By Col Wajid Hussain
A stressful life creates imaginary fight or flight situations, resulting in mouth breathing. This kind of breathing activates more use of the upper chest, causing reduced oxygen uptake in the arterial blood. The nasal breathing helps ensure regular, calm, steady breathing using the diaphragm. Taking a “deep” breath to puff out the chest and raise the shoulders, neither is deep nor beneficial to oxygenating the body. To help deal with stress, a truly deep breath is abdominal, gentle and quiet; the exact opposite of the big breaths usually taken in an attempt to calm down.
Gains of Nose Breathing
1. Nose breathing results in 10 to 20 percent more oxygen uptake.
2. Nose warms and humidifies incoming air. Air entering nose at 42.8˚F is warmed to 86 F at the back of the throat, and 98.6˚upon reaching the lungs. Significant amount of germs and bacteria are also removed in the process.
3. Nasal breathing during physical exercise, produces an aerobic training effect, raising heart rate and arterial blood oxygenation.
Adverse effects of Mouth-breathing
4. Mouth breathing during sleep on waking up results in a dry mouth, general dehydration, increased acidification, creating dental cavities, gum diseases and bad breath.
5. Mouth breathing significantly increase the number of occurrences of snoring and obstructive sleep apnea.
Save the Children
Children became mouth breathers( for larger intake of air) with increased consumption of acid and mucus forming modernized processed diet of bakery items, canned vegetables and sweetened items. This all reduces their respiratory strength. Over time, the brain adjusts to this larger intake of air, and overbreathing becomes a habit.
Throughout evolution, our diet consisted of 95 percent alkaline-forming and 5 percent acid-forming foods. The alkaline-forming foods are easy for the body to process and are “breathing-friendly”. This does not bar meat protein consumption provided it is not processed. Pak Destiny
