Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Airway First, the podcast from the Children's
Airway First Foundation. I'm your host, Rebecca Downing. My guest today is award-winning author
James Nester. Over the course of his career, James has written for Scientific American,
Outside Magazine, BBC, The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, and many more. In his latest
book, Breath, The Science of a Lost Art, he explores how the human species has lost the
ability to breathe properly and more importantly, how we can get it back.
Breath spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list in its first year of release
and has sold more than 1 million copies. It was also awarded the best general nonfiction
book of 2020 by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. James has spoken around the world
at a variety of venues including Stanford Medical School, Harvard Medical School, the
United Nations, and more than 60 radio and television shows. We are also proud to have
James as a member of the Children's Airway First Foundation advisory board. You can
find out more about James at MrJamesNester.com. And now, here's my interview with James Nester.
James, thank you so much for being on the program today. We really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me here.
Absolutely. Right out of the gate, I would like to ask you something from your book.
I'll have a link to your book, Breath, in the show notes as well. It was something that
caught my attention when I was actually reading the book. We all know how to breathe, right?
We've been doing it since birth. So why do I need to learn how to breathe?
Well, you could say that same thing about eating or exercising, right?
Right, yeah.
So if we evolved or grew up in a natural environment, you don't need to learn how to breathe. You
don't need to learn how to exercise. You don't need to learn what foods to eat and when. You
don't need to relearn how to sleep. But since we aren't in that environment anymore, since
we're in an industrial environment, we need to relearn all of these things, how our bodies
are naturally supposed to be. And so I'm not going to go move to a cave or to the wilderness.
I want to live in this environment. And if you're going to live in this environment and
not be sick all the time, you need to listen to your body. And it's not just that you need
to relearn to breathe, but you need to relearn to do all of these different things. And breathing
is just a part of that. So we have lost the ability to breathe properly. Just look at
the data and you'll see that. I was shocked when I first found that, but it's entirely
true.
Yeah. And we've talked about this in some other podcast episodes, which, you know, obviously
I'll link to, but and you really hit on it. It's the industrial environment. I mean, that's
where this shift happened, isn't it?
Yeah. And all you have to do is either look at our ancestors, distant ancestors, or look
at indigital populations that are still living in the way that our ancestors did thousands
of years ago. And they don't have hypertension. They don't have diabetes. They don't have
breathing problems. They don't have respiratory issues. So, you know, they don't have lower
back pain or foot problems. So all of the, I won't say all, many of the problems most
of us living in the industrial world are containing with our problems of our own creation. So if
we have created these problems, these health issues for ourselves, then we can help reduce
them or get rid of them. And that's exactly what's happening in self care and health awareness
right now all over the world.
That's very valid. So before we get too deep though, just to kind of give a little backstory
for those that are listening that may not have read the book yet, and if they haven't,
I highly recommend it. Would you just share a little bit about your journey because you
had your own airway or breathing journey, which played into this book, correct?
Yeah, I did. I was suffering from various respiratory issues. I was told that there's
nothing I could do about them really. It was just a sign of aging. So I was getting pneumonia
a lot, mild pneumonia. I was getting bronchitis a lot, at least once a year. I was noticing
I was starting to wheeze when I was working out. And what was odd about this is I was
doing everything else that I had understood was healthy, right? I was sleeping, fine,
eating all the right foods. I was exercising all the time, but I kept having respiratory
issues. And every time I would have some sort of infection, I was given the old Z-Pak, given
some antibiotics, which works, you know?
But it doesn't fix the core issue. So it was something that I was contending with for
years. Nothing super major, you know? It's not like I was missing work from it, well,
when I had pneumonia I was, but it wasn't something that was impacting me all the time.
It was just sort of in the background, but it did seem to be getting worse every year.
And so I wanted to figure it out. And that's really what got me interested in this concept
of learning how to breathe correctly and improving your respiration and seeing what
that could do for you. And I'm trying to remember exactly how you just phrased it, but with
what's going on with breathing and the fact that we're just, we're all having these different
respiratory issues, right? We're all having allergies, asthma is on the rise. You're seeing
all of these things. And you mentioned that you get a Z-Pak. We've all done that. But
we're not getting to the core, right? We're just treating the symptoms. And part of that,
I think, is this whole, I'm not sure if it came from you or where, but this global pandemic
of breathing. So at the core, if it's my understanding, is this whole disevolution that you were referencing,
right? The jaws that we just suddenly don't have room in our mouths anymore?
Well, there's many reasons why we're such poor breathers. And this disevolution is one of
many reasons. I think it's the primary driver. Other people think being constantly exposed
to allergens, to pollution, to mold, to dust can contribute to this, which is totally true.
But I really think the shrinking of our mouths, the shrinking of the sinus cavities really
had a lot to do with why we become such habitually poor breathers. And when I discovered that,
you know, that in the course of about 300 years, this came on from close to zero, not
quite zero, close to zero to 90% of the population has some sort of malocclusion, which can impact
your breathing. It shocked me because I didn't know that evolution, quote unquote, evolution
could act so fast across an entire population, but it can in a single generation. That's
what we've seen. So yeah, I think it's the main driver. But you know, I think there's
also an argument to be said that these other things have at minimum contributed to it,
us not being able to breathe properly.
And they're also, well, I guess not also. So as far as, you know, contributing one
of the things we've done, and I say we collect blame on you know, calling anybody out is to
counteract our bodies have started many of us mouth breathing during the day and the
night this whole chronic mouth breathing thing. So why is this so critical that you
uncovered that we breathe through our nose instead of our mouth? Because I think at least
several I've done it right when I listen about yes, I've tested and it's a lot easier to
breathe through your mouth. It's just easier. So yeah, so so why is that bad if that feels
easier? What makes that so bad?
Well, it's a lot easier to go through a McDonald's drive through every meal than to cook your
own stuff. So that's a fair point. Okay. Yeah, you know, we can breathe through our mouths.
We're designed to be able to breathe through our mouths as a backup system. And it's fantastic.
How terrible would that be just to have one pathway through which we can breathe? But
it is not the main pathway through which we should be breathing. You can when you're
really working out hard, you can default to mouth breathing for a little bit. And you're
laughing when you're talking to someone. Oftentimes when we're talking, we're mouth breathing,
which is one of the reasons why I think talking to people gets so exhausting after a while.
Not really focusing on how you're breathing. But and that won't make any difference. I'm
talking about habitual constant mouth breathing. And you know, this is not my hypothesis. It's
not my theory. This is documented over decades and decades and decades, hundreds and hundreds
of different studies looking at the difference between mouth breathing and nasal breathing.
So anyone that's looked at our anatomy can see what a complex, beautiful ornate structure
the airway is. And it's that way for a reason. You know, nature doesn't build things in a
very complex way by accident. Nature's very into building things as simple as possible.
What is the most simple and efficient way of building something? Nature doesn't like
unnecessary excess. So all of these structures are there for a reason. They're there to help
filter our air, you know, protect us. They're there to allow us to get more oxygen. They're
there to allow us to have more developed growth in our mouths and faces. So this is not controversial
stuff, right? And from what I've seen is no one has argued this point that the nasal breathing
is superior than mouth breathing. But very few people really apply that logic to their
day to day lives. And that's what I thought was so interesting about this is we've known
this for so long and yet look around. And so many people are probably mouth breathing.
Yeah. And you mentioned something about, you know, more oxygen. But if I understood correctly,
there comes a point where there's too much, right? Where we can actually breathe in too
much. No, you're not going to breathe in too much oxygen. It's, you know, everyone's been
focused on oxygen, but oxygen is easy unless you're really sick, unless you're at altitude.
Getting oxygen is the easy part. It's having that proper level of CO2 that's a lot harder
for people. So you can over breathe, you can hyperventilate and your SBO2 is rocking to
99%, 98%. Great. Why do you feel so terrible? Why is your health so bad? What do you keep
having asthma attacks and panic attacks? It's because you're breathing too fast. So it has
less to do with oxygen, more to do with the volume and pace of each of those breaths that
you're taking in. It's just too much. It's like revving up a car. And when you're idling,
just revving the motor over and over and over, you're going to wear out the motor, which
is, you're going to wear out your body if you keep breathing that way.
Gotcha. All right. So it's the fact that it's just too fast or too much volume.
Yeah. It's, it's when we over breathe, you know, if anyone's done any breath work, you
over breathe for a specific purpose to stress your body out. That's what these vigorous
pranayamas do. You are stressing your body out. So in order to give you the power to
learn how to stress your body out specifically so you can calm it. So if you're unconsciously
over breathing all the time, you are sending your body and your brain stress signals. This
is just 911 calls over and over and over and over throughout the day. What happens to the
body? Blood sugar goes up, cortisol goes up, free radicals go up. You start losing sensations
in your fingers and in your toes. You're always cold all the time. So that is caused by this
chronic over breathing. Just like overeating is bad. Over breathing is bad as well.
So how should we be breathing then? Aside from through the nose?
Yeah, you know, everyone thinks like I spent so many years researching this stuff. Oh,
I found this secret and it's now trademarked and you can learn more about it when you take
my fifth course where I lose the secret training of the breathing masters. There's no secret
here people. It's extremely boring because nature is very simple and your, what your
body needs is very simple things to support it. So instead of taking 40 different supplements
all the time, eat the right food. You don't need those supplements. Instead of paying
attention to every single step you take throughout the day, just work in a way in which you're
naturally walking throughout the day and you don't need to look at your pedometer. With
breathing is the same thing. Why don't these indigenous populations have all of the respiratory
issues because they are in a natural environment. Their posture is very different. They're paying
attention to the way in which they sit. They pay attention to the way in which they sleep.
They pay attention to the way in which they breathe when they're exercising. So it's,
the secret is just to do what your body is naturally designed to do. That's the secret.
This isn't about becoming superhuman or super breather. It's just allowing your body to
naturally do it. There's nothing wrong with our bodies. It's us who have screwed up in
our cultures who have screwed them up and now we're trying to get them back to that
balanced state.
So then what's the point of doing breath work?
Well, breath work allows you to become aware of your breath. It allows you to take control
of your breathing, conscious control of your breathing so you can condition yourself to
breathe better unconsciously. The more breath work you do, especially training in breath
holds or training very slow rhythmic breathing, naturally your body is going to find that
pace. It's going to find that rhythm and you'll start breathing that way without even thinking
about it, which to me is really the point of all this stuff. I don't want to have to
be thinking about how I'm breathing all the time. That sounds terrible. I want my body
to naturally do it, but that takes a lot of conditioning and that's what breath work is
so good at doing.
Catch.
You're listening to Airway First with today's guest, James Nester. You can find out more
about the Children's Airway First Foundation and our mission to fix a force six on our
website at childrensairwayfirst.org. The CAF website offers tons of great resources for
parents and medical professionals, including videos, blogs, recommended reading lists,
comprehensive medical research, podcasts, and so much more. We also encourage parents
to join the Airway Huddle, our Facebook support group which was created for parents of children
with Airway and sleep related issues. You can access the Airway Huddle support group at
facebook.com backslashgroups backslashairwayhuddle. Are you a medical professional or parent that's
interested in being a guest on the show or do you have an idea for an upcoming episode?
Then shoot us a note via the contacts page on our website or send us an email directly
at info at childrensairwayfirst.org. As a reminder, this podcast and the opinions expressed
here are not a medical diagnosis. If you suspect your child might have an airway issue, contact
your pediatric airway dentist or pediatrician. And now let's jump back into my interview
with today's guest, James Nester.
And this is then we're playing into your comment about how we breathe during the day
impacts how we breathe the night then, correct? This is pretty controversial. This part of
the segment of the podcast put up a big red flag because some ENTs and sleep medicine people
say how you breathe the day has zero impact on how you breathe at night. I tend to disagree
with that even though I'm a reporter, I shouldn't have attitudes or I shouldn't have really
placed myself on one side of the line here. I have to disagree on it because I have met
probably hundreds by this time of people who have used breathwork to improve their daytime
anxiety, their asthma or their panic or whatever. They say, my God, I used to sleep, used to
snore, used to have sleep apnea and either it's greatly reduced or sometimes people don't
even have it anymore. Just a real, I want to be super clear about this. Everyone's different.
So everyone's going to respond differently. So you can't say what's worked for one person
is going to work for everyone. But from what I've seen, there are no negative side effects
from improving your breathing. So you're only going to improve things are only going to
improve and time and time again, we're seeing sleep improve. But when you learn how to breathe
properly, have there been any huge studies of this? No, who's going to pay for that?
Right? Zero people because this is just allowing people to get off of CPAPs. You know, but
there is one in Stanford coming up about 200 people looking at sleep tape and sleep apnea.
That's being run by Ann Kearney down at Stanford. She finally got funding after looking for
funding for about five years. Oh, wow. From a private funder, of course, because who,
what a public entity would ever fund. So, it's allowing people to help heal themselves
for free. Right. So I'm going to ask you another controversial
one. I only know it's controversial because I've heard your response before. But I only
had one other person that would ever talk to me about this on the podcast. So we're
going there. Yeah, it's really not that exciting, but I just thought I'd practice it with that.
So, mouth taping. I know your advocate's not the right word, but your supporter of it.
And just, you know, from some of the things that I've read and some of the other people
that I've spoken with in previous episodes, that seems to be another touchy one at this
point. Where do you stand on that? Well, yeah, I never want to be an evangelist
for any of this stuff. I always want to be objective because if you're objective and
you don't have your hand in any of the cookie jars, you can call BS on stuff. And I always
want to be able to call BS on stuff because that's my, it's supposed to be my job as a
supporter. So when it comes to mouth taping, I talk about my personal experience in the
book from going from mouth breathing and snoring a lot to mouth taping and snoring
zero. I talk about my experience talking to other people who had that same experience
as me. And since the book has come out, this is the one thing I've heard more than anything
else over and over and over. No matter where I go, what place I do talks at, from doing
book signings, people talk about mouth taping, how it has transformed their sleep quality.
In many cases, transformed their life. Will it work for everybody? No. No. Right. Is there
any negative side effect to nasal breathing during sleep? No. Can everyone mouth tape?
No. And a way to try to see if this is right for you is to put that little piece of tape
on and keep it on for 10 minutes while you're watching TV or whatever, and then keep it
on for 20 minutes and then try to work a few hours with that little piece of tape. And if
you find after an hour of wearing that tape, you just have completely forgotten about it
because it's effortless to breathe through your nose. I think my personal opinion from
talking to so many people about this, I think you can try it out at night and see if it works
for you. If it doesn't work for you, don't do it. If your nose is clogged, don't do it.
Don't do it. That's right. There's some common sense here. And now it's just, I can't tell
you how many interviews, even the New York Times just wrote about mouth taping. Wall
Street Journal wrote about it two months before that. It's now in Men's Health Magazine,
a huge section. And some ENTs say, oh, this is extremely dangerous. Don't fall for this.
Get your sleep study immediately. Come on over to my office. So there's a certain logic
to that, right? Some people have structural issues in their noses. They need surgery in order to
breathe well, which is why you try these other practices of wearing it for a little while,
seeing how it works for you before you use it when you go to sleep. So common sense,
which is a slim supply. A lot, you know, a lot of throughout a lot of different areas right now.
So that's what I think of mouth taping. I love it. I have a real hard time sleeping without it.
It's the same for millions of people now. Is it right for everyone? No. Figure it out yourself.
Those are the tools. Right. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Because it is, it's so funny.
I've had other guests that I'd asked and they just, they don't even want to talk about it.
So I do, I appreciate that. Well, you know, because I think people see something online and
then immediately want to do it all the time, you know, without doing any of these initial
steps. And there's, there's other people who are really pissed off and sleep medicine. Some ENTs
were just like, you know, who are you to tell people that they can improve their sleep using
this piece of tape? You are not qualified to say this. I am not qualified to say that, but I am
qualified to go out and talk to leaders in the field over a number of different years and look
at the research. And that's what I'm telling you. And I'm also okay with telling you my personal
experience. Sure. And that's what I mentioned in the book. And if you have a problem with that,
too bad. I don't know what to tell you. You know, I just think this is something that is free. I
know it works for a lot of people. If you're careful, if you do it right, it might work for you.
So why not give it a try? Why not? Right? I have strong opinions about
mouth taping as you, as you say. I know, I know. That's what you get for asking me that question.
I knew, I knew, but that's why I asked it. Because, you know, like I said, no one else will talk to
me about it. So, all right. So one of the things that you say, and it's not a direct quote, so,
but that respiration can also lead to restoration. And to me, especially as it relates to
children's every first mean, that's, that's it in a nutshell for me personally, right? If you can
breathe right, your health's going to improve. I just thought maybe we could talk a little bit
more about that and some of the things that you have found over the course of your research. So
I mean, you've seen some pretty dramatic changes, correct?
I see them all the time. I get letters all the time, hundreds, thousands, thousands of them.
Now, I hear about this, all people find me and they corner me and they tell me about this stuff,
which is a bit ironic because I am only the messenger here. I cannot do any of this research.
And so, you know, I will try to refer them to the experts in the field and those experts may be
sick of getting all these emails from these people. But, you know, that's my role here. I'm a conduit
to where the research and the science is. So of course, I, you know, hear all these stories
all the time because they're so transformative. But one thing that all of these people have had in
common, every single one of them from my experience, is they're all really pissed off. They're extremely
angry that it took them finding a weird book to learn that their kid may have a breathing problem.
Maybe shouldn't be on a fistful of drugs that aren't doing any good for them, right? That maybe
sleep disorder, breathing is why their kid is still wetting their bed at the age of 12,
why they have such severe ADHD. And I'm pissed off for them because I'm not saying I'm not against
drugs. I think Western medicine is a beautiful thing. I would not be alive without it. I love it.
Pills and powders when you need them are the best thing in the world. Imagine dentistry without
anesthesia. No, thanks. I really like living in the modern world, but you can't diagnose someone
with several chronic issues without looking at their breathing. And one thing that I keep hearing
over and over again is that no one even asked their kids about their sleep quality, about their
breathing, about anything to do with their respiration. And I think that is borderline
criminal. It really is to have some kids suffer for 10 years without looking at the most simple,
basic principle behind so much of this, which is breathing. And if there's one thing I hope this
book does is bring attention to specifically sleep disorder breathing, which I see as a growing pandemic
of its own self. That's true. And kind of to that point, you've been,
in the whole, the year and a half you've been on our board, and just for that amount of time,
I know you've been traveling, you've been speaking in your, you're all over the place talking about
this and talking with people about this from when you started, you know, when you were doing your
research to now, are you seeing this kind of has this shift started, or is it still,
I guess, specifically within the medical community, are you starting to see the shift happen because,
you know, at least from the perspective where I'm sitting, parents are starting to get it and
parents are starting to ask questions. Well, I don't know if I'm the best person to answer that,
because I'm in this little bubble, right? I'm brought out to do these talks, I go on these tours,
and people are already clued into it because they're going to see me. Most of them have read the
book. So they, so they want to share their stories. So it's hard for me to look at the general gauge,
what's the temperature of this stuff, you know, throughout the country. I don't know.
I see from all the letters I get and all the people that tell me stuff that awareness seems to be
spreading, but I just have no idea. And, you know, it's not my job necessarily to spread this.
I've done what I could with the book, but I really think it's the family physician's job,
or the people looking at the kids or prescribing them, whatever drugs for their problems to be
a prize to this information. It just seems crazy that they're not. And so I don't know what it's
going to take for that to happen. Probably a bunch of lawsuits is what I think is what's going to
really push the dial, which is sad, but kind of true. But I think that that's really what needs to
happen. And as far as, you know, has this become global news? I don't think so. I think we've got
a long way to go, but you do see signs of this percolating in places. Maybe it wasn't percolating
before.
Right. Okay. And I'm not going to ask you to do reading demonstrations for us today.
Just for anybody that's listening that would like to see some of them, I'll find a couple of
other interviews that you've done that you've demonstrated that some people can get kind of a
sense of what you talk about in the book. You do list some examples. So at the end of every episode,
I like to turn it back over to the guest and just open the floor completely to you so that the
final thought is yours. Any message that you would like to leave with parents at this point?
Well, I think if parents are listening to this podcast, they're clued into the breathing health
of their kids. So there's not a lot that I can, I can tell them. I think that awareness is really
the most important thing just to become aware of it. Are all problems attributed to sleep disorder
breathing or breathing dysfunction? Of course not. No, they're not. But it's a pretty easy one to
diagnose. And because it's so easy to diagnose, I think that that puts some more power in the hands
of parents. Like you can, there's so many wearables now that can provide pretty accurate data on
sleep apnea, on snoring, on other issues to do with sleep quality. That it's worthwhile if your
kid is having chronic issues or even if they're not, just look at their general breathing health.
You know, it's once you're a good breather early on in life that will tend to stay with you, but
you need that knowledge and awareness. I mean, my God, I wish I had known this stuff when I was
growing up. It would have made my life a lot easier, you know, but I didn't. And so you can't regret
the past, but what you can do is learn from our follies and sort of try to put all that knowledge
together and build a better future. And I think that's what everyone's trying to do at this time.
And I think breathing is definitely breathing awareness is definitely a part of that. Awesome.
Well, I appreciate you being on today and speaking a little bit more about your book and
everything that you just covered. Thanks a lot for having me.
Thanks again to today's guest, James Nester, for sharing his insight and to each of you for
listening to today's episode. If you're new to our podcast, please don't forget to subscribe.
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Take care, stay safe, and happy breathing, everyone.