling. Yeah. Yeah. Huh? She likes it a little mixed below the waist. You could tell down there. 1.00

01:30:40.680 Could I even put plants in my car? Like, is it that close of enough thing?

01:30:43.760 Yeah. You could be one of those people that puts Legos on the outside of your car and plants on the

01:30:48.460 inside. Like, there's no judgment here. You can have an art car. That's okay. I think a small plant

01:30:54.520 like that isn't going to do much. It might look cool. So why not do it? Yeah. You know, what some

01:31:00.980 companies are doing, like algae is really efficient at sucking up CO2 and giving off oxygen. So some

01:31:07.200 company, they're selling these big tubes of algae that you feed. So you have, I don't know if that

01:31:14.100 looks as cool as a snake plant, but to me, it's kind of, you know, it's a nice talking point at

01:31:18.760 dinner parties. Yeah. It's super interesting. Algae. I mean, that's what happens to the ocean is the

01:31:24.620 world's lungs, right? That's where we get, what, half of our oxygen. I think it's even more than that

01:31:29.960 is from, from the ocean, from algae. Yes. Yes. Wow. I didn't know that at all. It's, isn't that funny

01:31:36.880 though? If you look at that, they're just mimicking leaves of a large tree of a large plant, you know,

01:31:44.000 it's an artificial plant, which is cool. It is cool, but it's definitely like, Hey, just get some

01:31:50.420 plants, just get some plants, but you can't, you know, to charge an airport 20 grand for that thing

01:31:57.400 or for 200 for plants. No one's making a lot of cash from that. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.

01:32:03.600 They always find a way to take something that we already have, redo it and make it like more fancy

01:32:08.200 and then sell it back to you. And really it's just the same thing. Germany uses algae tubes on

01:32:13.520 buildings to produce biofuel, generating energy and absorbing CO2 at the same time. Wow. That's

01:32:17.600 pretty, pretty interesting. They use that to make a biodiesel that you can run that oil that they

01:32:23.780 extract from that in a diesel car. I have a 40 year old Mercedes old 300d that you can run it off

01:32:30.980 of vegetable oil, use vegetable oil. No way. Yes. I've been doing this for years. It's a real

01:32:36.600 thing. So they're kind of, they have a twofer right there. They're removing CO2, making new oxygen,

01:32:42.320 and they're also creating fuel. Yeah. In Germany, buildings are going green, literally with the use

01:32:49.280 of algae filled tubes mounted on their exteriors. These transparent tubes house fast growing micro

01:32:54.480 algae that absorb carbon dioxide from the air and use sunlight to grow all while producing

01:32:58.980 valuable biomass. The living facade serves two purposes. It helps cool the building by providing

01:33:03.800 shade and generates biofuel. The system is known as the bioreactor facade. The algae not only capture

01:33:12.500 CO2 emissions, but also produce oxygen, making them natural air purifiers. What plants produce the

01:33:18.320 most oxygen? I believe it's algae. I think Irish ivy snake plants are also really good. They're all

01:33:25.620 going to do it, but at different levels of efficiency. I'm curious what, what the researchers

01:33:31.540 here find. Erica, Erica Palm and snake plant top the list for indoor plants that produce the most oxygen.

01:33:39.220 These plants excel at photosynthesis and air purification, releasing significant oxygen while

01:33:43.960 absorbing toxins like benzene and formaldehyde. Let me see, other hyde. Pothos, P-O-T-H-O-S, 1.00

01:33:53.340 reduces CO2 effectively and filters pollutants at night. Spider plant purifies air of carbon monoxide

01:33:58.620 and formaldehyde while boosting oxygen. Aloe vera releases oxygen nocturnally and removes toxins

01:34:04.560 like benzene. It's kind of cool you go to sleep and your plants are out there helping you out. Night,

01:34:09.220 little soldiers. Yeah. I mean, you got 4 billion years of evolution here to build systems. Yeah. It

01:34:15.560 is crazy. It's so crazy how it's like, um, we do all these steps to get back to, to just try to get

01:34:23.340 back to baseline. Yep. Um, and that's pop those right there. Oh yeah. I've seen those before. I think

01:34:29.160 my mom has moms have a lot of those. Um, yeah, you just forget it. I forget about most people don't,

01:34:34.460 but I forget about nature so much, unfortunately. Um, I don't forget about it. I long for it. I

01:34:39.180 think I just, I work a lot, mostly indoors, you know? Um, I wanted to ask you about asthma. I feel

01:34:46.520 like growing up, like we all had a friend with asthma or being lazy. That's what our PE teacher

01:34:50.400 called it. But, um, what, what, uh, do you, do you have any advice for parents that have children

01:34:58.920 with asthma or for people suffering with asthma, um, about how they could adjust their breathing

01:35:03.280 techniques or is that not associated? Sure. So asthma is treated now with bronchodilators

01:35:09.720 and oral steroids. This is what they give people with asthma and they both work really, really

01:35:15.000 well. But again, they're not addressing the core issue. What's the core issue of asthma?

01:35:20.100 Like sudden inflammation of the airway, right? To where you can't breathe. And it's this constriction

01:35:26.040 and this paranoia. What we have learned irrefutably, this is what we've learned is that people

01:35:32.900 with asthma almost always have a very low tolerance for carbon dioxide. And another

01:35:39.460 way I'll say this is they can hardly hold their breath. You ask an asthmatic to hold 1.00

01:35:44.520 their breath, they go, wow. So they have habituated themselves, not, not all asthmatics, but a lot

01:35:55.220 of them have habituated themselves to be mouth breathers, to be constantly over breathing.

01:35:59.340 So when they sense that they are unable to breathe and that CO2 goes up, because that's what happens

01:36:07.280 when you hold your breath, that CO2 goes up, it sets off alarm bells in their brain that this

01:36:12.020 is an emergency. They're having an attack. So then they over breathe more, which constricts

01:36:19.080 everything more, makes it harder for them to breathe, makes it harder for them to get oxygen.

01:36:23.580 And then they over breathe more and then they have an attack. So what we've known for over 70 years

01:36:30.580 is that one of the most effective ways of reducing symptoms of asthma is to learn to breathe slower,

01:36:40.040 is to learn to breathe through the nose, and is to learn when you feel an attack, instead of

01:36:46.740 hyperventilating and exacerbating that attack, to take control of it, to start to breathe slow,

01:36:54.680 to hold your breath for two seconds, two, three seconds, to let it go, to slightly and calmly build

01:37:02.880 that carbon dioxide, which will keep your airways open. There is a Russian doctor called Buteyko who

01:37:10.980 studied this and researched it for decades, 70, 80 years ago. This is still taught all over the

01:37:16.660 place. And I have heard from so many people, and there's about two dozen studies showing how effective

01:37:23.100 just learning how to breathe slower and how intimately your breathing habits are tied to your symptoms

01:37:31.380 of asthma.

01:37:32.440 Yeah. Yeah. I never, I, I never struggle with it, but yeah, when you see people that struggle

01:37:37.060 with it, uh, yeah, I know that's, yeah, I know a lot of people deal with that. Um, oh, before you

01:37:43.560 leave, uh, you always hear the theory, uh, or you always hear the saying in through your nose,

01:37:48.400 out through your mouth. Is that true?

01:37:50.220 It depends. If you're working out, sometimes that's really effective when I'm talking about

01:37:53.780 mouth breathing, just so people aren't confused. I'm not talking about if you willingly want to take a

01:37:58.740 breath through your mouth. You're doing some breath work. You want to breathe through your

01:38:01.180 mouth. You're LeBron and you're dunking on some dude and you want to take a mouth breath. All

01:38:06.400 that's good because that's something you're consciously doing. I'm talking about the unconscious

01:38:09.860 stuff. I'm talking about the stuff at night. So in through the nose, out through your mouth can be

01:38:14.680 effective in some stages of athletic performance for most zone one, two, and three in through the

01:38:21.980 nose, out through the nose is going to be so much more beneficial. And this is the one thing

01:38:27.040 elite trainers are really getting into now. The number one thing they have their athletes do,

01:38:32.180 it doesn't matter if they're an Olympian or a fighter or a cyclist, is they look at their

01:38:37.120 breathing and they teach them how to breathe slower and lower. If you think about it, if you're able to

01:38:43.540 conserve more energy by taking fewer breaths and getting more oxygen, what can you do with that

01:38:48.580 energy? You can beat your opponent, right? And that's why they're interested in it, but not only for

01:38:53.520 competitive athletes, everybody can benefit from this. So it's safe to say that we can go ahead

01:38:58.960 and change it then. It's in through your nose, out through your nose. Absolutely. Well, depending

01:39:03.400 on what you're doing, right? So you need context around this. It is the vast majority of the time

01:39:08.940 for 80, 85% of athletic endurance sports. It's in through the nose, out through the nose. Yes.

01:39:15.280 Amen. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For people that have smoked most of their lives

01:39:27.000 and are changing that now, are there breathing techniques that they can do or anything specific

01:39:30.700 or is it just in through the nose, out through the nose? I don't know. I don't think it's been

01:39:36.680 well-studied. I would suggest if in through the nose, out through the nose for that five to six

01:39:43.320 seconds in, five to six seconds out, if that can help people with ground glass lungs the way it can,

01:39:48.860 the way we know it can, it could probably be very beneficial for smokers. But I don't know any data

01:39:55.360 that would support that. But again, you're going to get other benefits beyond the potential benefit

01:40:01.220 of removing more toxins from your lungs. Yeah. Oh, if you got 9-11 lung or you got, dang,

01:40:07.040 I'm sure they can handle parliament lungs or whatever. You know? James Nestor, thanks so much

01:40:12.660 for joining us today, man. Thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, I appreciate it. I appreciate your patience.

01:40:16.980 You guys can all go grab his New York Times bestseller. The revised edition is out now.

01:40:22.940 It's out now. Yeah, just released about last week.

01:40:26.100 Breath, the new science of a lost art. Thank you so much, brother. Thanks a lot.

01:40:29.820 Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be

01:40:37.260 cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found. I can feel it

01:40:48.260 in my bones. But it's gonna take...

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - February 20, 2026

#641 - Breathing Expert James Nestor

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