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161 " The most convincing scientific validation of breathing less for asthma came by way of Dr. Alicia Meuret, director of the Anxiety and Depression Research Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In 2014, Meuret and a team of researchers gathered 120 randomly selected asthma sufferers, measured their pulmonary lung functions, lung size, and blood gases, and then gave them a handheld capnometer, which tracked the carbon dioxide in their exhaled breath. Over "
― James Nestor , Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
162 " Chewing. The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we’ll trigger, the younger we’ll look and the better we’ll breathe. "
163 " to New York and was offered a job working on performing artists. These singers, actors, and models needed straight teeth but couldn’t be seen with braces. A colleague introduced him to an old monobloc-like device. After a few months of using it, opera singers began hitting higher notes and chronic snorers slept peacefully for the first time in years. Everyone had straighter teeth and reported breathing better. Some in their 50s and 60s noticed the bones in their mouths and faces growing wider and more "
164 " Over four weeks, the asthmatics would carry the device around and practice breathing less to keep their carbon dioxide levels at a healthy level of 5.5 percent. If the levels dipped, the patients would breathe less until the carbon dioxide levels rose back. A month later, 80 percent of the asthmatics had raised their resting carbon dioxide level and experienced significantly fewer asthma attacks, better lung function, and a widening of their airways. They all breathed better. The symptoms of their asthma were either gone or markedly decreased "
165 " Researchers have suspected that industrialized food was shrinking our mouths and destroying our breathing for as long as we’ve been eating this way. In the 1800s, several scientists hypothesized that these problems were linked to deficiencies of vitamin D; without it, bones in the face, airways, and body couldn’t develop. Others thought the lack of vitamin C was the culprit. "
166 " Next is the tongue. If the tongue overlaps the molars, or has “scalloping” teeth indentations on its sides, it’s too large and will be more apt to clog the throat when you lie down to sleep. "
167 " When people hyperventilate, there is something very strange happening,” Meuret wrote. “In essence they are taking in too much air. But the sensation that they get is shortness of breath, choking, air hunger, as if they’re not getting enough air. It’s almost like a biological system error.” Willing the body to breathe less air appeared to correct that system error. "
168 " Should obstruction become more stubborn sinus infections, Nayak might offer a patient a balloon. In this procedure, he inserts a small balloon into the sinuses and carefully inflates it. "
169 " He was convinced that heart disease, hemorrhoids, gout, cancer, and more than 100 other diseases were all caused by carbon dioxide deficiency brought on by overbreathing "
170 " Since we have known for a long time that savages have excellent teeth and that civilized men have terrible teeth, it seems to me that we have been extraordinarily stupid in concentrating all of our attention upon the task of finding out why all our teeth are so poor, without ever bothering to learn why the savage’s teeth are good,” wrote Earnest Hooton, a Harvard anthropologist who supported Dr. Price’s work. "
171 " Both problems can lead to chronic breathing difficulties and an increased risk of infections. Surgery is highly effective in straightening or reducing these structures, but Nayak warned that it needs to be done carefully and conservatively. The nose, after all, is a wondrous, ornate organ whose structures work as a tightly controlled system. "
172 " Farther down is the neck. Thicker necks cramp airways. Men with neck circumferences of more than 17 inches, and women with necks larger than 16 inches, have a significantly increased risk of airway obstruction. The more weight you gain, the higher your risk of suffering from snoring and sleep apnea, although body mass index is only one of many factors. Weight lifters frequently deal with sleep apnea and chronic breathing problems; instead of layers of fat, they have muscles crowding the airways. Plenty of rail-thin distance runners and even infants suffer, too. "
173 " Tummo "
174 " Scuba divers can make it to three hundred feet breathing mixed gases, but it takes years of training and is a logistical nightmare. The danger isn’t going down—although that certainly is dangerous—it’s coming back up. For a scuba diver, a one-hour plunge at two hundred feet breathing regular compressed air would require a ten-hour ascent to purge the deadly levels of nitrogen gas in the blood that accumulate on the way down. A three-hundred-foot ascent on compressed air would most likely kill you. "
― James Nestor , Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves
175 " Meanwhile, the Papworth Method, a breathing-less technique developed in an English hospital in the 1960s, was also shown to cut asthma symptoms by a third.* "
176 " Still, nobody seems to know exactly why breathing less has been so effective in treating asthma and other respiratory conditions. Nobody knows exactly how it works. There are several theories. "
177 " Forty percent of today’s population suffers from chronic nasal obstruction, and around half of us are habitual mouthbreathers, with females and children suffering the most. The causes are many: "
178 " Swami Rama "
179 " to extend the length of time between inhalations and exhalations. The less one breathes, the more one absorbs the warming touch of respiratory efficiency—and the further a body can go. "
180 " Inside each of our 25 trillion red blood cells are 270 million hemoglobin, each of which has room for four oxygen molecules. That’s a billion molecules of oxygen boarding and disembarking within each red blood cell cruise ship. "
