Breathing Through My Nose

I think I’m a … I can’t believe I’m admitting this … I think I’m a mouth-breather.

Why didn’t anyone every tell me this!?!?!?!

Or maybe I’m a mouth-breather, but only sometimes.

In my weekly round-up (still trying to name that thing that’ll make me famous and get me thousands or readers) I talked about the book, Breath, all about breathing and I’m obsessed. With breathing.

The book starts by describing the evolution of humans and why our noses are all different. Fascinating. Then the book quickly gets to why we’re supposed to breathe through our noses. All those hair filters and heating and cooling and cleaning of the air and on and on and on.

For the past 5 days I’ve been keenly aware of my breathing and I’ll be damned … breathing through my nose? I kinda feel like I’m suffocating. And I’m breathing too deeply and not enough and too quickly (the average human breathes in-and-out 12 times per minute – I’m at about 18-20 breaths per minute).

Don’t get me started on sleeping. I wake up dehydrated every day. Why? Because I’m mouth breathing. What happened when I tried falling asleep with my mouth closed? I struggled.

For years, when I had my decades long battle with bronchiectasis, I Blogged alot about phlegm-free diets, breathing exercises, and all sorts of lung stuff. When I finally fixed my wheezing and lung-bleeding, I thought … hey …good.

But I have a long way to go and breathing correctly and nose-breathing, specifically, is my new obsession.

Sitting here at 52-years-old, thinking about my mortality more than ever, it’s these little things that I think will make the big difference and add a few years to my life and make the years I have more enjoyable.

I’ll add this to my end-of-year push along with cold showers, daily exercise, stretching, and lifting heavy weights.

I’ll keep ya updated.