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" The right nostril is a gas pedal. When you’re inhaling primarily through this channel, circulation speeds up, your body gets hotter, and cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate all increase. This happens because breathing through the right side of the nose activates the sympathetic nervous system, the “fight or flight” mechanism that puts the body in a more elevated state of alertness and readiness. Breathing through the right nostril will also feed more blood to the opposite hemisphere of the brain, specifically to the prefrontal cortex, which has been associated with logical decisions, language, and computing. "
― James Nestor , Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
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" Everything you or I or any other breathing thing has ever put in its mouth, or in its nose, or soaked in through its skin, is hand-me-down space dust that’s been around for 13.8 billion years. This wayward matter has been split apart by sunlight, spread throughout the universe, and come back together again. To breathe is to absorb ourselves in what surrounds us, to take in little bits of life, understand them, and give pieces of ourselves back out. Respiration is, at its core, reciprocation. "
― James Nestor , Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
144
" Around this time, a few thousand miles west, in the industrial factory town of Zlín, Czechoslovakia, a gangly, five-foot-eight-inch runner named Emil Zátopek was experimenting with his own breath-restriction techniques. Zátopek never wanted to become a runner. When the management at the shoe factory where he was working elected him for a local race, he tried to refuse. Zátopek told them he was unfit, that he had no interest, that he’d never run in a competition. But he competed anyway and came in second out of 100 contestants. Zátopek saw a brighter future for himself in running, and began to take the sport more seriously. Four years later he broke the Czech national records for the 2,000, 3,000, and 5,000 meters. Zátopek developed his own training methods to give himself an edge. He’d run as fast as he could holding his breath, take a few huffs and puffs and then do it all again. It was an extreme version of Buteyko’s methods, but Zátopek didn’t call it Voluntary Elimination of Deep Breathing. Nobody did. It would become known as hypoventilation training. Hypo, which comes from the Greek for “under” (as in hypodermic needle), is the opposite of hyper, meaning “over.” The concept of hypoventilation training was to breathe less. Over the years, Zátopek’s approach was widely derided and mocked, but he ignored the critics. At the 1952 Olympics, he won gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters. On the heels of his success, he decided to compete in the marathon, an event he had neither trained for nor run in his life. He won gold. Zátopek would claim 18 world records, four Olympic golds and a silver over his career. He would later be named the “Greatest Runner of All Time” by Runner’s World magazine. “He does everything wrong but win,” said Larry Snyder, a track coach at Ohio State at the time. — "
― James Nestor , Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
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" Asthma is an immune system sensitivity that provokes constriction and spasms in the airways. Pollutants, dust, viral infections, cold air, and more can all lead to attacks. But asthma can be brought on by overbreathing, which is why it’s so common during physical exertion, a condition called exercise-induced asthma that affects around 15 percent of the population and up to 40 percent of athletes. At rest or during exercise, asthmatics as a whole tend to breathe more—sometimes much more—than those without asthma. Once an attack starts, things go from bad to worse. Air gets trapped in the lungs and passageways constrict, which makes it harder to push air out and back in. More breathing but more feelings of breathlessness ensue, more constriction, more panic, and more stress. "
― James Nestor , Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
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" Eventually their bodies adapt to avoid such unexpected attacks by staying in a state of alert, by constantly overbreathing in an effort to keep their carbon dioxide as low as possible. “What anxious patients could be experiencing is a completely natural reaction—they’re reacting to an emergency in their bodies,” said Feinstein. “It could be that anxiety, at its root, isn’t a psychological problem at all.” This approach is all very theoretical, Feinstein warned, and needs to be rigorously tested, which is what he will do in the coming years. But if it’s true, it could explain why so many drugs don’t work for panic, anxiety, and other fear-based conditions, and how slow and steady breathing therapy does. "
― James Nestor , Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
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" This new, highly processed diet lacked fiber and the full spectrum of minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and other nutrients. As a result, urban populations would grow sicker and smaller. In the 1730s, before the onset of industrialization, the average Briton stood about five-seven. Within a century, population shrank two inches, to less than five-five. "
― James Nestor , Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
