Do you breathe through your nose or your mouth?
Your body extracts oxygen as you inhale air and exhales carbon dioxide as you breathe out.
So does that mean that oxygen is good and carbon dioxide is bad?
Oxygen can be corrosive and toxic, plus if you have a deficiency of the “waste gas” carbon dioxide,
that can cause fainting, seizures and even death, and it doesn’t get much worse than death!
Carbon dioxide is not the bad guy, in fact it’s pretty important in the breathing equation
Balancing the levels of oxygen & carbon dioxide is a complex task for the body, because the supply of each gas fluctuates with every breath.
If you mouth breathe you can exhale too much carbon dioxide, affecting that balance
By inhaling through the nose, the incoming air is filtered by those fine nose hairs
Nasal breathing warms and humidifies the air coming in.
Nasal hair reduces a significant amount of germs and bacteria with every breath.
Our nose is a reservoir for Nitric Oxide, NO – an essential gas for good health.
Mouth breathing – leads to dehydration
because you exhale vapour with every breath –
If you wear glasses you have probably breathed on your glasses to clean them?
That’s because of all the water vapour that escapes, with EVERY breath through the mouth.
A dry mouth increases acidification of mouth, dental cavities, gum disease, it causes bad breath, snoring and obstructive sleep apnea.
And if you’re unsure whether you breathe through your mouth while you sleep?
If you wake up with a dry mouth, that’s a sign that you do.
My Thursday blogs are always on breathing, and in future episodes I’ll explain more about this and how you can improve your breathing,
reduce your heart rate,
stop you from getting out of breath so quickly,
and even how your breathing can help you lose weight!
Yes, you did hear me correctly.
It seems bizarre, but it can.
