The Breathing Expert: Breathing Through Your Mouth Can Cause ADHD, Diabetes & Child Sickness! (Must Listen): James Nestor

27:19I can control my diaphragm, but when I don't think about it, it kind of controls itself. It's not accurate. Yeah, absolutely. It's an autonomic function. But by taking conscious control of that diaphragm, you can control your heart. You can control your blood flow. The diaphragm also does an incredible amount of work pumping blood into the heart and pumping lymph fluid throughout the body. So when you see people only using 5 -10 % of their diaphragmatic movement, which is considered normal now, just moving the diaphragm this much, their hearts have to work so much harder to just pump blood. And their bodies have to work so much harder to pump lymph fluid, which you need to get rid of all that waste.

28:03The body likes movement. The fluids need to be moving. So just by taking a slightly deeper breath and exhaling a little more, you were able to help your heart rate out, which is why your heart rate will start to go down after a while. You're able to help your blood pressure in some cases. You're able to pump lymph fluid in more just by taking a slower, deeper breath. And just look at the animal kingdom for your guidance on this. We don't need any fancy animation to show us what proper breathing is. Look at a healthy dog sleeping. Look at a healthy infant sleeping and breathing. Look at indigenous cultures, how they sleep, how they breathe.

28:45You can't tell their breathing. That's what healthy breathing is. It should not be perceptible. So when a lot of people hear about healthy breathing, they want to overdo it, right? They want to... Yeah, I feel great. If you look at a monk or someone who's a master breather, you cannot tell their breathing. It's so soft and so subtle that it just comes in and comes out. That is someone who is balanced. Their nervous system is balanced. Their breathing is balanced. Are these habits we can learn? You talk there about posture and about the diaphragmatic movement and what percentage of the diaphragm we're using and how much that's filling our lungs.

29:28Are these habits we can learn? Absolutely. Because even posture feels like... It's like it's going hard to sit like that. If you start paying attention to your breathing, your posture is going to get better. It is hard to be leaning over like this and take a huge breath. Look what happens to your posture. So form dictates your breathing, your breathing dictates your form. That was written in the Dow, like, 1200 years ago. So once you learn how this proper, slow, deep breathing works, your posture by virtue of that will get better. Would you recommend... Because a lot of people do work in offices.

30:07I'm one of them. I spend a lot of my days, sat down, 10 hours, looking down at a screen. What would you recommend for us? I think the science is pretty clear on standing desk. Convertible standing desk are really helpful to sit for part of that time, to stand for part of that time. Whenever I'm on the phone, which is often I'm standing. So I just press a little button and I go back to standing. When you're standing, you're opening up your chest, these inner castles, you're opening up to allow yourself to naturally breathe deeper breaths. So you can do that sitting, but you just look kind of corny, like sitting like this all the time.

30:46So I think that that's a good hack. I think that the science is very clear that every couple hours, I'm not very good at this, I'm trying to get better. Go for a walk for 10 minutes. Take your call while you're walking around to reset things. That's just one of many different components, looking at the posture and its relationship to healthy breathing. When I was reading through your work, and I was thinking about having this conversation with you, this is really, I guess, slightly obvious, but I also can understand how it's a stupid question, which is if nois breathing is so beneficial for our health and wellbeing, then why do we have the capability of breathing through our mouths?

31:25Do you know what I'm saying? Great question. How wonderful that we have a backup system in case anything happens to our noses that we don't suddenly die. So you can drink through your nose, right? It's really hard to do that, but you can, and it goes down to your stomach, but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Just like with breathing, like, again, look at the animal kingdom, look at a cheetah running at 100 kilometers per hour. How is it breathing? And then how through its nose? The only time that a horse starts breathing through its mouth is when it's sick. So that is a sign that it's sick.

32:02A horse running at a sprint is breathing through its nose. This is what we, this is the organ we are designed to breathe through, and no one who has studied rhinology would argue otherwise. There are 30 different functions that the nose does for breathing. So not only does it help filter air out and heat air, but it helps capture moisture, about 40 % more moisture, so you don't have to constantly be drinking water. When I see people jogging and they are breathing through their mouth, and they're carrying like four different water bottles, they wouldn't need those water bottles if they just learn to breathe through their noses.

32:42Because the body is designed to capture that moisture. That's what the nose does, and all of those hairs do. And then there's nitric oxide, which is this miraculous molecule that plays in a central role, and phasodilation, circulation, and more, and it kills viruses and bacteria. This all happens in the nose. This does not happen in the mouth. Nitric oxide is only happens in the nose. Nitric oxide. Yeah, we get six, six times more nitric oxide, just breathing through the nose, six times more. How? And if you, because of all of these different tissues, they release nitric oxide, and there is some science showing that this boost of nitric oxide can significantly help us defend more from viruses and bacteria, including colds, so breathing in and out through the nose.

33:36There's a lot of work in nitric oxide and COVID rehabilitation, who knew we can produce so much of it in our noses. And if you hum, you can increase that to 15 fold. So humming, you're going to annoy everyone if you do this, increases that nitric oxide, 15 fold, and there was one study that showed this guy completely got rid of his rhinitis, just by humming for about 10 minutes, four times a day. So these are simple tricks you can do. They are free available for everyone. The humming also helps to calm the body down, because we have the vagal nerve, right? So when you hum, you're sending signals to the vagus nerve and you're calming your body down.

34:25What is humming doing? Humming is stimulating more nitric oxide and allowing it to break free from all of those tissues. So you humming your nose? Yeah, and you can feel the vibration there. So somebody sent me this device like three months ago that they now have a device for people who don't want a hum that goes on your nose and hums for you. If that's going to help you hum, you can do that. But I found it's just kind of easier to pick a song you like and hum that. When you talk about the common cold and, you know, flu and infection, did you see a clear correlation between people that had good breathing habits and the common cold and bad breathing habits?

35:05There have never been like a huge study done on that, on humming and nasal breathing in the common, and there never will be, right? No one's going to fund that. I can say anecdotally, absolutely. And if you look at the biochemistry, if you look at the physiology, if you look at all the functions of the nose, you can deduce, it seems very clear to me that you will be susceptible less to certain viruses, certain bacteria by breathing in and out of your nose. You mentioned COVID there. Your book came out right as COVID hit, which is unbelievable timing. Yeah, yeah. Some people thought I'd plan that somehow.

35:47It was interesting. The first week the book came out. Somebody criticized it for taking advantage of this pandemic. Without bothering to notice, the book was printed and in warehouse six months before anyone had ever heard the word COVID. You know, and I worked on this book for years and years and years. So, yeah, lockdown in the US was in March. This book came out in June, right on the heels of it, which was absolutely bizarre to me. And all of the research looking into breathing patterns, looking into nasal breathing, how that can help rehabilitate people with long COVID and with acute cases of COVID is very solid.

36:31And I still don't see anybody talking about this. What are the most important things that we're not talking about as it relates to things like COVID from your research and your book? I think the most important, well, depends on who's talking. People in breathwork communities have been talking, yogis have been talking about. Buddha's been talking about it. So, I think in Western medicine, you come in and your doctor assesses your health, listens to your heart, maybe it looks at your cholesterol. They're not looking at your breathing. And this is especially important for kids. I cannot tell you how many hundreds, thousands by now of parents have written me, their kids are on all these different pills.

37:09None of them are doing anything. They have ADHD. They're flunking out of school. And I am astounded that more pediatricians and more doctors aren't looking into this because so many millions of kids are suffering because of their breathing is so terrible. It's been so terrible for so long that their bodies are now rebelling against them. And why are kids breathing in such a way? Because you think of a kid, you think, I think we form these bad habits when we're adults or later in life. But the thought that a kid has developed such a bad habit somewhere is quite hard to take. See, all roads go back to those schools, right?

37:49And that anthropology and those ancient cultures, right? So, these kids are not able to breathe well because their facial development is so retro -nathic, which means it has grown so far backwards that their airways aren't able to open up enough. So, whenever they put their heads on a pillow, that's what it sounds like. So, it is a problem with facial development that we did not have hundreds of years ago. And you can see this, I spent years looking at ancient skeletons and they did not have these problems. So, right out of the gate were messed up, right? Our facial function is messed up and it's making it harder for us to breathe.

38:37Add on top of that pollution, bad sitting habits, bad breathing habits, and you have a recipe for disaster, which is what has happened for so many kids today. So, I have to ask where that facial issue started and how that is being passed on. Because in my mind, evolution or de -evolution or whatever the word would be in this case, stopped. I thought we stopped changing and evolving because we are no longer being selected out of the gene pool. There is no stopping evolution. Evolution means change throughout time. It does not mean progress. So, when people use the word evolution to mean we are evolving better and we have these better capabilities, that's not what the word actually means.

39:27It's changed throughout time and we can change for better or for worse. And for the past few hundred years, we have been changing for the worse. This is not my opinion, this is a scientific fact. So, it comes back to that question, why? Why would an animal change for the worse? And it goes back to my answer, the environment. We can trace the exact point that our facial structure started growing in this de -form way to make us less susceptible to healthy breathing too, that changed in such a way to make us such poor breeders. And that point is, right when industrialized food came into different cultures.

40:11So, that happened at different times, came in first to England and France, then it spread to Germany, then it spread to Scandinavia, then it spread through the rest of the world. You can see in a single generation of eating industrialized foods, things that were canned, things that were bottled, things that were baked, things were sugar in it. Single generation, 50 % of the population will have crooked teeth that didn't have it before. Crooked teeth are indicative of having a mouth that's too small for your face. Your mouth grows too small, teeth have nowhere to grow in, so they grow in crooked.

40:50What else is a problem with having a mouth that's too small for your face? You have an airway that's too small, you aren't able to breathe properly. So, we can see that exact point, and researchers have done this for decades and decades and have seen these skulls before after industrialization. And the same story plays out no matter where you are on the planet. So, that is what has ruined our faces, and that's why we look so different than we did 300 years ago, 2000 years ago, 20 ,000 years ago. Why did our mouths get smaller at that point? Because of industrialized food, elicits very little chewing.

41:28You don't need to chew very much when you're eating soft food. So, if you think about it, our ancestors chewed for like 3, 4 hours a day, chewing raw meat, bones, roots. Think about the foods you ate today. Well, maybe not you, because you're probably eating healthy food, but the food that most people are eating, everything soft, takes a few bites as gone. There's no rigorous chewing, and if you don't get that early on in life, your skeleton does not develop properly, and your musculature does not develop properly. And you grow a different kind of face that makes you much more susceptible to poor breathing habits.

42:11Does that then mean that one way we can avoid these breathing related disorders later in life would be to have our children eating more difficult foods when they younger? Absolutely. And if you look at the reasons why our ancestors all had these pronathic really strong faces, these huge airways, it's because they were breastfed for a minimum of 2 years. And after that, they weren't weaned on the applesauce or baby food. They ate adult food, right? There was no such thing as Gerber's back then a few hundred years ago. They went from being breastfed to eating adult food, which requires a lot of chewing.

42:53That's the main driver behind how our faces have developed and devolved in the past 300 years. The point there about being breastfed for 2 years, why is that consequential? This is where I get into a lot of trouble here. So I want to be very, don't worry, I'm going to try to do a lot of it. You might trust me. So I want to be extremely clear here. I am a journalist and I go out and talk to experts in the field. These are not my opinions. What I'm telling you, what I have been told by dozens and dozens of experts, and I'm not shaming anyone for feeding their children any way they want. That's none of my business, okay?

43:39What I have learned from several experts is the stress and chewing required for breastfeeding will help pull the face out and develop a larger airway. Again, I want to be very clear, I'm not shaming modern mothers, you're under an incredible amount of stress, bottle feeding, perfectly fine. You want to do that, I think it's great. But that stress, and you think about it, like for 2 years, if you're constantly pulling that face out, the face is going to develop differently. So that makes sense to me. But even if a kid is bottle fed, which is great, if you want to bottle feed a kid, as long as they're eating healthy food that they actually chew after that, I believe my personal opinion is you can develop all of that proper facial structure.

44:37You can also use some different orthodontic devices to help push that along and you will be perfectly fine. What is the difference between the bottle and the nipple, in terms of what it does to my... Yeah, see when I mentioned we're both getting trouble here, this is what I was talking about. I will not visually demonstrate. You can look it on YouTube, anybody. But there is, it's much easier to feed from a bottle, it requires less stress to feed from a bottle. When you are breastfeeding, it is much more activating for the infant to have to glom onto the breast. And the nipple goes actually deep into their mouth, almost down their throat, and it requires more chewing stress.

45:25We know this. Which is why a lot of kids, when they're given the choice between the two, they want the bottle, because the bottle is easier, they want more food more quickly. And again, I want to be clear, just because you were bottle fed or whatever early on does not mean you're doomed. It's some of this sounds depressing, but I considered it inspiring and empowering to know the science behind this, so you can fix what the core issue is. And I'm convinced that kids who are bottle fed can be wonderful, perfect breeders by adopting other habits beyond that. You mentioned hyperactivity, as being coreilitry to breathing.

46:06So if you're a parent and you have kids who are having health issues, even if they don't have health issues, look at how they're breathing at night. This is so important. Look at how they're breathing in the day. If they're breathing in the vast majority of the breast through their mouth, you have to fix that number one. They will be much more susceptible to asthma, allergies, and other issues later on in life, especially at night if they're breathing through an open mouth. And if you can hear them breathing when they're sleeping, this is a big red flag that you better look into immediately because there will be so many downstream issues caused by that breathing pattern.

46:46Like this is increased risk of diabetes, increased risk of autoimmune issues, increased risk of asthma, ADHD, and more. So some researchers, this is not my words, this is what they told me. They said there is no such thing as ADHD. What that is is sleep disordered breathing. Period. Really? They said it is 100 % related to your breathing at night, especially. So again, that is not my view. This is what they have said. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I don't think it's too far to say the vast majority of those issues if your kid has sleep apnea or is snoring are caused by that. They are not sleeping well.

47:34If you are not sleeping well, what do you do all day long? Your body is trying to stay awake, so they're giving ridlin to stay awake. They're giving sleeping pills to go to sleep. Those sleeping pills will make their breathing worse because they loosen all of the muscles in here and they cause more resistance when they're breathing. So even if kids, even if you hear a slight resistance to it, that is caused for alarm as well. I know this seems overblown like some crazy warning, but you can, there are 500 scientific references available for free on my website. Look at the work by Christian Gimano, who was at Stanford for 40 years.

48:15He was sounding the alarm in the 70s and nobody listened to him. And people still aren't listening to this and it is a serious problem. So what's true for kids is also true for adults, but I'll just cap that off right there. I mean, please do not cap it off ever. I prefer when you talk. So the ADHD point is fascinating to me because it's been a huge topic of conversation in society because of the apparent rise in the disorder, but the certain rise in the diagnosis of the disorder. These researchers and scientists that believe that ADHD is purely a consequence of early breathing habits. What evidence have they got for that?

48:56What studies have they done to show the correlation between how we breathe when we're little and our chance of ADHD when they're fixed the breathing the ADHD goes away. Really? For the majority of the cases, after everybody, for the majority of the cases, it disappears. You can look at the studies. You know, I'm happy to provide those for you. To me, it makes sense. It's if you're struggling to sleep, you are never going to be fully aware during during the daytime. And this is one of the reasons why so many kids get their adenoids taken out, their tonsils taken out and more. But unless you fix the breathing habit, you can do those surgeries and they can be very helpful.

49:46Unless you fix the breathing habits, all of those problems tend to come back sometimes even more so. So you're not fixing the core issue. The core issue is breathing and breathing retraining breathing habits. Ahead of this conversation, we were doing some research and we found that study that analyzed more than 11 ,000 children over six years beginning at six months of age. And that revealed that children's sufferings from sleep -disordered breathing had a higher incidence of behavioral and emotional issues such as hyperactivity, aggressiveness, depression and anxiety. They are 50 to 90 % more likely to develop ADHD -like symptoms than were normal breeders.

50:25That blew my mind. There it is right there. I'm glad that you mentioned that and I didn't. Yeah, and there's dozens of studies showing the same thing over and over and over. The question then becomes, I guess, is if I have ADHD, I'm 30 years old. Yeah, I think it depends on who you are. I don't think that there's a blank prescription or a blank guarantee on any of this stuff. I think it depends on what's the root cause of that ADHD. We know in kids, it's treated as a neurological problem. If that were true, then the drugs should work and they don't. And I believe it's a physiological problem. It's a breathing problem.

51:05And that study is just one of many that has espoused that. If you're talking about an adult with ADHD, what I know about adopting healthy breathing habits, you will only benefit. That benefit might be this big or it might completely transform your life. You will only know once you do it. So I don't feel comfortable guaranteeing anyone of anything. There might be some respiratory therapist or breathing coaches who will say, absolutely, I can cure your ADHD with these breathing practices. That's fine. But I don't think it's the same prescription for everybody. I know it'll help though. Going further back up this train of thought, then we're talking about exercise and nose breathing at the very start of this threat of thought.

51:51And I have sat here with a few people now. I think it was Peter Atia who was talking to me about VO2 max. Subject matter, I don't still fully don't understand. But from what I understood, it was the amount of oxygen we're able to take from each breath. Yeah. So that's a general measurement of the amount of oxygen, how efficient you are at taking up oxygen, which is related to breathing, but it's also related to the respiratory system and how you're able to extract that oxygen from your lungs into your bloodstream. And it's a good gauge of general athletic performance. It's not everything. And there's been some pushback against using that as a measurement.

52:31But it's a general general gauge, a good tool for that. Is there a correlation between our health outcomes, how long will live and our lung capacity of VO2 max and all of that stuff? Is there a correlation now? So I had the same question years ago and I started looking into it and it turns out that numerous studies have found that the healthier and larger your lungs are, the longer you will live. That is the greatest indicator of lifespan was lung size and lung health. The greatest indicator. The greatest indicator, according to these studies, the Framingham study looked at 5200 people over the course of 70 years and they found that the people who lived the longest had the largest and healthiest lung function.

53:19They even did studies in which they were looking at people who had lung transplants. So surgically in plant and lungs, those who were given larger lungs lived way longer than those given normal size or smaller lungs. So no matter how you get these larger lungs, it's better. And luckily we don't need to get a transplant to do this. We can practice healthy breathing, we can practice stretches, we can exercise and this naturally can keep our lung size up. It's very sad when you start looking at these charts of what happened after you're 30, you're almost there. So get ready. It's a real bummer. But your lung function starts dropping off very quickly and especially for women around 50 and 60, your lung function and your lung size starts shrinking, shrinking, shrinking up.

54:11Which means at the time you need more oxygen, more easily, it's much harder to get that. And that's where people's health really starts disintegrating and they start having problems. The good news is you can stave off this deterioration, the shrinking of your lungs by doing all the stuff we're talking about, by doing breath work exercise, by exercise. What is yoga, but stretching and breathing into this lung and breathing into that lung so the yogis knew this thousands and thousands of years ago. And it's that it almost feels like that downward spiral is kind of self reinforcing and self fulfilling because if my lung capacity deteriorates, my movement and my exercise capacity will deteriorate, which means my lung capacity will deteriorate, which means our move less, which is kind of this downward spiral, right?

55:03Absolutely. And it's my belief after studying this stuff for so long that that is the thing you want to pay attention to more, more than anything else, especially as you go older, your lung function, how much air you can pack into your lungs, how long you can hold your breath. So that all of this is indicative of your general respiratory function and your general health so that that little hint of using a breath hold every morning to see where you are physically and mentally, I think is good. They've used it for thousands and thousands of years and now it's coming back. This is something that a lot of these longevity experts aren't looking into.

55:41They're looking into nutrition and exercise. They're not looking into lung capacity. We get more energy from breath than we do from food and drink, right? We take 30 pounds of air in and out of our lungs every single day. And so I find it interesting. They're focused on all these micronutrients. All that stuff's important, right? I believe most of it. But from what I know, a lot of them aren't focused very much on their breathing. I want to make sure that I have something that I can take into my own life there for the expansion of my lung capacity because I'm sold on the importance of it. So exercise expands my lung capacity.

56:20Yeah, 15, 20%. Just by exercising, by virtue of actually, if you're a good exercise or your lung capacity will stay up. Coneyvascular exercise. And there's ways to access that a little more if you're dysfunctionally breathing when you're working out. You're not doing yourself too many favors. So you have to remember the simple basic things. You have to learn how to take a proper breath, then apply that to your workouts. You will see such an incredible difference once you do this. This is what yoga is good for. It's hard to do yoga without breathing well, right? You can do it, but by virtue of all those different poses, they're meant to open up your chest, right?

57:00To expand this area. So yoga, cardiovascular exercise with proper breathing through my nose, breath work practices, the start of the day. I think biomechanics, the first thing is awareness to any of this stuff. You can take your hands. We can do this while we're seated here. You can put it above your sit bones here. And when you breathe in, breathe very, very low. And you want your hands to move out laterally. I don't care what your stomach's doing moving out laterally. So as you breathe in, when you say low, you mean in my belly, you want your hands to be moving outwards. Okay. I don't care what's happening with your lung, with your stomach.

57:38I can hold my breath and move my stomach in and out. So when people talk about a belly breath, that's not what we're doing. When your hands are moving out laterally, that means your diaphragm is descending. That's how we can see if you're taking a proper deep breath. So as you breathe in, you want your hands to be moving outward. And if you take a cloth measuring tape, you can actually measure your progress this way. The next thing you want to do is take your hands, okay? Take your four fingers, place them on your collarbone and put it this one's very weird. Place your middle finger right there.

58:11So it's only your middle finger that's touching. And we're going to breathe deep, then we're going to move that breath up into our chest.

58:21Don't move your shoulders. You want to see those fingers naturally separated. So this is not a flexing thing. Your shoulders stay down. Just like this. Just like this, fingers on the collarbone. We're going to take a big breath into our lower abdomen area. Move it up. And you want your chest to be expanding outward. The last thing we want to do, take your hands and put them, especially you need to do this. Take your hands, put them around your neck. Yeah. I want you to do that same breath. You should feel zero tension in your neck. There's none of this going on, okay? It should feel soft and supple.

59:09So let's take that belly to the chest breath. If there's any tension, do it again until there's no tension.

59:24Okay. Now try that again, keeping your shoulders down. Okay? Do not move your shoulders up. There's none of this going on. You're very soft, very relaxed. Take your hands above the hip bones. When you're breathing in very deep, those hands should be out like this, like wings. Yeah. Okay. And you're going to breathe in deep and those hands should be moving out laterally.

59:50You will start to feel those organs getting compressed. That's good. You want that. Then you can move it up one more time. So we're going to start low and we're going to move that breath up to the chest. Keep your shoulders down. Try to get the shoulders down. There you go. Those fingers should be separating. So this is something that you can check in if those hands are moving out laterally. If those hands are separating on your chest, you are taking a proper biomechanical breath. And that's what you need to focus on. And you'll notice once you start learning how to access these different areas, you start applying this to working out and your performance will tend to go up.

1:00:41You'll be less exhausted at the end. You'll just feel better all around. So we should expect our chest to come kind of be outwards as we breathe in. You want to see your chest moving outwards because most of your lungs, the expansion is in your back. But some of that is going to be happening. This is not a pose that you want to do like this, right? You should be very loose, very limber. And when you breathe in, you want that air to fill all the way up there. But you want to start low first. That means the diaphragm is descending. Most of the air that is soaked up from the lungs and that gas exchange happens at the bottom of the lungs.

1:01:23So you want to be able to access the bottom of those lungs. Is there a certain way that I, because when you say you want to start by breathing at the bottom, how do I know? So the symptom of me breathing at the bottom is it coming out. What do they call this? My abdomen coming outwards on the sides. Because everyone calls this a belly breath. So people do this with their belly, but you can move your belly independently of your breathing. This is a way that you can't cheat. So a tape measure is good. And if you get an inch, inch and a half, that's pretty good. But you can work that up. And if you see really good breathers, people have practiced a lot of yoga and done it the right way.

1:02:09They can have this massive expansion. And this is what ties into freedivers. Free divers are the experts accessing every square inch of their lung capacity to fill it with air. And that's what they do, which is why if you ever see freedivers go to one of these competitions, they're short people, tall people, fat people, whatever, they all have these enormous chests. Because they've been able to develop this incredible lung capacity. One of the things that I think causes shallow breath is this kind of constant state of fight or flight, stress, anxiety, screens, social media. And it's funny because whenever people would have been listening to this podcast and started to heard you talk about breath, and they would realize that they were probably at that exact moment doing really shallow breaths.

1:03:02You talk about these free divers who were able to extract 18, use 80, 90 % of their diaphragm or more. We used 10 % roughly 10%. And oftentimes less than that, the average person. What is the correlation between stress and breathing? And also, I'm talking now about the everyday angst of life. So we've talked about the skeleton. We've talked about anthropology. We've talked about biomechanics and posture. But something else that ties into this, you're 100 % right, is psychology, is your brain. So how you breathe affects how your brain works affects your anxiety, but your anxiety also affects how you're breathing.

1:03:43So again, it's another one of those circles. What happens so often is when we're at work, we're so sensitized to threats and to fear that we overreact when something happens. Even though it's not threatening our life, we get a nasty email from a friend or an email from the boss that's disappointed at the last project you did. And we get stressed out. So what is the physiological response to stress is we clench up, we hold our breath, and then we breathe like this. And we hold our breath again, and we breathe like this. You think about thousands of years ago when we were out in the wild, what would we do if there was a threat approaching?

1:04:35You hold your breath to be silent. And then you breathe too much, you get a respiratory system ready to either fight it off or to run away. So we're having the same response in our day to day lives now because we're so over sensitized to it. So researchers have different names for this. They call it email, apnea or continuous awareness. I mean, there's an academic name for it, partial attention syndrome. I prefer email apnea, easier to remember. No matter what you call it, it's the idea that when you're in the office place, you're breathing dysfunctionally because of this constant stress loop.

1:05:15And they found there were some NIH studies on this. They found that breathing this way can have long -term damage to your health, high blood pressure issues. All of the things we had talked about metabolic dysfunctions and more, which makes sense because you're just constantly in this loop of fear and threat and stress. So the quickest, most effective way, way more than drugs to take control of this stress is to take control of your breathing. And this has been documented time and time again. So when you notice you're breathing this way, you stop. What I like to do is breathe two breaths in and then an exhale looks like this.

1:06:01That resets your respiratory system, that resets your breathing pattern. And then you can do a few rounds of that and go back to very simple five second in five second out. So let's just pretend you're in line at the airport. Someone's cut you off. You ordered something at Starbucks. They gave you the wrong, you know, all the things that are just drive us crazy nowadays. At that moment, want you to breathe in, pause, breathe in again, let it out. Relax yourself a little bit when you're doing these breaths. Okay, breathe in, breathe in again, and let it out. Do that one more time. Breathe in, let a more subtle, let in again, and let it out.

1:06:54So you did this in a very exaggerated way, which is fine, but you can do this so no one can tell you're doing it. You can do it very subtle. You probably feel a little different now than you did before. Yeah, so much different. You can return to then a slow, low, rhythmic breathing pattern from there or whatever makes you comfortable. I like five seconds in five seconds out. Also what's beneficial for people if it's comfortable for them is four seconds in six out. We'll really mellow you out and you can try that right now. Breathe in. Okay, first of all, slow. I should not be seeing you. Okay, you should see.

1:07:31Okay. So we're going to breathe in just very, very lightly. We're going to relax here. What does it matter if you see it? Because you're trying too hard. Okay, and this is not there's a time and place for the. This is not it. Okay. Okay. So breathe in. One, two, three, four out. Two, three, four, five, six. Breathe in. Two, three, four out. Two, three, four out. Two, three, four, five, six.

1:08:09Okay, so breathe in. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

1:08:36Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

1:09:06Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

1:09:35Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

1:10:05Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

1:10:27Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Justaways separately.

1:10:51Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay?

1:11:00Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Slowly you're making them more comfortable with more CO2 you're making them more comfortable with their nervous system function with themselves Which is why this assessment of a breath old is very useful and so important It's not only a diagnostic.

1:11:20It's a therapeutic is while you're holding your breath You're also in the action of training yourself to tolerate more CO2 which will calm your body down I'm going back to this point about the parasympathetic and the nervous system and anxiety Why Does having an extended exhale Help with anxiety so you said breathe in for full breathe out for six Why why does extending that exhale by two seconds help with stress anxiety? So if you really pay attention and a lot of people have problems doing this is which is why it's helpful for them to look at their Wub or or whatever you can place your hand over your heart and when you inhale You can feel your heart rate increase when you exhale Slows down.

1:12:09This is how HRV works. This is how it's calculated is the difference in time on that the shortest distance to the longest difference And this is looking at your nervous system function respiratory sinus So how you breathe affects how? How many times your heart beats right so if you're exhaling which slows the heart rate down More what's gonna happen to your heart rate? It's gonna start slowing down more and That exhale that slowing down and telling your body you're in a safe place that it can relax is what triggers this response by the nervous system Interesting. It's like tricking the tricking the body into believing that such a simple hack And a lot of people is say oh this can't be true But so many of us have these wearables you can check it for yourself and in real time to look at your heart rate variability Changing your breathing pattern look at your blood pressure to for many people They can just switch to the breathing after a couple of minutes You can see drops of 15 points not for everybody But for some people 10 to 15 points just by switching your key one is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes In hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead and over the course of my career I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places one which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite They're also a sponsor of this podcast net suite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined Platform you'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place their technology has been a real game Changer especially for my team at flight studio as over the last year we've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and arrows over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with net suite So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business head to net suite dot com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning that's net suite dot com slash Bartlett We talked about the pandemic early Ron and covid one of the big conversations you must have seen playing out was that masks are Bad for us because it's like trapping carbon dioxide in inside the mask which is making us sick I even see people having this conversation right now online in the wake of the pandemic They're saying you know these masks that we put on kids.

1:14:31They've caused sickness and illness in kids Carbon dioxide is kind of seen as this poison What is your pv on this man? There's even more controversial than the whole breastfeeding thing, but let's go there okay, so Surgeons and dentists have been wearing masks for 100 years. They're able to function just fine. They wear good quality masks and they wear them when they need to be wearing them There are several studies that support if everyone wears a mask and if everyone is wearing that mask properly It does seem to stem some Transmission of covid and other viruses. That's that's the truth Now let's look at the other side Has been telling we've been telling people that social distancing at least in the US they after six months of social distancing Which absolutely work.

1:15:26They said no now you can go out as long as you're wearing a mask Did that do anything to stem the spread of covid from what I see no? So there's there's a number of problems most the masks that people are wearing are terrible quality They're filled with chemicals that you are inhaling and they're causing a lot of health issues Okay, that's that's number one second one is most of us are wearing them improperly We're not wearing them in the right way the third one is people feel this sense of Comfort that they're actually protected wearing this mask which is not the case in many situations and This is because I've done my own research looking at carbon dioxide levels in indoor Environment and have found these places that we were told that we could go to and we would be safe as long as we're wearing masks Completely not the case some of these places had such high CO2 that it meant every seventh breath You were inhaling with someone else's breath backwash with someone else's exhale So I don't care how many masks you're wearing they are not going to stop the spread of These diseases if you are in an environment where so much of that air has been recycled So that's really interesting to me.

1:16:47I've never heard this before the idea that the amount of carbon dioxide in the room You're in which I guess is determined by how well ventilated it is has a relationship with how much recycled air I take in how Absolutely and this I learned all this after the book came out of a talking to a pulmonologist who said you really need to look into Indoor CO2. I said well why he said that is a good Way of determining how much of the air has been recycled So I bought one of these which is a carbon dioxide meter and I've been recording our CO2 during this interview Jesus and so If you are outside It's about 418 depends where you are 418 19 parts per million CO2 That's healthy right even though CO2 is going out this causing climate change.

1:17:42We all know that But for breathing that is perfectly healthy Once you get into 800 parts per million some studies have found that Sorry, it's going on there testing people when they're testing students you see a 20 % decline in Test results just from 800 by the time you get to 1000 You start suffering from things like eye irritation sore throats other issues So we're probably breathing in every one and every 30 breaths That I'm breathing in is your breath or the camera man's breath by the time you get to 25 100 you're in really bad shape one in every 17 breaths is a breath you're breathing from somebody else so We have been told by authorities that we should only worry about levels that are up to 5 ,000 parts per million that is completely false There are over 18 studies that show levels over 800 into a thousand can potentially cause problems with bone Dementeralization kidney calcification and chronic inflammation and so just since we've been sitting in this interview We started off at 700 and now we're at 1100 and if we were to continue working in here for the next few hours This could be up to 1500 1700 which has been shown to have serious Issues with with cognitive function and with physical function That's very scary and it's caused for a redesign of this studio because I mean putting on the air conditioning with that help Because that would that would it now it's recycling the same air unless that air is is coming in from outside Is that air come from outside?

1:19:35I don't think so I think it's recycled and A really scary study I read was a lot of schools are at 1500 to 2000 Several studies have found this they have shown a 50 % decrease Intest results When students were exposed to air with that much CO2 in it 50 % decrease in test results from 1500 to 2000 I've recorded levels up to 4000 and 5000 in bars and subways and more Jesus Yeah, this isn't my Hypothesis either this is something I was told about about a year after the book came out and I've seen a lot of scientific studies since and I sent some of those to your team Just to show that this isn't something I'm making up the the ones you sent to my team.

1:20:29I have Some notes here I can pull up um In one study of 24 employees cognitive schools were 50 % low in the participants were exposed to 1400 ppm of CO2 compared with 550 ppm during a working day. We're nearly there So I am 50 % dumber Because you've been breathing so much I started and I record highly recommend nobody get one of these why because you go crazy wherever you are on an airplane I've seen 2700 First for a million any wonder why you feel like crap after a long flight and sometimes it goes up and then it comes down Because they put in more oxygen But usually when the plane is warming up it's 25 2600 Which is why a lot of people just immediately go to sleep You know, I think maybe they're doing it on purpose to mellow everyone out But if you think about cognitive function I mean this is a 50 % decrease in test results is insane and to think you have kids in these Schools taking tests to go into college and all of the errors recycled I mean, it's just when I mentioned at the beginning of our chat here That the modern world is conspiring to make us unhealthy.

1:21:47I think this is an example and from what I've seen Very few people are paying any attention to this and it's real you're reading the scientific studies over there This isn't stuff that I'm feeding to you This is it almost sounds like I'm smoking it sounds like I'm inhaling You know because we talk about people have got to smoke outside to keep us healthy So we change the laws in this country so you can't smoke indoors Well least smoking is fun and it gives you a buzz right? CO2 is you can't smell it It's really hard to sense it It's invisible and yet it's always there any outside environment you don't have to worry about it But indoor environments especially in the buildings we've created now that don't have windows I can't tell you how many hotels sometimes really nice hotels I go to open the windows My god, they've glued the windows shut right and overnight I watched this just ticking up Hundred points every couple hours And you wonder why you wake up so Feeling so much worse than you did when you first came in there So this is this is real stuff and in a room like this there's nothing you can do because the HVAC system has been Designed to just recycle the air over and over and over again my hunch and I'm probably wrong about this And the next few years people are going to start requiring Bosses of companies are going to require that there be fresh air for their employees because I think you're gonna see Big problems with performance.

1:23:24I mean even just sitting here now that you know this I feel too high So some of that's a placebo effect sure but But don't you feel a little like warm and tired So take my word for it do not travel with one of these it will make you a complete neurotic I'm doing it because I want to document it I'm gonna be updating future editions of the book with some of this information because I didn't know about this When the book came out but I think people really need to know about this and start asking hotels Can I open the window start at before you rent an office? Can I open the window like it's that easy You just need to open it a little bit makes a huge difference just opening it a little bit people can't see this But we sit in a room here and we like air seal it for sound reasons.

1:24:13Yeah, so we don't have any windows in here um And we actually make this This is a replica of my old kitchen which is on the top floor of this building So we the reason which had this wonderful huge balcony over there that you could open the whole side of the The um that side of the building and walk outside into the fresh air But we moved it down here and made made this little chamber because of sound reasons I do sit in here for sometimes nine hours a day. There's been an occasion a few times where I've done three podcasts in a day And I feel that now you've said it I do feel incredibly fatigued I'm sure it's because I'm talking and you know having really you know sort of challenging my brain a little bit but I only I can only wonder if the studies are correct and there's a 50 % variance in my cognitive scores What would happen if I found a way to get oxygen into this room More oxygen in the carbon dioxide out I promise you'd feel better.

1:25:10I'm gonna figure out how much better who knows you know depends on the day, depends on the person I promise you'd feel better. I promise your brain would be operating and functioning better than it is now We're not meant to be in full white walls trapped inside, aren't we? And this is the alignment problem never this is that misalignment problem Even a hundred years ago, right? Every building had windows that you could open even 50 years ago every build almost every building had Had windows you could open but but now the standard protocol is because it's easier to heat and easier to cool Right you're creating this this bubble Which is why if you go into like a Walmart one of those sorts.

1:25:52There's no windows. There's no anything You just got blue light in this bubble you can control the the environment much more easily But what is it doing to people's health? You know, uh, so this is I'm the guy That asks for a hotel room does it have a window and you get really funny looks and it's until you start traveling with one of these and start reading these studies And you realize how important it is so interesting One of the things that I that I've really taken from this is when I wrote my book um, I always go to the jungle To write I literally write the book in nature I've just realized that I'm actually increasing my cognitive Performance by going and sitting down by lake every year and writing versus doing it inside an office So whenever I reflect on tasks that require real cognitive performance Honestly, like having an interview conversation or writing a book or any sort of deep sort of intellectual cognitive tasks It's so important that those rooms and those spaces are well ventilated And the right light and those those two things I think are very important and I think we're going to see So much of this changing in our culture soon because people are going to ask for it and they're going to feel the difference So there's a whole bunch of different reasons why you're thinking more clearly It's not just the lack of CO2 right in the environment.

1:27:11It's the natural light your nature itself is just so inspiring and relaxing But this is one component of it without a doubt I'm shocked that nobody has ever told me that this before. I'm not about that It's just bliss like it by hand and down there but we both feel energized and ready to roll But I'm the type of person that would rather be empowered by information I like when people turn the lights on because we go through our lives Misdiagnosing the problems we're dealing with and so for me knowledge is power because of course I've sat in this chair for you know a long time and To know that There's a potential to potentially increase my cognitive performance when I'm doing a conversation Just by finding ways to get oxygen to this room is is profound without a doubt I'm sure that that will happen In the morning when you do this diagnostic of holding your breath so you get to the hotel room You do this diagnostic you hold your breath.

1:28:07Do you time on a stopwatch? Yeah, no time in on my watch So what this is is you can call it a bolt -score Body oxygen level test you can call it a control pilot call it whatever you want All it is is you take a breath in We're gonna relax. Okay. I thought we could do a race. I wanted to be you and work on work Gonna I'm sure you will I beat James Nestor breathing You take a com breath in okay, and I'll tell you What it is and then well maybe do it which will make for terrible podcast time We you guys can just snip it out, but we're just gonna take a com breath not a big breath com breath and To that point where it just stops when you're exiling you don't push the air out It just naturally stops that neutral point.

1:28:54Okay, just take it. We'll just practice this right now take a breath in Just let they are It will be a point where it just naturally stops. Yeah, that's when you start the timer. Okay on that neutral hold So you just take a breath in And breathe out. I'm not gonna tell you what I'm gonna do this so you don't take an extra big breath and breathe in again Breathe out to neutral Hold your breath. Hold it As you're holding your breath the first Point at which you feel resistance that means a swallow that means your diaphragm Starts convulsing gently That means you feel a buildup of pressure at the back you have to be honest with yourself.

1:29:45This is not a maximum breath hold Test This is the very first point that you feel some palpable discomfort Then you go back to normal breathing. So you won't be doing yourself any favors if you're cheating past that threshold Okay, yeah, so good So what you want to get to is 40 seconds and when you return to breathing the way that you know You've gone too far is when you go Yeah, your return should be come You're not seeing me return. Okay, there is no effort So these are good gauges to know that you've pushed it too far. Okay, so what you want to be going for Is 40 seconds or more to be holding your breath you got 40 seconds.

1:30:39I think you pushed it a little too far Freedom. I was waiting for that point of just feeling a little bit uncomfortable and then Most athletes even elite athletes get to 20 seconds when they first start doing this And they've trained themselves to push through the pain they compete and they win But their bodies are not happy Which is why so many athletes peak and then they're complete mess After they stop competing that this happens with football players this happens with baseball players and more What most people do is about 15 seconds 15 seconds you would be surprised especially older people especially people have respiratory problems As I mentioned before people with asthma and panic About three to five seconds they have severe asthma and panic so you just start to understand how dysfunctionally Their breathing is their CO2 tolerance their ability for their lungs to extract oxygen their nervous system in Just because you got a low score That is just a diagnostic and it's a starting point to improve your breathing.

1:31:50This is not a competition. Do not compete with yourself We can get to stuff that Is very competitive if you'd like but this test is just to tune in to how your body is responding and another warning I want to be very very clear about do not take one number and think you're good to go This changes in the morning changes if your sleep is bad changes if your sleep is good changes after you eat and more So you take these throughout the day Maybe three times a day and after a week of recording that number you average it That's your number that you're working with Does that make sense? That makes sense.

1:32:30So so take it at night. Take the morning take it at noon And just put it in your phone and then at the end of that week you'll have your your bolt score This is what they call it Patrick we keep on calls at that Can't stop looking at your carbon dioxide one turn it and the more I said it did we just tick up here Yeah, which this was like a stock meter. We'd be in good shape You know you mentioned asthma there um the I mean my my perception of asthma. I don't suffer from asthma So I don't know about it. I've never no point in my life If I've been forced to learn about it or has my curiosity led me there so far But when I my understanding of asthma is that people have born with it and then they give in medicine That is the general accepted understanding of asthma and it's wrong So some people are naturally predisposed to have asthma, but that is not a life sentence of asthma In the idea that a three year old a friend of mine his kid has asthma Is given a butarole it's given all these different drugs.

1:33:31They're taking out his adenoids. They're taking out his tonsils No one's looking at his breathing. I asked my friend. I said How does your kid breathe at night? He's like oh snores all night long with an open mouth How does he breathe in the day his mouth is constantly open? Nobody mentioned that nobody mentioned that So I don't go for unless you've got a genetic neurological disease, right? I don't go for this argument that diseases that come on that are Diseases of civilization that we are stuck with these diseases our whole life We certainly know that's true with diabetes who thought that diabetes is actually reversible type two diabetes is reversible by adopting a different diet It is there's a company called vera and this is what they do they reverse diabetes the same thing is true For asthma and anxiety that's my belief at minimum you can reduce the symptoms If it really works out well You won't have any symptoms at all and I can say this now because I've talked to dozens and dozens and dozens of people Who suffered through asthma for decades?

1:34:39They weren't able to go outside and play as a kid They had to stay indoors. They had to stay locked up their breathing was terrible Who now have no symptoms of asthma by taking control of their breathing seems impossible There's a number of different clinical trials showing that the effects of healthy breathing Showing exactly what these effects of healthy breathing can do for asthmatics that three year olds your friends three Yeah, can you play out that story? What did what did that what what was the end of that story? He called me up and he's like You know a bit about breathing a little bit You know what what can I do for you?

1:35:17He told me what was going on? He's like they're taking out their adenoids They're taking out this kids tonsils. He's three years old taking out the kids tonsils are three and adenoids Because they think that he you know that is the root Cause of of his asthma. This will allow him to breathe better But what they don't realize what they didn't mention as I mentioned earlier if you just take out adenoids and tonsils But don't fix the underlying breathing dysfunction all those problems come back This is true with asthma. This is true sleep avian this is true with snoring and more So you have to fix that core issue So I hooked him up with a Very well -known breathing therapist who and he's now this just happened last week I said I'm not going to argue with your doctor and your surgeon Maybe your kid needs all these things taken out immediately.

1:36:06I will argue with the comment that he's going to be on oral steroids and bronchidilators for the rest of his life I said I don't think he's starting off on a good foot at three years old So he's now and I'll let you know how it goes But if what happens to him happens to the hundreds and hundreds of other people I've heard from You can reduce the symptoms and in some cases reverse them entirely mention tonsils It just sparked my curiosity because I'm thinking back through my childhood every you know so many people have their tonsils taken out And now I reflect on that through the frame of like misalignment and Ancesthes and stuff I go why would we be cutting something out of our body?

1:36:52um That must be a misalignment problem of sorts. I that that must be a symptom of The environment we live in not being right for the human body That's my guess Why would a part of the human body that's taken millions of years to evolve to this certain function Just all of a sudden be of no use in the past 40 years You have to start to ask that question So what is the root cause of those inflamed adenoids and tonsils? Is it the fact that they are there and that's the problem maybe for some people genetically right that that could be the issue But what's causing that inflammation You have to answer that question first before you gonna fix it and just going into a three year old To their mouth and starting to rip things out.

1:37:40I my personal opinion is that that's a really bad idea I would go through a bunch of different methods to see if you can improve The core condition first before you revert to that surgery is great I know people who have had their breathing absolutely transformed by doing nasal surgery It works wonderfully for so many people But I would try to see what you can do with your natural body first So interesting I told you my partner she um she's got I think she's got like her deviated Which means that breathing you can always hear a breathing through her nose Pretty much all the time. I mean especially when she sleeps Kind of start when she goes to see percent even you know, she'll wear To be fair she started wearing mouth tape.

1:38:24I wanted to talk to you about this She started wearing this thing called myotape which goes around her lips and has a hole in the middle um But that having that myotape round her mouth when we looked at her whoops scores in the morning really interestingly Her heart rate was flatter than ever So usually what you'd see in our heart rate is kind of these like spikes upwards throughout the night So sometimes it might spike up to 60 or 70 But with the with the mouth tape round her lips Keep which kept keep it kind of keeps your mouth closed throughout the night Her heart rate super flat her wake events Down asleep efficiency up I hear this every day really I mean Yeah, this is the the beauty of nasal breathing what the brain wants is a consistent fluid signal it gets that signal from your breathing So there's a study else and you guys on this that the clock the master clock of sleep and of the brain at night is that cyclical deep Easy breathing pattern This is what the body doesn't want to have to fight and defend itself when it's sleepy And this is it's time to rest and restore and grow right if you're constantly waking up What's that doing the body has to stop what it's doing the repair mechanisms and address the threat over and over and over and over That's what's happening when people are struggling to breathe Breathing like that so this doesn't shock me at all This is exactly what happened to me This was my same experience and it's the experience that hundreds of people have had and they've sent me their sleep scores for some some reason showing their heart rate variability showing their How much more deep sleep they're getting and showing how rested they are in in the morning So no matter how you get to nasal breathing if it's by force of will some people can just will themselves I think that's awesome That's the greatest way of doing it if it's a piece of tape.

1:40:21That's what I like using myotapes fantastic It's been around for a long time And it takes away some of the paranoia that people have with first taping their mouth It's especially good for kids you don't want to tape a kid's mouth this myotapes just sort of It provides a gentle reminder to keep your mouth shut at any time you can talk you can breathe through your mouth But it's it's just gently reminding you to keep your mouth shut I think it's great some people use chin strass whatever you want to use But breathing in and out through your nose at night has so many benefits Your girlfriend has seen it Millions of people have experienced it now and it's free and easy available for everybody It's just it's profound and you know this this whole discovery of breath and sleep in the The two -way relationship has just been so illuminating for me and that's You hugely part of the reason why I wanted to have a conversation with you to get that message out there Um the perfect rhythm of breathing there was this fascinating thing you talked about that there is a Perfect rhythm to breathing Which is it was quite spooky reading about it What is the perfect rhythm to breathing in?

1:41:28It depends on who you are. I've learned a lot more about this as well But a good first place to start Is this five to six seconds in five to six seconds out you can get more geeky after you hit that I used to call this five point five I write about this in the book with five point five seconds in five point five seconds out That's five point five breaths per minute. That's what researchers found to be really the most beneficial But then I got so many inquiries and emails and letters from people saying You know, I'm into the slow breathing But I can't hit that half second and it's driving me crazy and I've been trying for two weeks I'm like good god.

1:42:11What have I done here? So I'm now telling people five to six seconds is fine You don't have to worry about that half second being being off Anything in that range, but what I've learned since this book has come out that tall people six foot six one and above should be breathing even slower larger lungs diaphragm has more time to descend so around four and a half breaths per minute So that's about eight seconds and eight seconds out even slower and for kids They naturally need to breathe more so you want to start a kid off at Start at three and three out just starting there and working up to that So this is a general guide that will work for most people a good launching spot But once you get there and you're comfortable for that you can actually view in real time Your HRV to find your perfect perfect rhythm because it varies a little bit for most people So slow is better If you're taller yes, but but not necessarily for some people who are panic anxiety Who don't have a very good CO2 threshold You have to start with two and two out just doing that Once you get comfortable with that let's go three and three out Four and four out right and you find what's most comfortable for you and wonderful being in the world of Wearables where you can actually see where your body is responding most My girlfriend does a lot of them that kind of It's almost I can almost describe it's like a psychedelic experience Is that what they call in it the the NF fire stuff or is that the holotropic?

1:43:59I don't really know the difference between the two But that when you do the breathing breathing ceremonies that almost it was almost like my ego The first time I did it I felt so emotional The first time I did it I it not in a not in like a sad like a sad way I just could see things a little bit more clearly in my life The first time I did one of these breathwork sessions with her And I felt the need to apologize to a bunch of people Because I just I'd had an argument with someone that day about something small and I just felt It was almost at my ego. It just like dissolved or something What's going on there?

1:44:33What is that? You know because it's people are prescribing this as a cure for like mental health and trauma and Well, I could tell you what's going on biologically. I could tell you what's going on psychologically psychically and in more we'll start with the biology A lot of these very vigorous breathing techniques, which I would strongly suggest People figure out your breath foundation before you go on to these don't just jump into this stuff Everything we've talked about nasal breathing slow breathing proper biomechanics If you figure out all that you will get so much more out of these more vigorous breathing exercises So a lot of these have you breathe very fast sometimes through the mouth You may be saying well, I thought you just said we shouldn't be breathing through the mouth for the short exercises It's perfectly fine and you breathe that way to specifically elicit a stress response in your body That you are creating it's the same thing with ice baths, right?

1:45:32Those aren't relaxing. They cause a stress response So when you're breathing Pranayama kundalini holotropic you are stressing your body out And then you're learning how to use your breath to calm your body down Right because all of these breathing techniques you And then you hold your breath and then you breathe slow and then you go back to And then you hold your breath So you were learning how to take control of your nervous system function and stress And so that stress you're compacting into this exercise so you don't carry it around with you the rest of the day Like I do and so many other people do So you go there you blow a fuse and then you're able to be chilled the rest of the day.

1:46:18So Biologically what's happening to your blood flow when you're over breathing you are inhibiting blood flow To your brain people. I've heard this in breathwork classes people say more you breathe the more oxygen's getting to your brain That's why you're getting so high the opposite is happening You're inhibiting blood flow right now if we were to over breathe and Yeah, you're gonna feel lightheaded. You're gonna feel some tingling in your fingers That's not from an increase of blood circulation, but a decrease So you can breathe into a state in which you have 40 % less blood flow to your brain by Overbreathing.

1:46:56Hallotropic is classic. You start feeling all kind your hands start going like this All the ionized calcium being glom dorm with albumum So all of these and lack of CO2. So this is a classic response some some breathwork people say It's because you're going back in time and you're becoming a bird and all that's beautiful If you want to believe that but what is actually happening to your body is that We're losing that calcium is being sucked up and that CO2 is being inhibited so that vasodilation is happening as causing you felt that I felt it too It's it's freaking when it first happens, but it's completely natural it comes back when you hold your breath Are you breathe more slowly?

1:47:42I only knew I was doing that because of a photo So they took a photo of me while I was doing the breathwork exercise and my my hands were in the air I didn't put them there and my fingers were colored like a crap. It was like that Yes, like that whoever's running that breathwork is doing the right thing You want to get to that state if you're ready for that state So that's what's happening to to the brain and the body you were denying yourself oxygen You were stressing yourself out so that you can live without that stress after that class Sorry, so how is it getting the stress out of me though?

1:48:15The same way that a cold bath is The same way that going to a gym for a half an hour or an hour You're working washing out getting the stress out the same way of going to a yoga class for an hour Like I feel so relaxed right this is compounding that stress It's stressing out your physical body and your brain Really pushing it so that you can be re -equainted with what a threat actually is right? You're not over sensed so when an email comes in from a friend and they're being kind of pissy at you You don't completely lose your top right and say I never want to talk to you again And I think that's one of the reasons why after that class you just went Whoa, I have a better perspective on what stress is How I should be treating other people around me and how my brain should be feeling that relaxed feeling that you have So it's harder to quantify Psychologically especially psychically or spiritually what's happening as a very personal experience However, I will say having done a lot of this intense breath work, you know this vigorous breath work I've seen people absolutely transform by it They do it one time then they come back the second time they're a little better at it and they get rid of a lot of Luggage psychological luggage people have go through some real stuff When they're doing it.

1:49:35I think it's beautiful because this is something that we're doing completely naturally with our own bodies That we have access to there's nothing exogenous about it, right? You know, this is something that that we are commanding inside our nervous systems So that's something I think needs to be explored a lot more I tried numerous times to get into an MRI machine. I wanted to do blood work I did one study which was not in this book in the hypoxia lab at San Francisco One of the oldest hypoxia labs and it freaked out the researchers so much that they really didn't want to be a part of it So um because my hands did that thing and they were pulling blood and my CO2 was so low that you know They wanted to put me into the ER I said no, no, I feel great.

1:50:17I said this is what it's supposed to be doing But they want to see everything consistent all the time right they see these big dips in CO2 they see this stress they associate that with serious illness They don't realize when you bring it on yourself It's something that you can help to master and and so I hope that more research will Will look into what happens to the brain during these vigorous breathing exercises because Not a lot has been done But I know it's very beneficial for people and there's been several studies showing just how beneficial It is for depression for anxiety even autoimmune issues and more of all the things we've discussed What is the most important thing that we've missed that is pertinent to breathing, health, well -being and you know daily practices What is the most important subject matter that that we've missed in this conversation I don't think it's necessarily that we've missed anything I think it's the importance of sort of doubling down on a point of try to make a few times is You don't need to pay for this stuff You don't need to read a bunch of different scientific articles to know That breath is a healing and very nourishing modality This is something that's available to us all day long all night long So you can just focus on these simple things get good at those simple things and work up from there Ultimately, I would love if people finally were able to work up to go to these big Breathwork powerful sessions because I don't know anyone that's gone in one of these and hasn't really gotten something Out of it I think you're Oh yeah, I went to your your live -in proof of that right now I'm the ultimate skeptic as well As as am I that's the nature of my job So just adopt these these simple things and I will say a final word breathing dysfunction is a serious problem especially with kids especially for adults as well So take this seriously fix it and I think you'll really see the benefits from that You'll hear in part because you're doing a BBC Myster series aren't you I am team told me yes, which is very exciting.

1:52:35So that myster series. Have you written it yet? Do you know what it's good? I am in the midst right after this Write it up. Yep, and I'm presuming it's going to be on some some of the subject maths we've discussed It it will be it it's a basic guide and toolbox of exactly what to do and when and how to improve these conditions But it also contains 90 % of this book was thrown out right because I didn't want to have a 600 page book So I'm able to slip in all this other stuff that was thrown out and some of this more mystical some history But a lot of science as well James I I could talk to you forever About this I really really could such that your way of articulating the points and the research you've done is so Captivating But I can see our carbon dioxide is ticking up We're getting close to that time I let's say funny.

1:53:26I feel like I'm like You know little bit like all of a sudden I am going to buy one of those things though. We have a closing tradition Okay, which is the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave be leaving it for The question left for you very simple What is it that drives you to be the best version of you? curiosity That's all that's the only thing that Not the only thing but the main thing that I wake up in the morning I'm excited to take on the day because I have the luxury of having a job that allows me to be curious I've had a lot of jobs that did not allow me to be curious but I'm able to ask questions and have conversations and it's every day is Is a privilege because of that Well, I think from reading this book as I said this is the book that has sat on my bedside on my girlfriend's side for the last I think a year roughly since we moved into that new place You've done a phenomenally great job of condensing the information to make it accessible And relatable to every type of reader out there but it's so It's like a light every other page.

1:54:32There's almost like a light bulb that's being switched on in my head About the way that I'm living my life and how small simple things that as you say aren't complex I don't need to buy some Huge course where I don't need to become a master in anything can have a fundamental change on my life And that's why this book is so unbelievably important But I mean the book speaks for itself because this book is sold like absolutely crazy And it's one of those books that is being driven by word of mouth one person is passing it to another You know I can talk through the people in my team in the web of how the book traveled and jimima and then melon and so fee and so on and I think that speaks to this book.

1:55:08I think it's fun. It's a shame. It's a real shame That I actually believe that this book is now required reading but it speaks to the misalignment problem And how far we've gotten from good habits as it relates to breathing and the consequences that that it's had on our health I'm very excited to see the BBC Moisturist series as well. I'll be checking out looking out for that because I love those series and they provide as you say a An actionable toolkit for a lot of the things we're talking about today I love the way you approach subject matters. I love the impartiality of it I love the fact that you lead with the evidence first Um, and as you've done throughout this conversation you try and keep your opinion second secondary It's what the evidence is saying um, which I think is really important and a lot of people actually they get quite scared of what the evidence is saying So they either avoid it or um They don't mention it at all, but you you hold that line really really well Your work is going to help so many people.

1:56:02I can't I can't imagine millions and millions of people that you'll never get to meet So on behalf of all of those people including my girlfriend as I said she started a studio upstairs called barley breath work Because in part because of what you wrote So afterwards, I just love to show you it But um just so you can see it because you it's it's an example for you of all the lives that you'll never meet that your work is touching You'll never you'll never get to meet you know You're probably if we hadn't met today You wouldn't even know there was a studio that had launched in London because of your work or there was someone that's Dedicated their life now to helping people with breath because of your work.

1:56:35So um on behalf of all those people You'll never meet thank you James Your work is very necessary And I can't wait to see what you write about next. I'm very intrigued. I heard there's a book on the way Very excited by that Thank you very much for having me Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places One which has helped me across many of my investments is net suite They're also a sponsor of this podcast net suite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform You'll find all of your accounting financial management inventory and HR in one place Their technology has been a real game changer especially for my team at flight studio as over the last year We've moved out of startup mode and into scale at mode We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and errors Over 41 ,000 businesses have chosen to future proof their business with net suite So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business head to netsweet .com slash Bartlett and free download the cfo's guide to AI and machine learning That's netsweet .com slash Bartlett