One of the best nonfiction books I’ve read this year.

The writer is a fantastic storyteller. He weaves the complex area of evolution, biology and anthropology into a personal memoir. In this, he achieves a tremendous feat of telling us about a simple thing that we all think we know, breathing.

Pulmonauts - I learnt about group folks interested in breathing techniques and ideas which are not validated by the broader scientific community, but it is quite useful. Their methods are either written in ancients texts like Vedas and also practised in a niche manner by scientists and doctors.

Few key takeaways:
-Breathing is one of the lowest hanging fruits in terms of health improvement.
-Mouth-breathing and over-breathing is terrible.
-More oxygen is good for health is a myth
-There is some benefit of having carbon dioxide inside our body.
-Techniques like holotropic breathing, WimHof method, Tummo breathing are areas worth exploring.