Investigation on the effect of oral breathing on cognitive activity (2021)
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
That doesn't prove anything. Apart from the problems in imaging connections, there's no reason to assume "more brain activation" means better cognitive functioning. Perhaps less is better, since a faster processing leads to a smaller BOLD response. There are more useful statistics in the article: the error rate and the response time. It looks as if "oral" was a bit faster, and had more errors. That might be enough to explain any imaging difference.
Does it mean impaired cognitive function? Well, that would depend on how strong your a prioris are. Is there any reason to assume it does? If not, then this most likely is a chance result. Perhaps oral breathing slightly impaired vision in the scanner or interferes with motor skills. Or perhaps it's the plug in the subjects' noses. This study needs a lot of additional support.
It made my mind jump to perhaps a second, potentially worse outcome of mouth breathing - seeding the lung mucosa with oral flora. That seems like it could enhance the spread and inflammation. And cause deleterious downstream impacts such as slightly increased risk of cancer, pulmonary diseases, etc.
> To help me avoid more tooth decay my dad bought me one of those fancy
> rechargable electric toothbrushes that really powers away the plaque.
> It also creates a fine aerosol mist of plaque, and I started to wonder
> if 4 years of using this brush had caused me to breathe in some of this
> plaque mist and moved an infection into my lungs.
I understand the evolutionary underpinnings for it ( 'what I did got me this far did it not?' ), but it is still not a great excuse for a conscious being.
Yeah, it's not good to do that, but how is that related?
The "evolutionary underpinnings" are a sound rationale, not an excuse. Not for completely eschewing new information but being conservative in making changes.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.107.7...
"Unexpected activity appeared in the superior and inferior frontal gyri independent of working memory" - seems their brain was focused on properly executing these nasal breathing instructions/training - which would be expected.
Doesn't say too much considering sample size.
A better study could be configured by observing twins (one with broken nose at one point, leading to majorly deviated septum and inherently limiting nasal breathing vs the other twin)
Their strong claims relative to the sample size and the quality of the experiment makes me doubt their level of motivation to do proper science. Just another flimsy paper used to pad resumes.
I wonder if this really has a negative impact, or rather a positive one.
When I am really focused for a long time, this even causes my jaw to become stiff and speaking becomes very difficult for a while.
Maybe he opens his mouth because it's the most comfortable thing to do in the moment.
Bit like breaths (in my experience) tend to be deeper and more "purposeful" even if the doctor says take a normal breath.
Struggling a bit to convey this right but you get the idea hopefully...
> Twenty-two healthy participants (mean age, 22.27 ± 1.42 years) performed a two-back (2B) working memory fMRI task
And then they looked only at the pictures in the MRI they supposed indicated more cognitive function, and ignored task performance.
[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/a-bug-in-fmri-software-could-in...
If there's no difference in task performance, an alternative explanation is that for the nasal breathing test participants wasted cognitive cycles on remembering to keep their mouth closed (versus oral breathing participants who had their nose plugged)...
Seems if you breathe from your mouth when you grow up, your tongue isn't parked up, pushing on your palate, and your jaw and face bones don't grow up correctly and it's very hard to correct as an adult. I get bone and articulation pains with the CPAP machine, since my tongue is now parked correctly it pushes hard...
Get your kids looked at. It's all hereditary for me (deviated septum) and I regret no-one telling me to get it looked at seriously when younger.
Aside from that, I've found yoga and meditation that uses the breath as an object helps with my breath quality when awake, and recently I'm trying hot/cold contrasts (a hot bath and cold shower) as outlined in this Huberman Lab podcast[1]. I've noticed that my sinuses are clearer afterwards. That could be the steam or another reason, it is hard work though!
> I regret no-one telling me to get it looked at seriously when younger.
Me too, I had terrible advice, from medical professionals too. They didn't seem to care so I'm heartened by the recent findings which, even though they scare the hell out of me because it underlines all the problems I face and most likely will face, those walking behind us may have an easier road.
[1] https://hubermanlab.com/the-science-and-health-benefits-of-d...
And it's (IMO) clever, since it's such a game changer for most of the people I met who use it, many costly ailments disappear. It's probably a winner for overall productivity and a great reducer of sick days and late-life healthcare.
The recovery from the surgery wasn't too bad for getting back to work -- I think I missed two days and the weekend. But the healing process gave me incredible headaches for about two months which went away entirely. Mine was badly deviated, though.
I have not heard of Azelstine, and will bring that up to my doctor, thanks!
I mean this seriously:
your body naturally dilates your entire respiratory system in response to oxygen demand - and not by a trivial amount.
As someone who has a suspected less than perfect septum, and experiences allergies from time to time, I have gone from simply noticing the dilation effect to actively pursuing it as a remedy.
Which is to say, if I stay the night somewhere with indoor cats, I alleviate the symptoms by going for a run …
YMMV. IANAD. HNY!
How? And despite your allergies, septum that were preventing it?
For doing cardio I was told/taught (by whom I can't remember) to generally breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
This allows for air to come in through the path that your body was 'designed' to do it, but you can also expel carbon dioxide more quickly (so the theory goes).
The original author probably was limiting their bicycle cadence to something that they could do continuously with their nose closed. I personally do something similar while running and weight training. It was hard at first, but your body gets stronger and more capable at exchanging CO2 over time. I wouldn't try this with HIIT though, and generally think that HIIT is a terrible training methodology as it leave you sore and incapable of doing more work outs as the processing of lactic acid is harmful if not damaging to muscle cells.
This is true, but you rarely see anyone actually doing it at the gym. It’s been a while but I recall that fully replenishing ATP requires around 3 minutes between sets, and most people rest for less than half that.
I generally do a set of 10 or less, wait 1 minute, do another set and then do some yoga for the remainder of 3 minutes. I then switch to another muscle group and do the same. When I switch back to the original muscle group an additional 3 minutes have past or 5 minutes since the last set for that group. This allows for some oxidative stress, which stimulates mTor and thus mitochondrial growth, but also allows me to do more sets in a work out in less amount of time. I'm generally done in 30-45 minutes, but work out daily at home.
While ATP takes a good amount of time to replenish, lactic acid take twice as long to clear out. So you really need to be resting 8-10 minutes between HIIT work outs, or just go home from the soreness. This doesn't seem as ideal if you don't want to spend all day in the gym.
This sentence, "Every participant practiced becoming familiar with oral breathing until the participants could naturally switch their breathing pattern from nasal breathing" made me feel like I must be an alien.
I will say however that there are a fair number of comments in this thread that are not really up to the standard I'd expect from HN. I'm quite intrigued to see "mouth breathers" referred to in such derogatory terms. What kind of social indoctrination has triggered that response?
But that’s a good thing, right? Nitric oxide being a vasodilator and bronchodilator, it promotes and regulates good respiratory function.
It's possible I just don't know what I'm missing, but (highly anecdotally) I haven't felt I've suffered having to breathe thru my mouth at all. Maybe it'll take me out when I get older, but I also don't know the difference.
> previous studies have observed [...] there was a decline in working memory performance for [...] olfactory memory task caused by oral breathing in healthy adults
referring to "Respiration Modulates Olfactory Memory Consolidation in Humans" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6596216/
Anecdotally, I find that listening to repetitive music can be surprisingly helpful when programming. I can imagine repetitive stimuli of other forms having a similar effect.
Just think about this, if you go to gym, do some sport, crossfit, whatever, you'd know it is certainly impossible for a human being anywhere on the planet, to even run 200 mts. without oral breathing at some point. If you keep doing physical activity your body eventually would have gone through years of orals breathing just by doing regular physical activity.
You actually need to breath by the mouth to increase the air pumped to the lungs, without that you rapidly exhaust the nose capability and you can't perform beyond marginal movement, i.e. you can fastly walk, but you won't run for long just by breathing by your nose.
So it looks a lot like from the point of view of evolution, our bodies are precisely made to breath by the mouth for short periods, which eventually account for long periods, and hours, months or years in the long run.
So it looks a bit like oral breathing is an expected normal function of the body.
ok, it is not that is a perfect function, or that it will keep you healthy at a 100% of the attempts, but is - this is my take - probably that breathing by the mouth is one more body function, a standard one, evolved to be regularly used, with some trade-off, cost / benefits involved.
It looks like we are beginning to underping those tradeoffs, but it is actually almost impossible to live normally without using those functions.
An example could be using teeth, which leads to quite a lot of bad issues in the mouth and probably affect lungs, the hearth, and a lot more. But you can't just stop eating and oral hygiene goes so far, it won't fully prevent issues, eventually something is going to fail there.
Oral breathing during exercise is a crutch for the body.
It's just a small piece of tape, as big as half a fingernail. It's placed on my lips right in the middle, and it works more by reminding my brain to keep my mouth closed and less by actually mechanically holding my mouth shut. If my nose is stuffed, I can just open a slight gap between my lips to breathe through. Otherwise, though, when my mouth is that close I will automatically close my lips and breathe through my nose through the night, which anecdotally improves my sleep quality and reduces morning breath.
Chin straps don't work with me. My face shape is kinda flat, and my temporomandibular joint is kinda messed up and doesn't hold my teeth together naturally. The chin straps I've tried all pull my chin down towards the airway.
A mouth guard plus chin strap may work but yeah there's that front teeth holding up the whole chin pressure.
I guess a chin strap would work aswell.
It was that book that made me get a deviated septum / nasal blockage surgery which helped a lot.
That said, I still do the neti pot every day since I wouldn't say my breathing is "completely" clear.
the other suggestion from the ENT doctor was that I removed both my tonsils and get my uvula chopped off. so I'm deciding between the septum operation and/or tonsil operation
Also had my turbinates reduced at the same time.
That said, I still do the neti pot every day since I wouldn't say my breathing is "completely" clear.
- never open your mouth while running,
- breathe in for 2 steps, out for longer, like 5 or 7 steps. Odd out steps ensure the cycle starts with foot falls from alternate feet, ensuring you don’t over-strain one side.
- don’t run so fast that you have to open your mouth
And your comment is also easily applicable, haha. I implemented the same strategy while running after the book. One of my favorite books.
In this case, it's an fMRI study. fMRI access is expensive, and analysing results is time consuming. It's reasonable to start small. If the smaller study comes up with anything interesting, then you can do a larger study later to confirm, and the experience you gained in the smaller study will help you design the larger one.
When I was a small child I had an operation in my nose that did something - that my mom doesn't remember. To this day I imagine they removed or fixed something and no one knows what they removed or did, I woke up in a recovery room with my nose bleeding (inpatient procedure). I had terrible allergies as a kid.
I'm really fascinated by this because some of the comments I've been reading here are very opinionated but I don't know what they are based on.
As for the current mouth vs nose and belly vs chest breathing, it really feels like a fad/cult. There seem to be a constant stream of very small "studies" with questionable methodologies with just enough results to warrant further investigation.
Yes and no. Mouth breathing in and of itself isn't, socially, a negative.
However, in English[0][1][2], a "mouth breather" is also a euphemism for someone of below average quality and intelligence.
Not sure how that came to be, but that's the answer to your question.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouth_breathing
My first exposure to the term was via internet memes where “mouth breathing” was conveyed as existing only with those who were mentally impaired. Check out the Urban Dictionary link someone else responded to you with in a different comment thread for more context.
I don’t recall ever hearing anything about “mouth breathing” in my society/culture/subculture before exposure to these memes, so I wonder if it’s a newer thing? If so, silly memes really are influencing our culture!
I doubt this was part of the curriculum, but in fitness classes at school we were told that breathing through your nose with your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth helps develop your face/jaw and that breathing through your nose moistens the air and helps filter it. We were also told that it's not necessary to breath through your mouth when you're out of breath as you won't get or don't need more oxygen and that you risk hyperventilating this way, instead we were told that you should breath using your diaphragm to help mix the air in the lungs and that you should hold the breath for about as long as you inhale/exhale if you can help it. This sort of breathing exercise seems pretty common in any fitness/exercise related guide I've seen too.
As far as other countries/cultures go, any country that has a strong yoga/meditative culture likely considers breathing through your mouth to be bad too, but this is just speculation on my part. Pranayama is thousands of years old for instance and is primarily concerned with controlling and reducing your breathing, which is hard to do if you're not breathing through the nose.
I always thought "mouth breather" was referring to stupid, but tough guys who did so much fighting that their smashed noses don't work anymore.
Also, my nose has been broken a few times and I can't ever really get enough air through it...
So the question is - what would be a plausible mechanism for oral vs nasal breathing having an impact on cognitive function?
Meaning that instead of nasal breathing causing more brain activity, instead the subjects had to concentrate more on consciously breathing through their nose and the activity is due to that? I.e., the brain activity is actually "causing" the nasal breathing?
Though it is hard to measure what are the effects of panic and what stems the shortage of oxygen.
It may be beneficial to deliberately nose-breath as long as possible, especially at Zone2.
I try to transition to nose-in, mouth-out as a fallback before going mouth-in, mouth-out.
Honestly, I don't even know how big of an effect it has, but I've been trying it for the past year to test it out. Been training for over a decade so I just enjoy testing new things.
They have been “nasal breathing” for centuries.
:-)
Top entry for 'mouthbreather' on Urban Dictionary is from 2017: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mouthbreathe...
1. Some people's nasal passages are partially or fully clogged.
2. Even when fully open, there is not enough airflow through the nose to facilitate anything more strenuous than light walking.
Also, no jamming jam into the ear, ya hear?
Now, apart from the fun rendition (“mouth breathers are dumb”), this gives an interesting explanation on why I feel dumb when I’m congested.
Anyway, is glue still ok?
- large amount of mucus (I stopped counting tissue after the 1000 mark [0])
- strange consistency of mucus (thicker, and glue like)
- very narrowed nasal cavity
[0] it got to a point where I was physically exhausted from sneezing, abdominal cramps and nausea.. "surprising" to say the least
this video about vitamin D physiology popped on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDBZM1n_uDE
apparently it's an important control molecule for the immune system
Is this knowledge more like right handedness vs left handedness, scrunch vs fold, sit or squat, not sleeping with fans or more like not drinking white wine with red meat?