You're Breathing Wrong

 I’m fit and healthy. So when I was out of breath getting out of bed, I was understandably worried.

A trip to A&E led to an asthma attack diagnosis. It’s only when you’re desperately short of breath that you start to wonder whether or not you’re doing it right.

Turns out, most of us aren’t.

Too Little & Backwards

The average breaths per minute is 16. What’s the optimum? Way lower than you expect. It’s five.

The optimum breathing pattern in a non-stressed state is a 5.5 second inhale and a 5.5 second exhale through your nose. 

This breathing pattern increases circulation throughout the brain and body while simultaneously decreasing the burden on the heart. “Our diaphragm drops lower and rises higher, allowing more air to enter the lungs and assisting in pushing blood throughout the body.” 

It also has been found to improve your HRV which, as you’ll know, is supremely important and also a major benefit of taking ZAAG.

The theory goes a little like this, we’ve become so accustomed to consistent stress that we’ve increased the likelihood we breath through our mouths. 

There’s also a general understanding that we should be breathing out just as much as we breathe in, which isn’t the case. In order to tell our body that we want it to relax (slower breathing and lower heart rate) we should exhale for longer than we inhale. 

Vital Cues

When we breathe in, we stimulate our sympathetic system (fight or flight). When we breathe out, we stimulate our parasympathetic system (rest and digest).

The faster we breathe, the harder our heart pumpts to deliver the extra oxygen. The more cortisol (stress hormone) we produce and the less dopamine and serotonin (counterbalancing hormones) we produce, reducing the likelihood we’ll feel calm.

Our inhale readies us, our exhale calms us. When our exhale is longer, our heart slows down. 

Somewhere between 5-75% of us solely breathe through our mouths (not the most helpful figure), which is suboptimal for a whole host of reasons.

Everybody Nose

See, we’re actually meant to breathe through our noses. There are very few animals on earth who are solely mouthbreathers and there’s also a reason why we use the term mouthbreather as a derogatory thing… because it’s not the optimal way for us to oxygenate our bodies.

• Nasal breathing allows us to regulate temperature of our breathe, which is less taxing on the body. 

• The hair in our noses allows us to sift out much of the bacteria in the air we breathe, meaning we’re less likely to get ill. 

• We release nitric oxide when we breathe nasally which opens up our blood vessels. 

• Nasal breathing improves concentration – with one study showing a 50% improvement in decision making ability.

• It also reduces the amount of water we expel in our breath by 42%.

And Breathe

Given that it's something we do constantly without thinking about it, our breathing deserves a little more attention. Longer, slower, nasal breaths, with a greater focus on exhalation over inhalation may well lead to improved wellbeing in all kinds of ways.

As neuroscientist Professor Ian Robertson puts it, “it’s the most precise pharmaceutical you could ever give yourself. Side effect free.”

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