Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

I finally got around to reading Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. It’s an interesting book and worth a read for anyone with a breathing disorder or unexplained chronic health issues.

The book tells the story of Nestor’s journey through the world of breathing health, starting out with his own childhood health issues developed as a result of being a chronic mouth breather. He does an experiment where he plugs his nose forcing him to mouth breathe, and notices a decline in his health, including development of sleep apnea which disappeared after he started nasal breathing again. The book doesn’t say how he knew he had sleep apnea though and he didn’t appear to have it confirmed with a sleep study.

Along the way he talks to many of the big names at the forefront (or fringe depending on how you look at it) of the breathing health movement, including Marianna Evans, Patrick McKeown, John Mew, Mike Mew, William Hang, Steven Park, and Theodore Belfor. He also describes research on: sleep at Stanford by Christian Guilleminault, mouth breathing in monkeys by Egil Harvold, the western diet and malocclusion by Weston Price, the connection with the vagus nerve by Stephen Porges, and the evaluation of the Wim Hof method by Andrew Huberman.

Nestor mentions being treated with a Homeoblock by Dr Belfor, but it’s not exactly clear to me why he thought this was necessary of what benefit he got from it. He seemed to think it was worthwhile. Maybe I forgot what he said because I read it while recovering from nasal surgery and wasn’t at my peak mentally.

He explores a bunch of different breathing techniques I have tried including alternate nostril breathing, Buteyko breathing, and Sudarshan Kriya, with an appendix listing the details which are also in videos on his website.

I’d already listened to several podcast interviews he did when the book came out and previously read a bunch of the books and studies he cites so there were no great surprises for me, but it’s still a worthwhile and fun read.