paperback, 336 pages
Published June 17, 2020 by Penguin Life.
300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had bigger skulls. Cooked food meant our heads shrunk; alongside a growing brain, our airways got narrower. Urbanisation then led us to breathe less deeply and less healthily. And so today more than 90% of us breathe incorrectly. So we might have been breathing all our life, but we need to learn how to breathe properly!
In 3.3, James Nestor meets cutting-edge scientists at Harvard and experiments on himself in labs at Stanford to see the impact of bad breathing. He revives the lost, and recently scientifically proven, wisdom of swim coaches, Indian mystics, stern-faced Russian cardiologists, Czechoslovakian Olympians and New Jersey choral conductors - the world's foremost 'pulmonauts' - to show how breathing in specific patterns can trigger our bodies to absorb more oxygen, and he explains the benefits for everyone that result, from staying healthy and warding off anxiety to improving focus and …
300,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had bigger skulls. Cooked food meant our heads shrunk; alongside a growing brain, our airways got narrower. Urbanisation then led us to breathe less deeply and less healthily. And so today more than 90% of us breathe incorrectly. So we might have been breathing all our life, but we need to learn how to breathe properly!
In 3.3, James Nestor meets cutting-edge scientists at Harvard and experiments on himself in labs at Stanford to see the impact of bad breathing. He revives the lost, and recently scientifically proven, wisdom of swim coaches, Indian mystics, stern-faced Russian cardiologists, Czechoslovakian Olympians and New Jersey choral conductors - the world's foremost 'pulmonauts' - to show how breathing in specific patterns can trigger our bodies to absorb more oxygen, and he explains the benefits for everyone that result, from staying healthy and warding off anxiety to improving focus and losing weight.
3.3 is a fascinating ride through evolution, medicine and physiology - and extreme sports. But mostly it explores you. Structured as a journey with chapters from the mouth and nose through to the lungs and nervous system, it is non-fiction at its breath-taking best.
I wanted to believe, but found the author seemingly wanting harder than me. Key takeaway: modern medicine has fallen behind where you should rightly expect it to be regarding your lungs.
I had practised nasal breathing a couple of years before reading Breath, but this book provided a lot of historical context and personal accounts of self experimentation, which was nice to have read. This is a great book to recommend when introducing people to nasal breathing. There are several other books who are more heavy on the science that also goes into much more detail, but they are quite dry and gives much less context to the phenomenon.
Can't recommend this enough - this was so interesting. Ordering a hardcopy now, to keep and reread.
I could not get past the amount of """science""" and just bad logical arguments in this book. If the book removed all occurrences of the word science and just leaned in to the fact that it's completely anecdotal and personal experience based, I think I would have kept reading.
This was one of the most thought provoking books I've read this year (so far). It makes me want to rethink my diet and brush the dust off my meditation and yoga apps.
Scattershot claims and descriptions intertwined with a not particularly interesting self-experiment in forced mouth-breathing.
3.5 / I liked the way Nestor approached the subject, combining contemporary science with older and differently rooted disciplines - and keeping a very open mind through it all. In the end I was a bit underwhelmed by his circling around the same thing, which was no doubt his experience throughout all he'd seen during his ten year period of research. The way he structured his narrative was very obvious, and therefore a bit too simplistic or too easy. Yet, even when I am no big fan of popular american non-fiction, I'm not hesitant to say that this one was worth the read.
There's a lot to be said about breathing and its place in our lives but I'm not sure this book is saying it. Oh, it might be but it's not convincing for some reason. It's a little too dramatic--a little too "this revolutionary truth is being overlooked"--but at the same time, there are such overlooked truths about breath, I think . . . Maybe I need to do all the breathing exercises and experience it directly but some are scary--they come with warnings--and others need to be repeated over a long period for results that aren't exactly clear.
The first surprising truth is that mouth breathing is bad for you. The "proof" is experienced by the author who has his nose sealed off as an experiment, but I'm not sure it proves what he says it does. It may merely show that having your nose sealed off has adverse results. …
There's a lot to be said about breathing and its place in our lives but I'm not sure this book is saying it. Oh, it might be but it's not convincing for some reason. It's a little too dramatic--a little too "this revolutionary truth is being overlooked"--but at the same time, there are such overlooked truths about breath, I think . . . Maybe I need to do all the breathing exercises and experience it directly but some are scary--they come with warnings--and others need to be repeated over a long period for results that aren't exactly clear.
The first surprising truth is that mouth breathing is bad for you. The "proof" is experienced by the author who has his nose sealed off as an experiment, but I'm not sure it proves what he says it does. It may merely show that having your nose sealed off has adverse results. It doesn't show that breathing only partially through your nose is bad for you.
So that's he kind of book this is. If you want to take it as a starting point for your own personal research, it should serve. There's clearly stuff in there that deserves to be further explored. I tried to follow up on some of this book's claims by searching the internet and there are legit medical journals who seem to support many of its theses.
Great journalism with new research, anecdotes, and curated techniques. It’s a fast-moving personal journey using old and new age advice, and the author makes clear is something still in progress. A monograph from Stanford University Press is cited that was published in 2018, and several studies were mentioned that are currently underway, so breath and orthodontics seem to be going through a revival. A New York dentist, Dr. Michael Gelb, said in the book, “In ten years, nobody will be using traditional orthodontics”.
The entire book wasn’t 5 stars. Part 1 is the author’s personal experiments (interesting and short), Part 2 is the art and science of breathing (easily the best section), and Part 3 was “Breathing +”, which explored pushing the limits of breath and didn’t really interest me at all. This is 5 stars because it’s a quick book with immediate health benefits you can practice (my average …
Great journalism with new research, anecdotes, and curated techniques. It’s a fast-moving personal journey using old and new age advice, and the author makes clear is something still in progress. A monograph from Stanford University Press is cited that was published in 2018, and several studies were mentioned that are currently underway, so breath and orthodontics seem to be going through a revival. A New York dentist, Dr. Michael Gelb, said in the book, “In ten years, nobody will be using traditional orthodontics”.
The entire book wasn’t 5 stars. Part 1 is the author’s personal experiments (interesting and short), Part 2 is the art and science of breathing (easily the best section), and Part 3 was “Breathing +”, which explored pushing the limits of breath and didn’t really interest me at all. This is 5 stars because it’s a quick book with immediate health benefits you can practice (my average systolic dropped 10 below its average for 4 days in a row so far), and the overall ROI covered below.
Optimum breathing rate, tongue posture, lung expanding stretches, different nostril activation, chewing, and clearing nasal passages are some topics covered. The appendix is full of breathing methods to practice, and the audiobook walks you through all of them. The book features Dr Mike Mew of Orthotropics, who if you visit his Youtube channel, covers facial growth guidance like tongue chewing, swallowing, proper facial posture, mewing, exercises, sleeping position, xylitol gum, etc.
Nice to read. It is hard to separate what is based on real science in this book and what is not.
