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Anecdotally (sorry), my resting heart rate was sitting around 72-ish for a long time, according to my fitbit. I'm a pretty fit guy in my mid 30's, so I wasn't r

Anecdotally (sorry), my resting heart rate was sitting around 72-ish for a long time, according to my fitbit. I'm a pretty fit guy in my mid 30's, so I wasn't really happy with that number. I started working on trying to improve my breathing a bit, and after a couple months it's now sitting around 58 or so. I mostly just tried to breathe through my nose as much as possible, with a lesser focus on breathing slower. At first it was difficult because it always felt like my nose was stuffy and hard to breathe through, but there are some techniques to clear it temporarily [0]. And over time my nasal passages became clearer to where I very rarely have trouble breathing through my nose. Of course I don't know for sure if that was actually what brought my heart rate down, but the timeline fits pretty well. Plus I figure the cost and risks of just trying to improve your breathing are pretty much nil, so it's worth a shot. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBqGS-vEIs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBqGS-vEIs0

curun1r 6y ago
If you're curious about this subject, there's a fairly new book [0] by James Nestor who argues for what you're talking about and quite a bit more. He did an experiment where he had his nose sealed to force mouth breathing and found that it caused a number of nasty health consequences, including elevated heart rate. So it's likely that your anecdote is representative of an actual causal relationship between nasal breathing and heart rate. He did a promotional appearance [1] for the book with Joe Rogan that covers a bunch of the material, but the book is interesting beyond what gets discussed in the interview. [0] https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5o9b2RVC2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5o9b2RVC2E

curun1r 6y ago

If you're curious about this subject, there's a fairly new book [0] by James Nestor who argues for what you're talking about and quite a bit more. He did an experiment where he had his nose sealed to force mouth breathing and found that it caused a number of nasty health consequences, including elevated heart rate. So it's likely that your anecdote is representative of an actual causal relationship between nasal breathing and heart rate. He did a promotional appearance [1] for the book with Joe Rogan that covers a bunch of the material, but the book is interesting beyond what gets discussed in the interview. [0] https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath https://www.mrjamesnestor.com/breath [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5o9b2RVC2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5o9b2RVC2E